Month: February 2015

Hmm. Although I wrote 1,103 words today, I’m noticing that I’m spending a lot of time in the afternoons and evenings watching television instead of doing something more important (like reading! writing! or publishing tasks!).

That said, I’ve made it to day 5 of this streak with an average of over 1,000 words a day. Now to convert that to 2,000 words a day without derailing my progress. I think I’ll let it ride just a little longer before I mess with the good thing I’ve got going here.

What is it I have going here? Well, I’m writing in the mornings and planning to write in the evenings. I say planning because I haven’t actually done any writing in the evenings yet. My routine is simple: I write for 2 hours 10 minutes in the morning first thing, and then write for 2 hours 10 minutes in the evening last thing (start around 7:30 am and 7:30 pm). This leaves the vast majority of my day completely free. :) I am loving it.

I have a reason for the 2 hours 10 minutes but I’m not going to bore you. Suffice to say, it’s on a spreadsheet and it’s a very dynamic number that I’ll revisit monthly, assuming I’m able to stick with this one for a while. :)

I wrote 1,345 words today. I’m really pleased with the plan I’m following. I might need to try a little harder with certain aspects of it if I want to reach 2,000 words a day regularly but I’m going to give it another few days before I force the issue. I might just be building up to it. Weather related school closings have continued and there are some administrative days coming, so I won’t actually be back into my normal routine until Wednesday. :o

Either way, there’s no doubt this is a streak now. :D I just finished day 4.

I wrote 1,302 words today. I’ll have to correct this tomorrow if I’m remembering incorrectly. Too tired to fire up the computer tonight and double check. :)

(Yep. I got it right.)

I wrote 1,734 words today. Two days of writing in a row. It’s official. It’s a streak. ;)

I’m not finished with the day’s writing, but I can say now that this isn’t going to be a 0 word day. I think I’m going to like this new plan. I’ll tell you about it later this week after I see if it has legs. ;)

So after having another 0 word day yesterday, I sat down and created a new plan. I’m optimistic. I’ll tell you later if it works.

Let’s see. I wrote a gigantic post detailing why I’m still not writing each day. Then it occurred to me: Don’t dwell on the past.

And stress = exhaustion.

Or that’s what I’m assuming anyway, since I’m no longer sick and I don’t have any other explanation for why I’m so tired!

Yesterday I meant to get back to writing. I didn’t. I procrastinated by finishing the interior formatting on that paperback I’m working on. It’s done now. :)

Still, I should’ve written yesterday, but when evening came, I couldn’t tear myself away from the formatting until it was finished. Once I did, I sat down for a few minutes to relax and … fell asleep sitting up again! Admittedly, it was about 9 pm at this point, but still I can’t believe I’ve been so tired the last couple of days. I’m just sleepy all the time. I think it’s coming off that nasty cold and then getting stressed about the heat pump issue and the weather.

Lots of the snow and ice have melted overnight and today because it rained and the temperature stayed above freezing, so that’s finally something I can quit worrying about.

I’m hoping a couple of days with some extra sleep is all I need. I might try another nap today if I can fall asleep. (I couldn’t fall asleep yesterday when I tried!) If not, I’m just going to assume I won’t get anything done today after 7 or 8 and work with that.

0 words today. I’ll explain in a post tomorrow. I’m too sleepy to do it right now. :o

This isn’t the same post twice… or maybe it is. The fact is I’m not two days in on a 0 words a day streak! This is one streak I want to break ASAP. Today’s been a bit slow but I did spend this morning formatting a paperback. This evening I’m going to switch to writing and aim at that 2,000 words I want to reach.

I swear, it might be time to go back to coffee just so I don’t fall asleep sitting up (which I actually did last night). :o I wish I could go back to coffee—I’ve been craving it something fierce—but alas, I’m thinking I’m sleeping better since I quit it and I’m afraid to mess up a good thing now that I haven’t been feeling so fatigued.

Although, you wouldn’t know it from my recent word counts. I’m going to fix that this week though, seriously! Starting this evening. Aiming for 2k, won’t settle for less than 1k to start off a new daily writing streak.

I’m so sad. I broke my streak before it even got started. I wrote 0 words yesterday.

The only thing I have to say for myself is that I procrastinated well. I finished my taxes. :) Taxes are always a pain and it’s nice to have them done already. Also, school has been out the entire week for the kids, including today, so I’m calling this week a holiday.

Still gonna write today, but I don’t think I’ll be getting started this morning. This cold weather is killing my heat pump. It faulted out again last night, but this time I noticed the “low water temp” error. I checked yesterday’s message and it was the same. Luckily, like yesterday, the unit started working normally once I reset it.

The error is probably caused by the fact that the unit is putting cold water back into the well and drawing out water that’s gotten too cold. Getting a repair person out isn’t likely to help. The unit is sending out water that’s about 32° F according to the thermometer on the unit’s outgoing water line where it’s mixing with the 54° F ground water and likely lowering the water temperature in the well so that what’s coming out isn’t 54°.

Anyway, the outside temperature is about 10–15° higher today than yesterday, so that’s going to help. The unit has actually shut off a few times today. Yesterday, it shut off only once all day. I’m just glad the heater doesn’t seem to need a repair! I’ve had to deal with enough of that stuff already this year. Really!

And wow, I expect my electric bill will be high this month. The house stayed 66° F last night and the night before because of the backup heat strips in the unit. Ouch! but worth it. I spent my adolescence in a house with nothing but wood heat, where the wood stove was in the basement and intended to heat the entire house. There were a few times I spent my winter break from school down there reading in a folding chair beside the fire. :o Waking up in a frigid house is just more cold than I want to deal with these days and if that means a higher electric bill, so be it. :)

Anyway, besides that, I can’t type when my fingers get cold. ;)

Hopefully I’ll have a decent word count to post later tonight. I’m keeping the laptop charged so that if the power goes out in the predicted freezing rain we’ll be getting later, I can write anyway. :D

I would have updated last night but when I put things away I had still hoped to get back to it later. Alas, that never happened and I couldn’t be bothered to turn the computer back on just to write this post. :) So, here it is, a day late.

I’m happy that I seem to be progressing. Two days of numbers doesn’t make a pattern though so we’ll see how it goes today. I want to top yesterday’s 1,344 words but I’m getting an even later start today than yesterday, even though I certainly didn’t intend for that to happen. I actually woke up earlier today, but the weather’s bad and the cold taxed my poor geothermal heat pump to its limit last night. I woke up to a cool house and a “service needed” notification, and that, instead of writing, is what I spent my morning on.

Right now the heater’s working again, and I’m hopeful it will continue working. My luck lately though says it’ll conk out sometime tonight after dark, when the road will be too bad to travel, the air will be frigid, and the repair people too off-duty to come out. They’re about 45 minutes away from me and would have to cross a mountain to get here. Tonight’s forecasted low is 3° F. I don’t live here for this kind of weather. :o

Ah well. I can’t let this distract me today! I might procrastinate the writing to do my taxes and work on my paperbacks but I still intend to get that writing done sometime today. ;)

I wrote 1,118 words today. Those words were spread between 4 stories I’m working on, but I’ll take it. I would have preferred to have the majority of it on the one novel I need to finish next, but since I’m just trying to get started again and I’ve been having so much trouble actually doing that, I’m considering it a win.

Now, to turn this one day of writing into a streak of days…

Next goal: work my way up to 2,000 words a day and stick there for as long as possible.

School was out today, and it just wasn’t a 2,000 word day.

I think it’s safe to say that school holidays severely affect my writing productivity. Ice storms and power outages don’t help.

Or maybe that’s just an excuse. I haven’t been writing well on the weekends of late either, although I’ve proven to myself on more than one occasion that I can write just fine when the kids are home. I just have to be in the right spot mentally.

Apparently, these last few days, I haven’t been. Here’s the thing: I didn’t mention it last week but I had a kid home sick on Thursday and Friday while I was still getting over my own cold. I’m looking back and thinking that maybe my lack of progress making myself write might have more to do with those kinds of distractions than just because I’d been sick.

As for the power outages, the power has only been out for about an hour and a half total since the icy weather started. Nope, I can’t blame the ice nor the power for the lack of writing today.

I just can’t seem to get started on this book again. I know I have no idea where I’m going with this story, but if I sat down and started writing, I also know that something would come to me.

I’m off to bed now, but tomorrow I’m going to try again to restart the writing. My computer is fully charged. Even if there’s another power outage, I should have enough power to write at least a couple thousand words tomorrow if I can just get started.

I’m definitely going to spend some time brainstorming how I can make tomorrow a better writing day than today. Then again, any writing tomorrow is going to be better than the no writing of today!

It really is harder to restart than it ought to be.

I marathoned Bosch yesterday instead of writing and I could kick myself today for doing it. But in the moment it seemed like a good idea to get it out of the way so I could concentrate on writing today and not be distracted by my desire to find out what was going to happen!

I’m going to be stronger today.

I feel better today. The cough is still a bit annoying but I no longer feel like I’m actually sick.

That means it’s time to get back to work. For real this time. :)

Yes, it’s Sunday. I don’t have an official work week, and I like it that way. :) One day is as good as another to restart and today is the day since I’m no longer sick. In what world does it make sense to take a day off just because of what day it is after having taken six days off already?

It’s funny, but looking back at my daily word count log, I actually wrote more than 1,000 words a day on my two worst sick days. I remember those days. Maybe the fatigue got worse or something as the cold dragged on, because the last six days of the cold, I wrote 0. Or maybe I just gave myself a break. I remember telling myself it was okay to take some time off while I was sick. I have leeway built into my 2015 plan to allow for 30 sick days of 0 words: 3 significant colds/illnesses a year x 10 days each).

Yes, I went that far in thinking out my 2015 plan. I’m great at making plans. I’m terrible at sticking to them. I also have 8 weeks (8×7=56 days) of time off for holidays and school breaks built in, because I recognized that I almost always fall off writing when the kids are on a break. Why not just make it official?

That all assumes I can stick to the plan and actually write the words on all the other days of the year, which hasn’t actually happened. But instead of trying to play catch up, I’m just going to revise the plan for the rest of the year as if the first month and a half of the year doesn’t exist. :D

No catch up! That’s one well shaft I don’t want to fall down this year.

So, off to revise my plan and get started writing. I doubt I’ll be able to finish by 2 pm today since I’m starting the day so late but I’m going to figure something out to get in my words today. It’s a new beginning to the new year. I want to start it off right. :)

I’m anxious to settle into my new routine, but I haven’t been able to really give it a go because of this cold. Yesterday, I got nothing. Today, I was still too tired to get started early, and now it’s mid-morning and I’m still tired. By the time I’m ready to go, it’ll be 2 pm (just like yesterday) and the whole routine will be shot to hell.

I want my 2,000 words today.

:(