I Went Looking for a Dictaphone and Accidentally Joined MI6
Updated: 8 hours ago
I have ideas.
They arrive at the worst possible moments: making tea, lying in bed, halfway through a film. My brain announces that I've just had a brilliant idea for a story, and I tell myself I'll remember it.
I don't.
By the time I sit down to write, the magnificent concept has evaporated, leaving me with the vague feeling that I was probably onto something. So I decided I needed a little voice recorder. Something the size of a keyring or a credit card, with a button I could press whenever inspiration showed up. I could record myself rambling, transcribe it later, and get AI to help turn the resulting verbal soup into something resembling a plan.
Voice activation would be handy, too. I don't particularly need recordings of myself shuffling about and making the noises of a man trying to remember why he walked into a room.
I found a promising one. 32GB, USB-C, one-touch recording. Around forty quid.
Out of stock.
This should have been the end of it. I could have waited, bought another, or just used my phone. Instead, I kept looking.
Welcome to Q Branch
There's a whole world of miniature recording kit out there, and some manufacturers aren't content with selling you a little box that records your voice. They want you to feel like James Bond. Credit-card-sized recorders. Tiny magnetic devices. Pendants. Gadgets so small that losing one would require an archaeological excavation of the sofa.
Somewhere along the way, I stopped asking, "Can I record myself talking about a story?" and started wondering why browsing a gadget website made me feel like I should be wearing a dark suit and answering to a number. Then I found the pen.
The pen
The pen is mightier than the sword. Apparently. Of course there's a recording pen.
It looks like a pen, presumably writes like a pen, and somewhere inside it is the ability to record audio. I should stress that I have absolutely no evidence this particular pen is a lethal weapon. None whatsoever. But there's something about looking for a way to record ideas for a science-fiction story and ending up examining stationery that looks as though it was issued to a particularly untrustworthy member of MI6.
I'm not saying the pen is dangerous. I'm merely saying that if I buy it, my shopping list becomes an operational briefing. I don't even need a pen. I've got several. Some of them probably work. Still, I clicked on it.
Obviously.
The sensible option (probably)
I don't need anything clever. There are AI-powered recorders that can transcribe and summarise everything, but they cost considerably more, and I'd rather keep the original recordings anyway. The rambling, the digressions, the sentence that makes absolutely no sense until three minutes later: that's all part of the process. I don't want a machine deciding what I meant before I've had a chance to work it out myself.
A small recorder with a physical button, decent battery life and voice activation should do the job. One recording might be Doctor Who, another Deadstream, other Mental Ramblings.
Get the idea down now. Sort it out later. Apparently, that's not simple enough to stop me browsing spy gadgets.
Licence to ramble
I still haven't chosen a recorder. The sensible thing would be to buy a basic one and get on with writing. But a small, mischievous part of my brain keeps whispering: You know what would be funny, though...
That part of my brain is responsible for most of what I write. It's also why I can't be trusted to browse gadget websites unsupervised.
If you need me, I'll be in the corner, recording my thoughts about a fictional time traveller and wondering whether I've accidentally found the Q Branch stationery department.
Over and out.
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