By Vanessa Johns
Can a 10-minute practice session change your life? Maybe not, but it can turn your day around!
Practice on Bad Days Too
If you’re having one of those days, try turning it around with a few minutes on your machine and a good song! Pick your favorite song or let Spotify surprise you, and just start writing. Let the music lift your mood. Making it to the end of the song will give you a sense of accomplishment and encourage you to keep going. The less friction the better: You don’t even need your machine. Break out your practice board or use your fingertips on your lap!
Practice With Friends
Everything’s better with a buddy, right?! Create a Zoom or Google Meet link, pick a song, share your screen, and write along. Use the chat to share helpful briefs and phrases. Plus you’ll be less likely to skip songs to find the “perfect” one. Create a shared playlist with songs that incorporate your trouble words and phrases. Dance breaks and singing along are encouraged – whatever you need to do to keep writing!
Practice With Purpose
Will it be the most productive practice session? No. Should you do it every day? Probably not. Should it be the only way you practice? Definitely not. Use it as a warmup or cool down. Match your mood or the season. Pull up the lyric video on YouTube or use Spotify’s lyrics tab so you can follow along more carefully. You won’t get every word, but you’ll get more than you drop. Practice writing words out, even if you have a brief for them. Use instrumental sections to drill those new words. Look up unfamiliar words and build your vocabulary.
Practice Phrasing
Repetition throughout the song verses and chorus will make you want to write short. Phrasing two or three common words at a time will cut down your stroke count and make you a more efficient writer, saving you wear-and-tear on your body over time. But phrases are only helpful if you use them, and to use them well, you’ve got to practice them! See if you can shorten your writing by the end of the song by nailing those common phrases.
Practice New Vocabulary
Pick any song off the Top 40 and you’re bound to encounter words you’ve never written before! This is not to say they will show up on a job someday, but writing unfamiliar words is an important part of being a court reporter. This is a great way to build your dictionary with informal language that hasn’t quite made it to Merriam-Webster. Don’t get bogged down by adding every new “hmmm” and “lalala” — just let your brain and fingers begin to work through writing these new sounds.
Here’s a playlist to get you started
- imgonnagetyouback – Taylor Swift (contractions)
- That’s What You Get – Paramore (-you, -get phrases)
- We Both Reached For The Gun – Chicago soundtrack (Q&A)
- Whenever, Wherever – Shakira (direction words)
- Bold as Love – Jimi Hendrix (colors)
Vanessa Johns, from Louisville, Ky., is a student at SimplySteno. She can be reached at johns.vanessa@gmail.com.
