Progress: April 30, Wednesday

—Working to increase my daily average word count

Made it to 1,679 words for the day

Here’s the thing. I’m writing “Writing Journal” posts in Evernote, but they ramble, and go on way too long, and feel a little personal at times, so I think I’m just going to skip posting them and include only my word counts, and maybe a short note or two in these progress posts. :D It’s for the best, promise! You’d get really bored reading them.

Progress: April 29, Tuesday

WIFI off.

—Working to increase my daily average word count.

Hmm. Made it to 327 words.

Don’t ask me why that was all I got done. I have no idea. At least I’m writing! :D

Scratch that. I think it’s lack of sleep. There were a lot of storms last night, the power was out for a few hours, and I just didn’t get much sleep. I’m tired, and that really explains everything. I’d lay around and nap, but I really need to get some writing done!

Also, something’s interfering with my ability to make reasoned, future-beneficial choices in the moment, and then stick to them.

Forget that last post

I’m not going to add those backdated posts after all. Just looking at them made me tired. I read back through the very first of the posts I was planning to put up and concluded I was doing exactly what I started using the writing on multiple stories to avoid doing.

Here’s a quick quote from the post named “Avoidance Issues; Let’s Knock Out Those Teeth”:

This is all about harnessing my unfortunate need to take frequent breaks and making that work for me, instead of against me. I’ll be using my other projects as my breaks. When I feel myself pulling away from a story and have that uncontrollable urge to shift my attention (and it will happen, because it always happens), I’m hoping having these other projects just ready and waiting will be to my benefit. Instead of slipping away to check email or read a message or two on a forum (and end up thoroughly distracted and out of the writing zone), I’ll slip away to write on another story.

What am I doing with the blog posts? Using them to satisfy my craving for a break, because I decided to do this right after I paused after 121 words into my novella this morning.

So, not doing this! Getting back on track and doing what I need to do, which is get back to writing!

Yikes—Weather Woes

It’s currently 75° F in the house and blustery outside. Wind keeps whipping my blinds’ lift-cords through the air, and I swear I feel like I’m coated in pollen or something. Who knows? All that dusting yesterday was kind of pointless with all this wind stirring around. Even my laptop keyboard is dust-covered now.

The greatest potential … is across the lower Mississippi and Tennessee Valleys. Widespread severe storms – including strong tornadoes, damaging winds and very large hail are expected.

Hmm. Sounds like the weather could turn interesting here later. Might should get that writing done sooner rather than later and quit messing around.

Progress: April 28, Monday

Getting started. … And later … Never got started. Not a single word written. I have no idea why. Trust me, I asked myself that question a thousand times. I have no answer.

—This is not the wayWorking to increase my daily average word count.

Progress: April 27, Sunday

Was going to call this “Break My Daily Word Count Record—Attempt #15” but I’ve decided to put that on hold until the weekdays. Or more specifically, for days where I feel I can give the effort my undivided attention. Not every day is a good day for going after a record. Today feels like one of those not-so-good days.

This is actually the third post I’ve written today. I scrapped the first two. They’re in Evernote, same as this one, so they’re not gone forever, but I’m just going to ignore them. ;)

That said, I still expect to have a productive writing day. Or I’m making the attempt, anyway.

Or not. Said about nine and a half hours and 45 words later.

6:06 PM: 45
10:15 PM: 506

I think I’ve also decided to post my little progress reports as “status updates” or “asides” instead of full-on posts. :D But yes, this just brings home the point that weekend days are unpredictable.

Break My Daily Word Count Record—Attempt #14

Fourteen is many more attempts than I thought would be necessary to reach my current one day word count goal, considering how successful I’ve found working on multiples stories each day to be for helping me reach higher word counts.

But fourteen isn’t really that bad, considering how long that record has stood.

5,475 has been my record for the most words I’ve written in one day since June 17, 2013.

And … ayk!! I had to look that up, and although my spreadsheet tells me the max() number in my daily word count sheet, it didn’t tell me that that particular entry had a note beside it! After reading that note, I don’t actually think that’s my high word count. :o I’ve been operating on the belief for nearly a month now that I managed to write 5,475 words in one day but my note indicates I might have “rescued” some words I deleted about two weeks prior to that date. Wow.

I took a closer look so I could find my true high word count and it would be the next highest number, 5,208 on August 16, 2013. I remember that day, and I know that was a genuine win.

Well, learn something new most days. Today is apparently one of those days.

I’d still rather beat 5,475. But this does, in fact, make a lot of sense, since I don’t have that same remembered feeling about the 5,475. I was surprised when my record was that high, and it appears now it was for good reason!

Still, back to the stories. I’m going to get started shortly and try to break at least one of those records today. Plus, it’s the first day of my new week and I’m trying to break another 7-day record, and I’m trying to break my monthly record.

Time to shut down my WIFI before I get lost in it!

And it’s 11:19 am and I haven’t written a word. I can still do this. So. Okay. Time to get started. Right now.

12:13 pm : 266
3:00 pm : 1,269
4:22 pm : 1,510

Slow going today! I just don’t see how I’m going to come close to breaking my record when all I want to do right now is nap. Or watch tv. Or do anything but sit here and write. It’s fun when I’m doing it but I just don’t want to focus.

Later…

It’s late, I’m tired, and I haven’t done any writing since 4:22 pm. I wanted to get to 2,000 today. I’m close enough that I should try—only I’m not going to. I’m so tired I just want to go on to sleep. I got up entirely too early today and I just don’t have any energy left.

Tomorrow I’ll try to get to 2,000 earlier in the day.

I promised to watch a movie tomorrow and I’m going to, but I’m also going to write more than I wrote today. The movie is less than 2 hours long, and lunch will be about 2 hours long, so I’ll be unable to work from 10 am to 2 pm. But 7-ish to 10 should give me between 1,000–1,200 words, then 2 to 4 should put me at 2,000–2,400, then 6 to 8 should put me near 3,000–4,200. I’m trying for 4,200.

From now on, though, I think I’m going to make Monday–Friday my primary writing days where I do more than my average. Saturday and Sunday will be reserved for just keeping my mean up and getting a head start on the week’s writing.

UPDATE: Yeah. This record-breaking thing isn’t working so well. I’m either going to have to try again in May or pull off a miracle.

Last Chance This Week! Break My Daily Word Count Record—Attempt #13*

Lucky 13, maybe? Yep, yep. I read a passage from Thinking, Fast and Slow last night about “regression to the mean” and I realized right away that I need to raise my daily word count mean so I can regress to a higher number! ;)

I didn’t read enough of the book to know if there’s anything else in there that I could use, but the fact is, my current mean is 725 words and that’s not even close to where I want to be. I want to be prolific and for me that means I should write at least 2,000 words a day on average. (Of fiction. Who cares what else I write?)

How committed do I feel to reaching this goal? Committed!

On that note, I’m tracking my progress today, because I’m making a concerted effort to break my daily word count record, and it’s my last chance this week to do it since my writing weeks end on Friday and begin again on Saturday. :D

9:21 am : 334**
10:45 am : 775***
6:20 pm : 1,174

*Yeah, you didn’t know there was an attempt #1–12, did you? I never put those posts online. Ah, well.

**Why so slow? Because I’m actually making progress on my stalled out novella! Yay!

***What happened?! I … don’t really know. I felt a compulsion to update a couple of websites I have, which ran terribly slow, and a quickie post or two turned into two and a half hours. Then life stuff had to happen, which happens every day, so no surprise there, and then when I finally got to writing again, it was 5:07 pm and apparently my speed was about 399 words an hour. Yikes!

I’ve promised to watch a movie at 7 pm so that’s going to be it for me, so back to work! The chance of breaking my record today has gone, so now I’m just trying to salvage what I can in my effort to reach and maintain a 2k a day average.

And, nope, didn’t happen. I didn’t get anything additional done on my books. I spent my last 40 minutes adding some of these posts I’ve been doing in Evernote to the real blog.

Progress: April 24, Thursday

Writing is not a job.* Just wanted to get that out of the way. :D Now, I want to spend all day writing, and all evening reading, so time to get to it or the day’s going to fade away on me.

Time : word count

9:27 am : 132
10:26 am : 598
12:54 pm : 979
Final : 1,080

I cut one of my fingernails too short when I trimmed them day before yesterday. Ouch. It only started hurting last night, though, so yesterday I probably damaged the quick right below the tip of my nail somehow.

Also, I’m up to unposted b-log number twenty-five. Twenty-five. Boggles the mind.

I’m going to take some time today, later, and post at least a few of them. Otherwise, I’ll probably never post any of them. Don’t be surprised to see some backdated posts after today. :D

I’m dragging and I’m not sure what to do about it. Hmm. Caffeine? Sugar? Exercise? Nap? They all sound like a bad idea just about right now, just another way to avoid writing. Which is funny, in an unfun way, because I actually like where my stories are, but I keep yawning and I’m tired. What to do, what to do…

Here’s a quote from the ever-helpful Joanna Penn:

I can’t keep doing what I doing and expecting a different result. I have to change what I’m doing in order to reach my goals. [sic]

This is exactly why I keep changing my process, and why I always seem to be looking for the next best one, because I can’t stay in the same place and expect to end up somewhere else. :D

From Kelly McGonigal, Ph.D.:

Psychologists have found that we are all too quick to use progress as an excuse for taking it easy … that making progress on a goal motivates people to engage in goal-sabotaging behavior.

I have direct experience with this and it’s a horrible, horrible feeling to know you’ve just done something wonderful (like beat your all-time 7-consecutive-day word count record) and then fall down the very next week. It’s hard to get back up after that, and I’m saying that as someone who is trying right now to get back up. Tomorrow is the end of my second week after the fact, and I’ve done so horribly bad on my word counts these last two weeks compared to where I want to be that I want to pretend they don’t even exist.

*I’ll link this to the relevant b-log if I remember. Ha! I remembered. :)

 

My fiction writing is not a job

“Lucky number 13, anyone? 6,000 words. That’s what I’m going for. I’ve decided if I’m going to break my record, I’m going to do it in 1,000 word increments.”

I was going to call this b-log “Break my daily word count record—attempt #13” but then I had a realization. And then, immediately on the heels of the first, I had another.

There’s more than one way to get to the same finish line. My finish line is, ideally, one million words of fiction in 2014. Things are going to have to change if I’m actually going to make that happen.

But back to the realizations.

As I was getting ready to write down my plans for another attempt at a word count record, I recalled that I’m supposed to be more concerned with consistency, because everyone knows that consistency will get you there faster. So why was I again chasing the ever-elusive too-high-to-repeat-regularly word counts?

And that was when I had my second realization. I haven’t actually thought through the comparison of consistency and irregular-but-awesome word counts, and I should. Before I assume one is better than the other, I need to do some math.

If I want to write one million words in 2014, I’ve got to write about 926,262 words more than I have right now, because yeah, I’m way behind. But let’s pretend it’s feasible that I’m gonna catch up. Here’s what I’d need to do that. :D

I would need about 25,730 words every week until the end of the year.

Now, if I were to concentrate on being consistent, I’d need about 3,676 words every day until the end of the year.

If I were to concentrate on hitting a few big days a week, I’d need 8,577 words three days a week. I wouldn’t have to write another word those other 4 days.

If I were to concentrate on being consistent but counting on a few big days each week, I could catch up with less than 2,800 words most days, with 2 big days of 6,000.

And, now that I’ve done the math, it occurs to me that I’m concentrating on THE WRONG THINGS, as usual. I enjoy writing and setting out to create these kinds of quotas is a sure-fire way to turn the writing process into a mindless job.

Hit a number, woo-hoo, you’re done for the day. Didn’t hit a number, boo-hoo, you didn’t do your job.

Every job I’ve ever had, I hated. I don’t hate writing. :D

I want writing to be important to me—to stay important, but I don’t want writing to be a job. I’m creating assets, and creating assets for myself is not a job, not for me, and I don’t want to treat it as if it were. I don’t write under someone else’s direction, and no one pays me for writing. I write what I want, when I want. I’m creating assets, for myself, to exploit. Exploiting those assets could certainly be a job, but the writing is not a job.

This distinction is important for me, because I don’t want a job. I don’t ever want another job if I can help it.

However, I love the idea of creating assets and then leveraging them, exploiting them, generating income with them. Makes me feel good. :D

Progress: April 22, Tuesday

Story #1 : 355
Story #2 : 224
Story #3 : 183

2:01 pm : 762

Story #4 : 96

3:38 pm : 858

Goal for this evening: Get as close to 1,000 words as possible for each of the 4 stories I started on today. :D

Story #5 : 218

9:35 pm : 1,076

Milestone: I’ve written on the most stories in a day since I began working with multiple stories. Too bad this hasn’t translated into more words.

Story #2 : 466

10:33 pm : 1,318

An Actual Post

Strangely enough, I’ve been blogging a lot lately, even if I haven’t been posting those posts (hereafter to be called b-logs). :D

I’ve been using Evernote (which I’m still doing for this one, tbh) and just writing the b-logs the same as I was doing on the site, and holding them with the intent of posting when I turned my WIFI back on. But it’s gotten kind of out of control, and I don’t feel a strong desire to post more than a dozen backdated b-logs.

It’s been a relatively good month. I’ve also had a few relatively bad days with my novella. I’m stuck on it, and I’ve had a hell of a time with it since January.

My current experiment

At the moment, I’m schedule free; the way I’ve been working has been working so well for me that I haven’t needed a schedule. :D Happy days…

A few weeks ago, I decided to try writing on multiple stories at once, every day, 800–1,000 words on each of 4 to 6 stories for 3,200–6,000 words.

I’ve increased the number of words I write daily, even if I haven’t been able to work on more than 3 stories most days, or get higher than 3,374 words in one day. But my daily average for April is currently my fifth highest out of twenty-one months of writing. I’ve also finished a novelette and made real progress on one of my bigger novels I need to finish in the next month or two.

I’ve been happy with this, and it’s kept me writing at a nice pace. It feels easy and I don’t know that I can ask for more than that with the lack of motivation to write I’d been feeling the last few months.

Here’s what I do (or try to do)

When I hit a wall with my concentration on one story, I switch to another. I try to do this instead of check email, forums, and blogs for a quick distraction that always ends up being a major time sink.

That’s pretty much the sum total of how I’m handling the different stories.

A lot of times, the writing feels easier when I go back to a story I was working on earlier than it did right before I switched, as if the switch loosened something up and I can now keep going without the same drag I was feeling when I hit the wall. And that’s it.

Week before last, I made it over 3,000 words on 3 days, and over 2,000 on 3 days. I ended that week with my highest 7-consecutive-day total to date of 18,049 words.

Last week wasn’t as good. I lost a big chunk of words when I decided to revisit my languishing novella and cut over 5,000 words from it. I’ve mentioned before that my spreadsheets immediately take deletions into account, and it knocked me back so that I ended last week with 4,523 words.

I had hoped this week would start off well, but it hasn’t. I got stuck on the novella and I haven’t been able to let it go. I’m dragging myself down as I agonize over that book.

I need to finish it; it’s a sequel I’ve already said I was writing; but I can’t seem to get unstuck on it. I’m even toying with the idea of deleting the whole thing and starting over, only I’m not sure how I’d do any better a job with it if I did that. This might be a case of just finishing it and putting it out there so I can get it off my mind.

All that aside, it’s time to get to work. I have stories to write. :D It’s raining today and I like writing to the sound of rain. I’m going to do a separate b-log with today’s summary of progress. Just easier that way! ;D