Month: December 2013

So, in 2014, I’m planning to attempt to write one million words of fiction. I’m not sure why I’ve decided that quadrupling my word count’s a good idea: oh, the pressure! But I have decided to try and I’ll probably know after a month if I have any chance whatsoever of accomplishing such a thing.

I have a plan.

I’m going to write for 5 and a half hours on weekdays, and 4 hours on weekend days. Based on my average word count per hour, I can make it to one million words writing that many hours each week. If I push myself during my writing time or improve my ability to let go of my perfectionist tendencies, I’ll probably be able to scale back those hours. If I don’t, I might need the 5 and a half hours on weekend days too.

My biggest obstacle is going to be butt-in-chair time. I have a distinct aversion to it! :D

I’m working on honing my ability to focus and stay in flow, but it’s hard. It doesn’t take outside distractions to distract me; my mind can flit from one subject to another without any warning at all, and that’s not good for focus or for staying in flow!

I have rules that I hope will help me.

I’m turning off WIFI on my laptop at night before I shut down (and blocking it on my phone and Kindle and NOOK and anything else I might use to access forums, blogs, and email) and I’m making it a rule that it doesn’t come back on until I’ve reached 3 hours, then I’ll allow myself a WIFI break of no longer than 30 minutes (while I do some light exercise to keep my blood flowing to my brain!), and then off again until I finish my time.

That’s it.

I want to keep this simple so it’s easier to remember the rules and easier to follow. There’s not a lot of gray area here and I don’t want it to require a lot of thought to make it work. Discipline is hard enough without making it complicated.

I followed a similar rule set back in February of 2013 and I wrote 51,396 words that month. While my daily goals were in word counts back then, I remember quitting at about lunch time every day and rarely writing for more than 3 or 4 hours a day (which makes sense because I was tracking my time and my word counts daily during that period and that’s a big chunk of the data I have about my average words per hour).

I’m excited and nervous and terrified by this 2014 goal all at the same time! It’s going to be fabulous. :D

The holiday has thrown me, and I’ve completely lost track of what day this should be in my Finish the Book! Challenge. Considering that the challenge should’ve been done ages ago, I’m taking this as a hint to retire the challenge. This book is at 140% of my projected/hoped for word count and it ain’t done yet. That really wasn’t the plan when I started the challenge.

I’m going to finish the book, and I’m going to finish it in the next couple of days so yeah, moving on.

Also, I’m keeping this short so I don’t waste time that should be spent writing fiction. :D

Oh, and even though I fully intended to keep the writing streak going until at least the end of the year, even though I gave myself permission to miss Christmas day, I messed up last night and fell asleep with only 10 new words written. So time to start that one over!

Okay, I’m getting  a late start today but this is it. I’ve gotta finish this book today or—today. Yeah. Today. If I go any longer, I’m going to be in trouble with my no-so-tentative-anymore release date. I’ve committed.

There’s definitely a part of me that says I can’t finish today. Maybe not, but I better get really close. :D I can handle being 1,000 or 2,000 words shy of the end. Right now though, I don’t even know where that end is and I’m already 19,721 words past my target. And despite being sick from 12/1 to 12/10, I’ve still managed over 13,000 finished* words in December.

12:50 pm: 0 words to start

I’m going to do about 10 minutes of exercise first to get the blood flowing to my brain and then I’m digging in for an afternoon and evening of hard core writing of 1 hour blocks with short 5–10 minutes breaks between.

Update #1: I haven’t timed my sessions because I can’t seem to get going on this, and I’m starting to think there’s something wrong with the scene. I mean, nothing wrong, wrong, but something about it just isn’t right. Might be time to delete a chunk and start over? I’m at a net gain of 28 words so far and that’s just so wrong. I must hunker down and daydream harder.

Next to last Final update: I give up. It’s been a sad little day. Nope. I just realized I can’t give up because I haven’t written 100 words yet. I’m not breaking my streak; I don’t care how much of a sad little day it’s been.

Final update: 117 words. Whew. The streak lives.

*I cycle through my writing as I go. I try to do as little after-the-fact editing as possible because I hate it. I don’t usually move on until I’ve got the actions/feelings/thoughts across on the page the way I want them. Works for me! This is the method that started me finishing stories. :) All the other things I tried (especially fast drafting through the first draft) just overwhelmed me and left me with a lot of unfinished stories. It took me over 25 years to figure out this was how I needed to write, assuming I started writing when I was 12. I actually think I was younger but I’d have to dig out stuff in storage to prove it, so I’m going with 12. :D Right now I’m working on eliminating the perfectionism that makes me rewrite sentences twenty times apiece before I end up right back at the same sentence I started with. (Yes, I’ve started paying attention and that’s invariably what happens. Yikes, all that wasted time and effort just to end up back where I started!)

Still not done. Day 13. Why oh why won’t you end, you darn book?! It is official. Longest manuscript I’ve produced yet for one of my independently published works. And still not done.

(Quick aside. The weather is crazy out! The wind is up and gusting, the house is cracking and popping, and the lights keep flickering and I’d worry about my computer shutting down except I’m using my laptop and I have a UPS for my modem and router. So I’m good.)

So, today’s count so far: 383 words
Ended with: 521 words

Staying focused today has been a nightmare.

I started reading a good book today during supper, though. Maids of Misfortune. I picked it up as one of those Kindle loans you can do once a month as a Prime member. It’s only the second book I’ve ever borrowed but I decided I should start trying to take advantage of that perk of Prime. I do borrow R.E.A.D.S library books on my Kindle sometimes, but that’s because I like browsing the library site more than Amazon. (Sorry Amazon! I love ya, but R.E.A.D.S is more browse-able.) (Here’s a link to the book: Maids of Misfortune: A Victorian San Francisco Mystery. I’m not that fond of the cover, but so far the story’s good and I’m enjoying it, so who cares, right?)

Anyway, I’ve decided I have to make reading more often a priority. I’ve always read a lot of books and letting myself use writing as an excuse to skip one of my most enjoyable pastimes is crazy. I didn’t have to skip reading at the end of a long day when I worked the day job, so why should I have to give it up now? I refuse! :D

What’s that saying? Work hard, play hard.* Reading is my “play hard.”

*Oh the irony! I typo-ed that into “word hard, play hard” first time through. LOL. Maybe I should’ve left it alone. :D

There are two versions of today’s numbers.

The short story:

Day 11: 1,914
Day 12: 226 (Streak’s still alive. Since 11/17. Yay.)

The long story:

Yesterday, I got a few more words but I still missed the mark on my four hours. I came in around three to three and a half hours. I don’t really know because I quit counting after three.

Today … well, it’s probably best not to talk about today. I’m still not sure where the day went. I did some non-writing publishing things for a change, and I also finally updated the files at Amazon for 2 of my books that I’d slowly been fixing typos in whenever I ran across one as I reread the books during the research for my current book. I end up rereading a lot of material this way, but there’s just no way around it.

Apparently I really got twisted up with one particular word, where I knew the difference but still used the wrong word a lot. And then didn’t catch it during editing. Usually if I find an error, I fix it, save the file, and just wait until I’m about ready to upload another book. But today I wanted to update back matter—and there were enough usages of the wrong word that I thought getting the new editions uploaded now would be nice. I mean, I’m hoping to get the next book in that series up in early January, so having the lead-ins be as clean as possible can only help. :) But I still need to do that same back matter update for multiple other books and then make sure all the vendors have the latest versions. Ugh.

I really wish I had a better way of tracking updates, so that the editions are the same across all platforms, because I just don’t ever seem to be able to start and finish a full-on, across all platforms update in one sitting for any particular book.

A better tracking system something I need to think about, I guess. My current master publish list (a spreadsheet) doesn’t really have the right columns for it without making the sheet unwieldy. Sigh.

Publishing is not quite as fun as the writing most times, although on days like today, I’d say it had to be a bit more fun or I wouldn’t have used it to procrastinate on the writing—and there’s just no way I can deny that that’s what I was doing. There’s still time to write a bit more though.

However, there’s a blog post flitting around inside my head that I want to get out, and I think I’m going to do that first. :D

Today is day 11 and I’ll do a wrap-up for this day in another post. This is just a quick summary of the days I didn’t bother with a wrap-up because to be honest, these posts aren’t as important as writing and  I keep finding myself distracted every time I log on!

Sun, Day 7 = 247
Mon, Day 8 = 1,274
Tue, Day 9 = 914
Wed, Day 10 = 1,969

I wrote for 4 hours only on Wednesday (yesterday). The other days I fell short, and it shows it in my word counts. Even today, I sat down with the intention of getting right to work, and thought about the summary posts, felt a smidgen of guilt and decided to update. Here it is 1 hour and 50 minutes later!

So, off the internet I go and back to my Finish the Book! Challenge. :D

Day 6? Didn’t see that coming.

I had really hoped this book would be done by day 6! I’m going to get started writing soon, but I need a breather first. Today was the annual shopping trip I take with my Mom and Sis. I’m pretty exhausted. And my ribs hurt, because we laughed a lot. And my feet, because we walked a lot. In the rain, to boot. But no boots, so my feet got wet because my shoes weren’t waterproof. I’m not even sure they were water resistant!

Shopping is my nightmare. I do not like shopping. And for some reason I get compulsive when I go. I came home with four throws (soft and beautiful) but I have no idea why I needed four. I have plenty of soft, thick throws. I just … had to have them. And I love them. I’m glad I bought them, and I can’t wait to get them out and use them. But, yeah, it’s a little mind-boggling as to why I felt compelled to buy them. I’m just glad I don’t have to shop very often, and that when I do, I usually have a much harder time parting with my money. :D

Now, two of the throws are in the wash and my supper is cooking and I’m about to start writing. I don’t know that I’ll get 4 hours of writing done today—or even one for that matter, but I’m going to do some. I haven’t missed writing at least 100 words since November 17 and I’m not going to mess it up tonight. :D

6:50 pm: 0

Bedtime: 128 words.

So all I really managed to do was keep my streak alive, but hey, that’s something!

Am I never going to finish this book? I’m afraid I’m having a problem ending this one. I cried like a baby today writing a certain scene and it was a good scene, but I’m really not sure it deserved a tear-bath. :D And this is definitely not the first scene I cried during the writing of. It’s been a true snot-fest, let me tell you.

In other news, I’m only 2 hours into my 4 hours of writing! I don’t know what happened today. If I stay up to finish (which I need to do so I don’t create a habit of not finishing my time each day) I’ll end up short on sleep because I have a family thing tomorrow that means I can’t sleep past 7 am unless I cancel, or pretend I overslept on accident—which is a terrible lie and I feel like a terrible person even thinking of doing it! So I won’t. I’m good like that. :D

9:32 pm: 1,100 words after 2 hours

*Apologies in advance (and in arrears) for the torture I put tags through. They love me anyway. Just like my characters. :D

Yay! I made progress again today. Boo! I only wrote for 2 hours and 20 minutes. I had dinner with a friend which was a 3 hour trip so I can forgive myself for not doing anything additional in the late afternoon and evening but I really should’ve got more done today.

4:40 pm: 1,431 words

Going to try to do better tomorrow, and while I don’t believe playing catch up is a good idea usually (because it almost never works when I try it), I might actually try tomorrow. I need to put in some extra time to get this book done and then I have other publishing things I need to do outside of the writing time. But that’s all assuming I get tomorrow’s 4 hours first.

My ultimate goal for this new 4 hours of writing a day is a 2,000 words a day average over the course of a month. Two days in, I’m sitting at 1,862 even with today’s 1 hour and 40 minute shortfall. (I did better than my 500 per hour yesterday and today both.)

Aha! I tricked you. You thought I wasn’t going to post today, huh? Well, I was too busy writing. Or, you know, afraid I’d get distracted and not actually get any writing done.

I started the 4 hours a day writing thing yesterday and we know how I did with that. But today was a different story.

I wrote in 1 hour blocks, got 3 done by 3:30 pm. Started the 4th around 4:00 pm but gave up after 20 minutes. I finished that block a few minutes ago at 9:34 pm. :D

Today, I seemed to be on pace with my 500–600 wph average, and ended up with 2,292 words for the day. I’m not a pre-planner or plotter, so I guess I’m lucky I get what I get. I also don’t edit much later. I do my fixing up as I go. If I didn’t, I’d never finish a book because I can’t go back and do extensive work on a story after the fact. Just can’t do it. I’m not just making an assumption, either. I spent 20 years trying it the other way and yeah. Not a lot to show for it.

Now, since I’m in the middle of this Finish the Book! Challenge, I would’ve loved to have gotten in a few extra hours but I’m still very tired and coughing a lot, so I’m counting it as a major win that I got in my 4 hours of hard core writing.* The coughing is bad enough that I haven’t been able to nap the last two days because when I lay down, it’s all I do. I miss my nap. Sigh.

*I love calling it “hard core” writing. Makes me feel all tingly inside. :D 

Definitely starting to feel better. I can tell a big difference today even though I’m still coughing a lot.  Hopefully the better feeling hangs around long enough to get four hours of writing in, but just in case, I’ve made a rule today that I can’t read KBoards until, or unless, I do.

I consider KBoards my leisure reading, although I don’t often participate. To be honest, I’d like to wean myself off the place, because I browse the boards more often than not to procrastinate. It could be social, but I don’t really do social there, so I can’t count that as a benefit. And although there is some good information there and some knowledgeable people, there’s also a lot of misinformation and plenty of posts that can make an author vulnerable to comparisonitis.* The Warrior Forum crowd has also started to take advantage of the naïveté of some authors on the board and that’s been sad to watch, and a little disheartening. Sigh. I should really just stop going there. :(

Anyway, happier thoughts!

I’m going to get my four hours in today, starting … right now!

10:15 am: 0
9:55 pm: 118

Uh, I’m innocent, I tell you. So. Yeah. I can’t explain what happened today, so I’m not going to try. Just know that I’m going to do better tomorrow. I spent a lot of time staring at my book. Just staring. It was kind of weird. I’m getting some extra sleep if I have to go back to bed in the morning to get it so I can have some energy. Goodnight.

*Swear I didn’t think comparisonitis was a real word (the spell check still doesn’t think it is), but then it showed up just fine on wiktionary. It’s always possible it’s still a fake word and someone just put it there to trick me. :D Ah, well. I’m tricked. I like it.

Feeling better this morning. If I don’t write today, then I’m just making excuses. Yes, still coughing, but the nose is better by a significant degree and I actually have some energy this morning. I’m going to nap after my first session if I’m still sleepy (I am right now) but I want to get an early start and get some words down before I do. I did get my 100 words last night so my 100 words a day streak* is still alive.

I’m starting the day at 0 words. But wouldn’t it be cheating to start it any other way? :D

1:43 pm: 55 ← That’s not a typo.
9:50 pm: 214

Yeah, whatever. It stayed one of those days. I had about as much energy after I sat down at 8 am this morning as I had three days ago. I never did get going.

I tried getting some sun today during a cloudless fifteen minutes, thinking that might help, but it really didn’t. All I can do is try again tomorrow! And hope the pressure in my chest clears up some in the meantime.

*That little streak is a powerful motivator. I didn’t want to do anything last night, and yet I wrote because I didn’t want my streak to die over a measly 100 words. Since getting started writing is always the hardest part for me, my efficiency has been terrible for those 100 words. I don’t think I’ve managed one night where it didn’t take me over 45 minutes to get them. (I could blame the cold and my fatigue, but I don’t honestly think that was the problem with efficiency. I think it was the getting back into the story and trying to remember where I was going and how to get there.)

Feeling … okay. Not great, for sure, and I slept late because I just couldn’t get up after getting up a few too many times during the night so I could actually breathe. But I’m going to at least try to get something done today that involves my fingers, typing, and adding words to my book. :D Never give up, never surrender, as Jason Nesmith says!*

1:06 pm: 0

*I will always love that movie.

Yeah. Not day 1. Again.

I’m not going to announce the beginning date of this challenge again until I’m over this cold. Tomorrow will be sick day 7, so I’m hoping I’ll start to feel better soon. There were times today when I couldn’t even keep my eyes open and yet I couldn’t nap either because I couldn’t breathe, then I couldn’t stop coughing, then I couldn’t breathe again, then my eyes wouldn’t stop watering, then my nose wouldn’t quit running. And on and on it went. I wish I’d been able to just make myself write, but frankly, I was just too tired. I’m going to squeeze out my 100 words so I can keep my streak alive and then I’m going back to sleep.

If I wake up still feeling this bad tomorrow, I’m doing my 100 words and not even worrying about it. This has been a terrible, terrible cold. I know it’s not the flu (no real body aches and my fever’s been persistent but low-grade) but whatever it is, it’s kicking my ass. I don’t think I’ve had this kind of cold in a couple of years.

Or maybe it’s just that I specifically remember the day I woke up sick this time and I’m paying attention as the days pass because I really needed to be working on my book. :( I don’t know though. I don’t feel like I’ve been this sick in a while.

You know what? Never mind. I just remembered last December, being in bed and talking on the phone and telling a certain someone how terribly, terribly sick I felt as I pushed tissues off the edge of the bed and covered a hacking cough. I can’t believe I forgot about that—and that that was just last year!

And—aha! It also puts my low word counts from last December in a new light. I’ve been looking at last December for months and using it to castigate myself for not working hard enough. Well, well.

I’d like to think I’ve learned a valuable lesson here about not slacking off the writing, because just when you think you’re going to be able to catch up, you could get sick, but yeah, this isn’t the first time I’ve let something like this happen, and I doubt I’ll change my ways.

Maybe the more valuable lesson to be learned is to keep notes in my spreadsheet so that when my memory turns faulty, I can’t use low numbers to rail against myself without good reason!

Still sick. Gah. This is one nasty cold but I am determined to persevere. I have no idea how long I’ll last today but I need to get some wordage down despite my hacking cough, the fiery burn in my throat, and the snot—oh my God, so much snot. I keep telling myself just a few more days and this cold will be behind me. 7–10 days say most sources. That’s like…aw, crap, Monday or Wednesday? Beam me up Scottie and save me from this! Oh, hey, I can’t remember but did beaming kill viruses and bacteria? No, it couldn’t have, right? All that healthy gut flora wouldn’t survive, would it? Or would it? Could the transporter inventors have accounted for that kind of thing? Wikipedia estimates say there are about 500 different species—but possibly as many as 1,000? Holy crap.

Oh, the irony.

Oh, how sick I must be to think this is a good way to start this post.

Oh—Okay, moving on! I’m going to try for 4 hours of writing today (that’s my new standard—4 hours a day of hard core writing). I can already say that 5,000 is probably a pipe dream because 5,000 words usually takes me at least 6 and a half hours, when I can even achieve it.

But here goes.

11:05 am: 0, of course.
10:52 pm: don’t even have my 100 for the day yet to keep my streak alive. The irony being if I had skipped writing this post and written something for my book instead, I would have nearly 300 words.

I’m totally moving Day 1 to tomorrow because I didn’t do anything but blow my nose and cough all day today, with a really bad movie* thrown in for fun. I seriously hope I feel better.

*The House at the End of the Street was more boring than bad. Although the last 30 minutes weren’t too terrible.