New Technology – The Making Of A Dyslexic Author

New computer applications are the difference between success and failure if you are dyslexic and want to get that book in your head on paper and to an acceptable publishing standard.
The following account is my journey from never being able to write to the publication of a successful list of Ebooks.
At the outset I will say that even after six years and 200,000 words I am not a gifted writer. Others say I am a great story teller. Yet getting a good narrative to read well is a many step process for dyslectics.
In 1960, flashing words onto a screen with a high speed projector was at the time thought to be a breakthrough in teaching speed reading. This visualization of words was a radical shift from normal phonics based teaching. For an undiagnosed dyslectic it was a complete disaster. It took four more years to eventually learn to read at fourteen. Yet never did I manage to write or spell. I was always able to cover this disability by using others to write for me.
Years later I would import staff to take dictation then get them to make a document readable.
This disability was still unresolved when at fifty five years old I decided I wanted to write a book. The first year left me with an unreadable manuscript I had written. The only way I could ever get someone to read it was to type it using a word processor to at least spell checks it. Spelling for dyslexics is a visual problem not a learning problem.
Two finger typing is also a frustrating task as my eyes don’t like rapid movement trying to see the keys. Even after 200,000 words it still takes two hours to write 500 words. To watch a touch typist rattle of 500 words in minutes is a place I will never know. By shear persistence and only because computers can spell for me did I continue to do what many that know me said was a waist of time.
By my third very badly written manuscript I eventually received some encouragement from a news paper columnist who was kind enough to by pass the many mistakes and poor writing style to say that the story concept was so good that it demanded to be cleaned up and printed, six half pages by episodes in the regional news paper.
Two years after my first born in print I discovered computer read back and I at last learned how to at last write a document with no mistakes. The big discovery was I could hear by ear the mistakes. By multiple play backs I could eventually get it mistake free.
The next step in the journey was only possible because of the internet. Like all writers you want to be read so I posted some short works on Fan storey to see what sort of peer review I might get. That’s when I very nearly quit. The feed back was very disheartening but some reviewers were saying the same thing. All agreed the story was great but the writing was not to publishing standard. That’s when one reviewer asked would I let her co-write one longer work. The last link in the chain to my ideas being well written was at last in place.
Only I know just how much work and rework went into that first co-written work by me and my writing partner.
If you are dyslexic with crazy ideas that demand to be read I have proved it is not impossible to with total belief and persistence do what at the beginning even I thought was impossible.