If you’ve ever written a paper, story or speech, you’ll want to learn how to do this. Elsewhere I’ve ranted about the benefits of reading your words aloud or having someone read them back to you. Things sound different when spoken into the air, when you hear words exist as they were intended – audible symbols representing meaning. When we hear our own words, we discover otherwise invisible rewrites waiting to aid our work.

Yesterday, I was playing around with the new gestures on OS Lion. Doing the two-finger-click-look-up thing, I saw the Speech > start speaking menu and tried it out.

Now I’ve known about the Apple reading voice at least since the iMac days. Even still, it was nice to find I could hear audio versions of the blogs I was reading yesterday via one highlight and one click. But that wasn’t enough. That little automator bot with his lead pipe/RPG taunted me yet again, standing his ground on my dock.

“Click me,” mini-automator said.

“Heck no, automator,” I replied, “you’ll kill me in my sleep.”

See? He’s been looking at me like that for years…

Flash to yesterday when I succumbed to the temptation. I chose “service,” added “get specified text” and fed the first chapter of my novel-in-progress to the starving que. [Insert gobbling sounds – not to be confused with turkey calls]. After that, I added “speak text” and hit play. The voice I heard was my old friend Alex from high school and he read my manuscript in that same convulsive monotone he used back in the good old days to reinvent the phrases “boom shackalacka” and “party like it’s nineteen–hold up it is” and “your momma’s so dumb, when the computer said press any key to continue, she searched for the any key.”

(I recommend Lion users use the Speech > start speaking  menu for that last one).

You know what? My novel didn’t sound half so bad as I feared. I made changes of course – just like any speech or article – but the automated read-back gave me confidence and insight for this third draft. I’ll definitely incorporate this more often in my work.

Try it.

PS> Don’t forget to vote for the Independent Book Blogger Award.

PPS> I edit, write and help you with your story for free on May Day!