Fiction writer. Expert procrastinator. This is my life.
It seems as if I’ve forgotten my daily accountability challenge, but the truth is it’s still going strong. I’m just not prioritizing posting on the blog here over writing fiction. :)
I tend to fall away from blog posting when the writing is going well. I’ll post another update soon about what’s working to keep me writing and what’s not, but as of now, I’ve written 5,718 words from October 1–4, and that is a 1,429 words a day average so I am quite pleased with that.
Yesterday was basically a no writing day, even though that wasn’t my intention at the start of the day.
However, I didn’t have a zero word day. No, sir. I had a -3 word day. I am disappointed, but it’s a fact that some days you’re just not going to feel great and things you wanted to get done aren’t going to get done because of that. That was yesterday. Moving on now.
Today, I’ll be back at the multiple stories challenge which I’ve since given its own page.
I’m starting the new month with renewed vigor!
Yesterday, I had a limited amount of writing time. It took far too long to write my words. Overall, I wrote 415 words total, on 2 stories.
As for my September on-track challenge, I haven’t made much progress on it, and as today is the last day for it. I don’t see a win in my future on this one. I would need many thousands of words to have reversed the accumulating deficit in my word count.
All I can do now is look forward and try to keep that deficit from growing larger!
I’ve continued with my multiple stories challenge and I’m pretty happy with how it’s helped me increase my word counts this month over last. :)
Google released some news about a new token that can be used to block their Bard and Vertex AI crawlers.
Google-Extended | A standalone product token that web publishers can use to manage whether their sites help improve Bard and Vertex AI generative APIs, including future generations of models that power those products. |
Time to edit my robots.txt file again.
(See Here’s how to block OpenAI’s bot crawlers in your robots.txt file for why I’m blocking them.)
Straight from the source: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/overview-google-crawlers
User-agent: Google-Extended
Disallow: /That’s the important bit. It’s not even an example on the page, but at least the user-agent info is.
Happy times.
I don’t mind opting-in to things I consider helpful to the world at large. But this opting-out business is ridiculous. Businesses take intellectual property seriously when it’s other people trying to benefit from their property. But when they want to benefit commercially from other people’s property, they have no problem skipping the permission phase and hoping no one cares later.
There’s nothing much I really want to say about yesterday’s writing, except that I enjoyed working on multiple stories. It’s very motivating. Ideas for one story feed into ideas for the others, so it also gives my creativity a boost. Because of that, I finished the day off with 1,503 words written, across 4 stories.
I really don’t think I would have done as well if I’d forced myself to stick with one story tonight.
Well.
Yesterday was a day. The family things I’ve been dealing with are continuing to bleed into every new day. Here’s hoping it will ease up soon and give me back my creative energy!
I ended the day having written 82 words, on 1 story.
At least it wasn’t a zero word day? Even if that’s just a small win, I’ll take it. :)
I went looking for this information this morning, and although it’s nice that everyone wants to give you the entire history of robots.txt and web crawlers and the like, sometimes (okay, most of the time) I just want the info I came for.
Now I’m going to share, without all the extraneous history lessons.
Straight from the source: https://platform.openai.com/docs/gptbot
User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /This goes in the robots.txt file.
I don’t need more than the basics, because I’m not interested in allowing access to certain directories and whatnot. But you can follow the link for more details if you want something else.
On a different page, there was also information on how to block ChatGPT plugins from accessing my site.
Straight from the source: https://platform.openai.com/docs/plugins/bot
User-agent: ChatGPT-User
Disallow: /To be honest, I’m not sure whether I want to block the plugins or not, but better safe than sorry. I can always undo it later simply by deleting the lines from my robots.txt file.
You could say this is a statement from me about copyright and you might be somewhat right. I own the content I write. But, in reality, it’s more about me making a statement about controlling where my writing and ramblings end up.
I ramble here because I want to share, but that doesn’t mean I want everyone in the world to just grab it up and put it wherever. I’ve blocked google’s image bot for years and years, and the same goes for the internet archive (when they honor it).
The fact is, my blog is my house, and I don’t like the idea of people coming onto my lawn, grabbing my signs, and running with them. Especially not so they can build a commercial product that benefits them financially and gives me nada.
Money hungry? Why, yes, I am. They’re more than welcome to pay me $$$ and license my content for training. I’d probably say yes. :D
At some point, during one of my several theme changes for this site over the last year or two (probably this one), I’ve lost my sidebar widget that included my personal best records (and one or two personal worsts, but they’re only there to remind myself not to let it happen again). :o :D
Since I had copied the widget into OneNote at some point in the past, I didn’t actually lose them. They just weren’t on the site anymore. Now, my stats have their own page. :)
When I started this post, I thought I was only two days behind. Guess not! Here’s a catch-up post.
I wrote quite a bit on Sunday. I spent most of the day writing, in fact. My total word count appears lower than it is because of the way I count words day to day. I deleted some notes and little bits I’d written ahead in my novel as I came to them, and then a big chunk at the end of a scene that I didn’t end up writing.
I gained a lot of momentum early in the day from some easy wins on my goal word counts for a few of my stories, and that helped me when I got to my more troublesome novels. :)
This was a good day overall. I would love it if I could pick up some speed, but it was a win for the 1,300 words a day goal, and for the multiple stories challenge. When I ended the day, I had added 1,847 words to my grand total, across 5 stories.
Monday was a very busy day and I had a lot to do away from home. I finally got to sit down and think about writing at around 10:45 pm. That was the extent of my attempt to write on this day: zero words.
Yesterday, I had some more errands to deal with and a lunch meeting with a family member. We’re dealing with some final things for a death in the family a while back, so these were really very necessary errands that have gotten in the way of writing. Another zero word day.
I even had a few things to do this morning, but I am hoping to settle in soon for a return to writing today. :)
I definitely don’t want to have too many of these zero words days in a row because it will kill my momentum and ruin my averages—and I’m already struggling to get the 1,300 words a day I need, whether as an average or a daily minimum! :o
I was reminded of something this morning when I sat down to write this post: I have a guilt problem.
Guilt made me stick to one story yesterday, and I paid for that with a low word count and less enthusiasm as I was writing.
Yesterday, I wrote 498 words, on 1 story.
When I know a story really needs to be finished, or I have a deadline approaching—even if it’s self-imposed!—I start to feel like I’m failing if I write on anything except that story. I don’t think I can succeed with the multiple stories challenge in the coming months if I can’t ignore this feeling and continue to work on multiple stories each day.
NOTE TO SELF: Do not fall into the mindset that I will finish the novel I most need to finish faster if I just focus one-hundred percent of my effort on it. Ain’t gonna happen, in almost all cases.
Writing a lot of words when I’m only working on one story is the exception, not the rule.
And truly, the motivational boost I get from working on more than one story at a time is huge, so there’s really no downside to it. :)
Ah, this is a tough question! I use sprints of varying lengths to help me stay focused when I’m writing. I don’t always need them, but I need them more often than I use them, to be honest.
Five minute sprints are good for when I just want to write and gain a lot of momentum. It really keeps me tightly focused on the writing, and I’m almost always trying to beat the clock to about 100 words. It’s about the only time I can consistently hit a pace above 1,000 words an hour.
A fifteen minute sprint works for me when I want something quick that’s easy to add up. A quarter hour is almost always easy math. :D
Twenty minute sprints are just about the perfect length for me. I rarely get distracted during them unless there are outside interruptions. The math is a little trickier through, because it’s one-third of an hour, or .333333 with a never ending line of threes. :)
Twenty-five minute sprints are great! I like them because they work well with my fifty minute sessions (a length that works really well for me). It’s exactly one-half of fifty minutes. It’s also a standard Pomodoro length if you like the Pomodoro Technique. The math is even tricker though, at .4166666666 (never ending sixes again). But I can stay focused on a sprint for 25 minutes usually. Not always.
A thirty minute sprint is a bit of a commitment. I can do it, but it sometimes feels too long. It’s easier for me to interrupt myself, and it’s easier to find my mind wander to something else if the writing starts to feel hard. With shorter sprint lengths, I can usually push through that kind of thing and keep going until the end, but with a thirty minute sprint, I fail a bit more often.
Anything over thirty minutes isn’t really a sprint. They’re getting into marathon territory. Longer time blocks are great when you want to dig in and focus. A timer sometimes helps (as I said before, I like fifty minute sessions a lot), but sometimes the timer is just an interruption.
So there you go, a list of all the different sprint lengths I use often and how I think about them.
I do sometimes choose different sprint lengths (one I like is twelve minutes because it is one-fifth of an hour), but those are just novelties. Most often, I stick to the ones above.
Yesterday was just one of those days I’d rather not talk about. :o
I wrote only 6 words, on 2 stories.
Two, because I made a few fixes in the short story that reduced my word count to a small negative, and then I wrote like two lines on the novel.
I stayed very busy with some publishing stuff, and that’s all the writing I got around to before I called it a night.
Yesterday’s total words should have been better, but I got hung up on that short story I finished the night before.
I ended the day with 454 words written, on 2 stories (but barely).
I’d done a few continuity checks with the connected series that same night and found my timeline was off a bit. I started correcting it yesterday, went too far, then had to backtrack to the original story and start again.
The story was really good as it was, and I didn’t want to mess it up.
I don’t always realize it when I’m writing, but sometimes I write things that need to be shifted around once I’m done. Sometimes I’m not even sure where a part needs to be shifted to until I realize something’s missing. Once I write it, everything falls into place, as if that was how it was supposed to be all along.
All in all, I added a few hundred words to it, and that’s the majority of the words I wrote yesterday. :o
Saw the email about Patreon Commerce and was about to get excited. Started to add a product, in fact, when I came upon the notice that said: “Product files can’t be edited once you make your first sale.”
Um, no. That’s not how digital books need to work. What would I have to do to update a book? Would it require me to retire a product and add a new one every time? Is that even feasible?
Every retailer I sell through understands version control.
I guess this is an experiment I’ll avoid for the moment. :)
You may not have noticed, but I had to go back and change the days of the challenge in the titles for the last two posts. Somehow I got off on my numbering and had two day 7s. :D
Oops. It’s fixed now.
I also accidentally dropped “daily” from the post title starting at day 7. LOL. It makes for a shorter title, but I’d really rather not leave it out! The daily part of this is what’s keeping me honest. :)
Yesterday, I worked on multiple stories, so I’m now firmly back into my multiple stories challenge.
I like working on multiple stories concurrently, instead of focusing on only one project until it’s done. This works best for me, most of the time, as I’ve said in the past. My word counts go up, and my motivation stays high. I need both of those!
Before I called it a night, I had written 2,448 words, across 3 stories.
That means I again reached my goal of 1,300 words a day. I’m hoping to stay there for a while. Winning my September on-track challenge depends on it. If I want to stay a full-time writer, I do have to write more than I have been. No question.
Most of the new words were for one story (a novel I want to finish soon), but I did finish a short story I started a few days back and do some minor corrections and get back into another novel that I’ll soon be working on more diligently, if all goes well with the current novel. :)
Did I forget to post AGAIN? I did! I realized it after I shut down last night, and decided to just do another two day catch up post. Hopefully, this won’t happen again for a while. :D
I can see pretty easily why I forgot to post for this day.
Zero words. The publishing stuff I didn’t finish the night before got in the way, big time. But I finished all that then went to bed super late. Going to try not to do that anymore for a while. It’s messing my attempt to shift my sleep time back. And that is not a win. :o
Yesterday, I spent some time getting a few chapters of a serial finished so I can devote the rest of this week to a novel I want to finish by the end of the month. It’s how I plan to win at my September on-track challenge.
If I finish the novel, I will definitely catch-up some of those words and make progress reducing that word count deficit I’ve accumulated since I started tracking my 1,300 words a day goal.
I don’t know why it was so easy to get bogged down in those serial episodes, but by the time I called it a day, I had only written 745 words, on 1 story. (See below for the updated total.)
That was disappointing, for sure. I worked hard yesterday and spent a lot of time writing. :(
HOWEVER, that number isn’t a final number. I did work on another story yesterday. I have words I hand wrote late last night on my novel that I’ll type up once I get started this morning (afternoon, who am I kidding, at 12:43 pm already). I don’t think it’ll put me over 1,300 words, but it will put me closer.
I’ll update it tomorrow when I do today’s accountability post if I don’t remember to come back and update it today.
After adding in the handwritten words, my day came in at 1,047 words, on 2 stories.
But the serial is on the back burner now for a while, and my novel is going to get a LOT of my attention. However (another one!), I’m also going to be picking up my multiple stories challenge again today and trying to catch up a bit on some of those small word count goals, too.
It’s going to be a busy day. You can come back tomorrow to see what I make of it.
As for yesterday, getting those serial chapters done was a win, even if it wasn’t the win I most wanted. I’ll take it. :D
Did I forget to post yesterday? I think I did! Wow. I just realized.
I ended the day with 1,356 words, on 2 stories. Yay! I came in above the 1,300 so that is a definite win.
I had some publisher work to do and it took me all evening and well into the morning, and I still didn’t finish it.
By the time I called it a day at about 3 a.m., I had written 355 words, on 1 story.
That story is now complete. Whew.
I’m not too dissatisfied. I’ll take what wins I can get, even if they’re small. :)
Yesterday, I had several things to do that took me away from writing.
I was also still working on finishing a story I wrote and thought I had finished. When I went back through it, my writer voice said, nope, there is more you can do here to make this the story it’s meant to be. So I worked on that, and I am really, really happy with the things I’ve added to it. I had skipped a few potential scenes to expedite my way through the story, but it kept bothering me. I just couldn’t let go of the feeling that I hadn’t really finished the story.
On top of that, I’ve felt like I’m fighting off an illness for the last several days (I feel feverish even now while I’m typing this). And I’m still adjusting my sleep patterns, so there’s that. I’ve been feeling off kilter for two days now. I’m hungry at the wrong times of day, and my energy levels are also up and down at the wrong times. Basically, I’m suffering self-imposed jet lag. :)
All in all, I only wrote 154 words yesterday, on 1 story.
But I made progress, and I can’t call that a failure. Today, I think I’m going to get back on track. It’s just a feeling I have, but I’m going to push for it.
Back on 8/20/23, I decided on a daily word count for my daily goal going forward. I incorporated it into my spreadsheet so I could keep up with my progress, and even made a note to myself: do not delete even if I get really behind →. That arrow points to day 1 of the tracking.
As you can see, I have gotten really behind. My challenge for September is to cut into that negative number. So not only do I want to stay caught up for the rest of the month, I want to catch up a bit on that on-track number. :D
Anything will be a win, but I specifically would like to get the number back into the mid-20k range.
On February 6, 2020, I had my first full caffeine-free day. Here is it September 15, 2023 and I’m still off caffeine. I glanced at a few previous posts on this issue and nothing has really changed. (It’s been 282 days since I quit caffeine; what I’ve learned.)
Turns out, caffeine really had nothing to do with my changing sleep habits. I just hit a point in my life where sleeping well became more difficult.
The few—very few—times I’ve had a bit of caffeine in larger quantities than I’d have in a cup of cocoa or decaf coffee, I’ve felt the difference in anxiousness and upset stomach to a marked degree.
I sometimes think the lack of caffeine might actually be to blame for the dramatic dive in my word counts that happened the same month, but there’s no way to be sure. There was a lot going on in my life during this downturn, so I can’t honestly say the lack of caffeine was to blame, despite the coinciding nature of the dive.
I think it’s just as possible that my sleep patterns are to blame. It’s hard to write (or do much of anything, to be honest) when you feel perpetually tired. Prioritizing sleep sounds easy, but when you can’t stay asleep even when you’re trying to, there’s not much you can do about that. (I never have trouble going to sleep; I have a lot of trouble going back to sleep!)
It’s taken me a remarkable amount of time to recover, and I’m not really there yet as you can see from the numbers. However, I don’t think I will ever know if the lack of caffeine played a role unless I start drinking caffeine again and I see a marked increase. :)
I don’t particularly want to test that. I’ve adapted to a life without regular caffeine, and I like how stable my moods are these days.
Anecdotally, on Monday, I drank a cup of jasmine and orange green tea, which has some caffeine (the first cup I’ve had in ages), and I didn’t have a big jump in my word count that day. The day before that, as you might remember (probably not), I posted my best day in a long while—caffeine free.