Day: December 29, 2014

I haven’t gotten back to the story yet

Lynn

It’s 7:31 and I still have 1:59:37.9 left on my timer. After lunch I sat down with my computer and returned to my document (admittedly it was a longish lunch break since I finished 3 episodes of Castle, finally bringing me up to date with the series). I then promptly opened my web browser because… yeah, I’m still not sure about that. I just know that to reach and maintain a 2,000 word a day average, I actually have to write 2,000 words a day more or less, but I don’t want to finish my time tonight!

So, tomorrow’s game plan. Get started early, when I have plenty of energy, and do whatever it takes to finish my words in the 5 hour block.

Because I can already tell you now, I’m not going to finish this time tonight. I’m too close to just calling it a night and going to sleep. I don’t usually get so tired so early in the evening, even though I’m much more a morning person than a night owl these days, but tonight I’m just … exhausted. A lot of people I know are sick with a nasty cold that’s going around and I’ve been in contact with every last one of them in the last week. I’m seriously hoping I’m not fighting off the same thing. I’ve had sinus issues for weeks it feels like, but I’ve managed so far to avoid the overt symptoms of a cold and I’m hoping to keep it that way.

Anyway, extra sleep helps… Or at least it has since I started making myself get some every time I thought I might be coming down with something. ;) I started this back when I was completing that book I got done in August. The final weekend, I thought I was getting sick and I forced myself to stop early each night and go to bed instead of pushing through like I would have usually done (typically I’m one of those people who binge works when a deadline is looming).

Strangely enough, it’s been a bit of a miracle cure. Extra sleep and I feel better and people around me continue to get sick and I manage to avoid anything worse than just feeling a bit under the weather. There’s a trick to this though and that’s to not depend on sleeping in to catch the extra sleep. I wake up with the sun, generally speaking, and after that, I sleep in fits and starts until I can’t stay in bed any longer. To get extra restful sleep, I have to go to bed early. That’s the trick. It works. :D

Fingers crossed. And if I didn’t need the sleep, I might be up super early tomorrow and be done writing 3,000 words by noon! Wouldn’t that be awesome?

Oh, and by the way, that January novella that I finally got back to? just passed 40,000 words. Yep, it’s a novel now.

Conundrum

Lynn

Conundrum. Give up on the experiment or keep trying?

My experiment hasn’t had one successful moment yet. I see the beauty of the possible results, but so far, those results are as elusive as the perfect lipstick color.

Some days I cannot believe some of the stuff I write. This is one of those days. I keep reading this sentence in my current work in progress and laughing and I can’t decide if I’m laughing because it’s funny or because it’s so outrageous that I have no choice but to laugh or I’ll freak out about how stupid it is.

In light of my results so far, I’ve tweaked my experiment.

I set my timer for a full 4 hours. (Revised down from the 4.5 hours I would have been writing if you added up the six 45 minute sessions.) I also stuck with setting aside the same 5 hours as before.

If I don’t finish my timed session in the 5 hour block, I’ll schedule an extra block of time to finish later, but still as one single block (to keep the number of breaks down, since that’s kind of the whole point).

At the moment, I’m sitting at 1:59:37.9 left on the timer for today, with 1,155 words completed. Meaning my pace is approximately 578 wph.

I’m not going to finish my 4 hours of writing in my 5 hour block today. It was supposed to go from 9 am to 2 pm (and here I am writing this at 1:08 but I absolutely could not maintain my concentration for another moment) and as I said above, I have almost 2 hours left on my timer. I’ll be getting back to it in just a minute or two but this says I used up my 1 hour of built in time for breaks and then somehow also managed to use another hour. I have no idea how; I haven’t done anything time consuming except drink too much tea.

I admit I’ve had to pee a ridiculous number of times this morning, but that’s not that unusual. I have a bit of a bladder condition that makes this a regular thing. What makes this tough for me is how easily I’m distracted once I’m away from the computer.

I should resolve to drink less tea in the morning, but since I have a rule not to drink tea after 2 pm (or at least not my green tea because it does have a minor amount of caffeine in it), I hate to skip it. I like my green tea. Still, I think I’m going to have to cut back. I gave up coffee completely about a month ago and made the 2 pm tea rule. My sleep’s been better so I’m not going back on that rule because it’s clearly working.

I just wish I found it as easy to employ my willpower with my writing as I do with these other things.

I quit snacking between meals in late May 2014. I haven’t eaten anything outside of meal time since.

You’d think willpower like that would be easily adapted to work for other things, but nope. I can give up coffee. I can give up snacking. I can give up tea after 2. I can’t make myself write when I don’t want to or stick to a writing schedule to save my life.

Sigh.