Jerry Weissman extols the virtues of speaking aloud:
Writers have long known that speaking aloud what they have written in silence helps them to shape their ideas. … Clive Thompson cites the example of writer and critic Tim Carmody, who "found himself staring at an empty page, not knowing where to begin. He had no problem talking to friends about his ideas, so Carmody booted up Dragon (voice recognition software from Nuance) talked aloud for hours, and got past the block." Carmody was experiencing the front end of a spectrum of benefits that comes from combining the written words with the spoken. At the back end of the creative process — reviewing and polishing — speaking aloud provides perspective. … Montaigne valued the process: "'The things I say,' Montaigne dictated, 'are better than those I write.'"
The Dish 