I Talk to Myself.

Reading out loud into a tape recorder is an excellent practice for writers. Unfortunately, it’s usually a humbling, if not traumatizing experience. As you listen to the playback, you realize this is not the raw stuff of brilliance. It’s the stuff you thought was brilliant but turns out to be flat, lame, poorly constructed, confusing, and, at worst, banal. While talking to yourself isn’t technically a mental illness, listening to your own writing can, at times, cause symptoms of mental illness including anxiety, self-flagellation, and feelings of worthlessness.

I bought my first tape recorder in the early ‘80s when the iPhone was just a minuscule glimmer in Steve Jobs’ deep subconscious. It took the same size cassettes that were used to play music and was kind of clunky. Nevertheless, it was a major breakthrough in the art of interviewing clients—particularly when they were explaining something complicated like reverse mortgages, the difference between RAM and ROM, or the inner working of hydroelectric dams. (See Writing Aside #14 for a partial list from A-Z.)

Instead of scribbling notes, I could focus entirely on asking questions until I vaguely understood what the person was talking about. Plus, I discovered if you badgered a client long enough, they’d eventually blurt out the perfect headline. (I once made up a list of the ten most important questions to ask. By far, the most important one was some variation on, “Yeah, but why the f— should anyone care?” Not a bad question for writers to ask themselves, too…)

My second tape recorder took little microcassettes. It was significantly smaller, which made it far easier to carry around, and was also the first one reporters could use to shove into the faces of lawyers, criminals, and politicians so they could document the difference between them if any.

Sometime in the 1990s, I moved up to my first handheld digital recorder. One cool feature was that it held hours and hours of recordings that you could organize into folders. You know how hard it is to set most car clocks? Setting up folders in a digital recorder was exponentially more difficult. Almost as difficult as figuring out why you’d want to in the first place.

It did take a while for me to convince myself that invisible bits and bytes were more reliable than actual physical recording tape. In fact, they were less reliable. One time I spent a day interviewing a half dozen specialists in some byzantine medical procedure. While driving back to the office, I pushed a few promising buttons to listen to the interviews. In the process, I did something that turned my display into Japanese. After a few customer service calls, I found out that all I had to do was reformat it by following the instructions on the screen. Which were in Japanese. It didn’t end well.

Soon thereafter, however, I got my first digital recorder with a computer interface. Which meant I had a backup if I connected to my computer before doing that Japanese thing.

Then the iPhone came along. Now I could think, record, save, listen to music, take pictures, read the news, and check the weather all with one finger. Virtually simultaneously! And spend even more time not writing in the process¹.

Finally, if you've watched too many episodes of Mission Impossible you'll want to try a  voice recorder pen. It records remarkably well and has lots of cool features you can spend days figuring out and never use. Are they legal, you ask yourself out loud? Well, there are different laws in every state but usually, it's legal to do without consent in a public place, but in a private setting, such as a bathroom or changing area, recording someone without their knowledge is illegal."² Suffice it to say, I have never recorded anyone, even myself, in a bathroom or changing area.

The great thing about this pen is that you can put it in voice-activated mode so when you go for walks you can record away without breaking your stride. But, the best thing about it is that it's also a real pen. So, even though I’ve lost the tiny connector that makes it compatible with my Mac, I can still use the built-in pen to take notes and jot down “brilliant” one-liners, just like I did before I ever owned a recorder.

It saves a lot of time.

1. The iPhone was also a major advance in the art of transcription. Ah, transcription. That’s where, as Captain Hook so eloquently put it, the canker gnaws. Transcription needs a Writing Aside all its own.

2. https://www.movavi.com/learning-portal/is-it-illegal-to-record-someone.html. https://recordinglaw.com/is-it-illegal-to-video-record-someone-without-their-consent/