And relatedly, how the HELL are you handling the seemingly inevitable wrist and arm issues that come with the craft? Last time I speed-wrote anything, my physical therapist called me a dozen kinds of idiot. Silently, because he’s a nice guy, but the expressions were an experience…
(I hope I do not overstep here: I’ve currently got a novel burning half my brain and a deeply unhappy right wrist, so it comes from a very proximate inspiration!)
The quick answer: because I too ran into the RSI barrier at an early stage, I've been using speech-to-text tech whenever possible, from when it very first became available in the early 1990s. @petermorwood and I were very early adopters of the first truly reliable STT software, Dragon Dictate (which eventually became Dragon Naturally Speaking).
We got Terry Pratchett hooked up to it, too, and thereby, if indirectly, made it possible for him to finish a book or two (or three...) more than would otherwise have been feasible for him. (Terry's own experts came in and fine-tuned the basic software for T's own needs.)
I've currently got the professional version of Dragon Naturally Speaking installed on my desktop machine, and can sit in my Comfy Chair with my feet up and dictate, watching the words spill out onto the big TV screen in the living room. Or alternately: due to currently being on the road a lot, I'm mostly using the app version of the software, Dragon Anywhere. Dictate to it, when hooked up to broadband, and it types what you're saying as you watch, with 95%-or-better accuracy out of the box. (And the program is endlessly configurable to handle specialized vocabulary, weird alien character names, or whatever.) When you're done, you save the file and the app'll email you a .doc-file transcription of what you just dictated. Cut and paste this into your preferred writing software and—having exuded a chunk of "zero draft" without excessive amounts of wear and tear on your sinews—you can then edit at your leisure.
The app runs on a relatively low-cost monthly subscription model... which makes it handily accessible to folks who can't afford the (unquestionably hefty) price tag on the standalone big-machine install of the full program. I recommend the app highly. You might consider trying it for a month or so and seeing how it works for you. The subscription goes month-to-month, and is easily cancelled if you don't care for it.
Anyway: hope this helps!
