Month: April 2015

Tomorrow I’ll be back on my schedule

Lynn

Tomorrow I’ll be back on my schedule, but today is for catching up all the things I need to do for the book I’m getting ready to publish. I could probably say I’m on the schedule anyway, except that I consider the schedule exclusive to writing, not publishing stuff. I’ll just take my break for lunch at the same time so I can keep up the habit.

With my next book, I’m going to be much more diligent about working around the schedule so I can keep writing even during the publishing phase. (It really depends on how much the schedule affects my word counts. If they stay high and I write as much as I want to be writing, writing through the publishing phase might not be necessary.)

Six hours a day, seven days a week is a good amount of work, so if I don’t have to add to that to reach the level of success I want, I’m going with that option. On the other hand, I really don’t mind. I enjoy what I do and would rather do it than so many of the other things I’d be doing instead. ;)

That said, this year, I’m not passing on doing my deck garden like I did last year (I grow tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, and other stuff in pots). I’ll be planting this weekend unless it rains me out. :D Maybe when the plants get pretty, I’ll post some pictures. :)

Edit is done

Lynn

Holy crap, that took so much longer than I had hoped. I finally finished the edit at 9:18 pm. I worked on it all day. The problem? I apparently read at half speed or less when I’m copy editing (probably why I’m pretty good at catching mistakes) and it’s crazy slow taking my necessary fixes from Kindle to document.

Another thing I’ve noticed lately: my books are too damn long. This book is 20,000 words longer than I wanted it to be, and editing 20,000 extra words is a lot of extra work. I forget that. I definitely forgot it this time. Considering the length of the book, I probably didn’t do half bad on time.

But I don’t want to write long books! I will admit, as I read this book, it sure didn’t feel long. It almost feels too short this time and that’s… not good. The ending kind of rushes up on you. Then again, I like the ending, so who knows.

So, tomorrow will have to be the formatting and publishing. I toyed with the idea of staying up and just getting it done, but I have kids with colds right now and if those germs are floating around here, a lack of sleep is exactly what I don’t need. I want to be at my best tomorrow so I can knock the rest of this stuff out quick. If I had to do it tonight, I’d be lucky to be working at half speed. I’m tired. I’ll be back tomorrow. ;)

I finished that book

Lynn

All those things I needed to finish day before yesterday? I finished the book—that was about all I got done. I didn’t finish the edit (although I did start it), and just as I suspected, I didn’t get to do anything on the publishing side of things yesterday. Oh, I got three more pages copy edited, but seriously, I’m going to have to redo them today because I can’t even remember where I’m at in the story. Yesterday was much more stressful than I expected. My anxiety levels were through the roof! :o

So, today, the plan is to do all those things I needed to do the day before yesterday and didn’t finish.

If all goes well, I’ll get this thing published by the end of the month yet. :D

I so look forward to returning to my schedule tomorrow. If I get close enough to done today, that’ll be the plan for tomorrow, and any lingering publishing tasks can fill in the time before and after the schedule.

 

Crunched for time today, no getting around that

Lynn

I have so much to do and so little time to do it in, so why am I writing this blog post? I do it for myself. Sometimes I think it relieves stress and today, I need some stress relief. I have an obligation tomorrow that means I’ll have exactly zero time to do any publishing stuff, unless I get really lucky and can squeeze it in late in the evening. I’ll be tired from a long day on the road though so I’m not going to be surprised if it doesn’t happen.

Here’s the thing. I really need to meet a sort-of public deadline I set for publishing this latest book, but today’s my last day to do it because it won’t happen tomorrow and I don’t want to get too close to the end of the month with it.

So, here are the things that I need to do so that I can make that happen.

I need to finish the book. (Yep. I still have one or two scenes to wrap up and I’m just not there yet. A good use for my 9–12 writing time.)

I need to do a final edit. (I did do an edit of the whole book already because I promised myself I would edit before the end this time and I stuck to that. I did the edit of the first half of the book quite a while back and I did the second half edit on the 14th and 15th this month (I noted it in my daily word count log). That means I only have 16,591 words plus whatever I write today that hasn’t been edited (basically the end of the book) and that the rest should be an easy typo read only (meaning I won’t lose time to highlighting lots of little fixes on my Kindle that I will then need to fix in the book—which always takes longer than it seems like it should for some reason!). This is great news because I really need to get this done.)

I need to write cover copy for the book.

I need to format the book in a variety of ebook formats.

I need to publish the book in as many of the places I usually publish as I possibly can get to today. (Some of which will depend on which ebook formats I’m able to finish in the time I have.)

I feel like I’m forgetting something but time’s a’wasting and I plan to get a head start on that read-through edit before my writing time starts at 9. Toodles.

Trying to work around the schedule

Lynn

It’s my biggest wish to be able to keep to the writing schedule while I go through the motions of preparing to publish a book. I can’t say that I’m winning the first round in that fight.

I’ve just finished a cover that literally took me the longest it’s ever taken me to make a cover. I broke down at one point and drafted an email to the designers of a cover I had made for a book for a different pen name, because this experience was just so bad that I couldn’t imagine trying to do another one. I hate designing covers. Honestly, I just hate it. I think I know why. I really don’t like doing stuff I’m not good at, and I can’t seem to get good at making covers. They’re all just passable. Adequate. And tbh, I’m so tired of that.

Because of that cover taking three days instead of the 5 to 6 hours I expected, I’ve written much less than I wanted to write over the last three days. I stuck to my schedule half the day Friday. None on Saturday. Half again, today. I’ve racked up just under 2,000 words for those days total. If not for the schedule, I know in my heart I wouldn’t even have that.

So yay! Another win for the schedule.

Tomorrow (kids will be in school) I attempt to stick the schedule again, while making time before and after to edit the book I’m preparing to publish and maybe even get to the formatting. Boy am I going to be busy…

A great first week of the schedule

Lynn

The first full week of the schedule has gone great. I didn’t have any of the problems I expected and I wrote more than I thought I would. I also had my first tough day today, although only because I had such a terrible night’s sleep last night after I woke up with a headache before one and couldn’t get back to sleep until nearly four-thirty. I still managed to work for the majority of my time and ended the day with a better word count than my lowest day this week.

Gotta say, I’m thrilled at the success I had this week. I wrote 14,400 words and ended the first full week of the schedule with a daily average of 2,057 words.

This change in attitude has really made a difference in my work habits and given me back my enthusiasm for writing. I’m absolutely brimming over with the desire to write. :D

I think that change in attitude has been just as important as the lucky break I had when I picked my work times, not realizing I was choosing work times that were just different enough from those I’d tried in the past to make a difference. I’m so glad I didn’t let myself overthink that decision.

Having a good run with the schedule

Lynn

This schedule is working wonders for me right now. I feel different about this one in a way I wasn’t expecting but am thrilled with. My word counts are better than I hoped for and I’ve set no quotas at all. My only plan is to stick to the schedule as closely as I can as often as I can. That meant stopping half an hour early today because of a family obligation. I still ended the day with my best word count since I started following the schedule.

I knew when setting the schedule that no schedule can work for every day all the time. But I gotta say, this one is working so much better than I expected. I mean, I hoped, but I really wasn’t expecting it!

This might be my best schedule ever

Lynn

I enjoyed another day of writing on a schedule today. The easy success of the last few days has made me think, wondering what the difference is between this schedule and those that came before. I finally think I’ve come up with several reasons to explain why it might be the best one ever.

  • I start later. 9 am is quite late for me. I’m usually up at 6 on weekdays but I sometimes sleep later on weekends. 9 am means the schedule works no matter which day it is without adjustment. Usually, I set up schedules that start really early and I’m always making adjustments.
  • The break between 12 and 1 is only an hour. Meaning I have less time to prepare food and less time to get sucked into watching TV or reading a book once I sit down to eat. Because I’m eating less at mid-day, I don’t get so sleepy afterward. Usually, I set up schedules with big breaks so I’m more rested when I get back to it. Unfortunately, I’m usually too rested and don’t want to!
  • I don’t have a quota or run the timers so the only pressure I have is the pressure to stick to the schedule. Usually, I have competing pressures because I usually do set word count goals and I run the timer and keep track of how much I produce. That’s a lot of added pressure. It’s nice being able to just focus on sticking to the schedule.

Anyway, I thought I had another reason but I can’t remember it just yet. If I do, I’ll add it. :)

Made it another day with the schedule

Lynn

Day two of following my new schedule went well. I stuck to it and probably got in about 5 hours of writing total after necessary breaks and one short, frustrating period of time where I thought seriously about taking a quick nap. I didn’t, but boy did I come close.

To recap:

Yesterday — 1,343
Today — 2,201

I wrote more today. Not by a lot, because I’m still stuck on this ending, but it is coming along.

Survived day one of the schedule

Lynn

I’m quite proud of myself. I wrote almost the entire six hours scheduled and I started on time at 9 and then at 1, although I admit to two interruptions and one almost nap that lasted about five minutes. All in all, I’d guess that I actually wrote for about 5 hours total.

My word count for that time amount of time sucks. Two reasons: I’m at the end of the book and endings always trip me up, and I’ve been stuck here for days so I’m not surprised it’s been a bitch trying to write my way out of this mess.

I have 1,011 words more than I started with and all of it was added to what I already had in the scene (which is now so long that it’s been split across two chapters). Anyway, it’s coming along and I’m pretty sure this is the climax, to be followed by a fun twist in the wrap up section that will leave a thread for the next books in the series. This series could go on for a long while. I really like writing it when I’m not pulling out my hair because of it. ;)

I’ll be writing more this evening because I’m at the point where I just need to get this book done, but I am taking a break before I get back to it. 3 hours is long enough for one sitting!

My final schedule

Lynn

I didn’t waste any time sitting down and sketching out a schedule after I wrote my little essay today. It was actually a bit of an eye-opener for me. I had no idea how strongly I believed that doing something you love means it should be easy to make yourself do it.

I really feel like I’ve had something of a breakthrough with that one. I’m almost always excited by whatever I’m writing once I actually get started. That’s a big deal because I find getting started insanely difficult even on the best of days. I’m like a rock that won’t roll when I have something I need to do, and that applies to so many areas of my life that you can take it as a general rule for my behavior. You can count on it. If I’m consistent in nothing else in my life, I’m consistent there.

Anyway, without wasting time optimizing the schedule or anything because it really doesn’t matter if I do—there’ll always be days where it just won’t work out well—I set my writing times: 9–12 and 1–4.

I’m going to try to get into a habit of turning off my WIFI at 9 and 1 sharp.

Any day that I don’t have obligations or outside interruptions, I plan to hold myself accountable for using that time for writing: I can write at other times throughout the day if I want, but I have to try to write during those times specifically, even if that means I just end up sitting with my computer and staring at my document.

I’m not setting a word count goal or quota for any of this, but I’m still interested in where I’ll even out with my daily average. Whatever it turns out to be, I’ll be satisfied as long as I’m putting in effort to actually write on my schedule.

The plan is to avoid shifting my writing times even if it means I end up not writing some days because I procrastinated my way through my scheduled writing times. I really hope that doesn’t backfire, but I feel like it’s a necessary step to keep me from messing with my schedule too often. I’m counting on it being easier to start and sustain a habit if I stick as close to the schedule as possible as often as possible.

If I were trying to squeeze writing in after a job or as a part time venture, I’d do things a lot differently. It would make more sense to just try to write as much as possible and go from there. But I’m not, and frankly, I’ve tried that and it worked when I had a job, but it doesn’t work now. I have so much more time available now that I procrastinate too much. Also, I just don’t need to do that anymore. I love writing, and I might be a little obsessed with it sometimes, but I actually don’t want to spend every spare moment I have doing it. I want free time that I can enjoy guilt free. I want to read and watch TV and keep up with my family and get together with my friends once in a while.

I hadn’t realized how much pressure not having a schedule puts on you to work all the time—and how that weighty feeling can lead to so much procrastinating.

Anyway, that’s the schedule. Wish me luck. I see good things in my future. :)

Reasons matter: a rambling essay

Lynn

I’ve decided many times over that a schedule is a bad idea for me. It occurred to me today that my reason for this isn’t exactly rational: A schedule puts me in a position of having to consciously face the fact that I’m choosing not to do something I’ve already decided I need to do, something I know I need to do.

I’m undisciplined when it comes to work (tbh, I’m undisciplined about most everything in my life). Deadlines don’t help. I still don’t usually become inspired to work until the very last moment and only the most serious of consequences is enough to get me going soon enough that I’m not absolutely scrambling at the last moment to get done on time.

This makes me ill suited to the career I’ve picked for myself, I know. It’s a struggle, but it’s worth it because I love earning my living by writing fiction.

I’ve tried to come up with some kind of system that doesn’t hang on goals but that’s just a mind-bending exercise in futility. You can’t have a system without goals of some kind. It’s impossible. I’ve tried to come up with a system that relies on me aiming at a targeted word count, but I keep coming back to the fact that I put it off until the end of the day and I just can’t get enough done in the time I end up with. I decided I would write until lunch every day; then I watched myself not start writing until lunch and wow, I sure produced a lot of words getting started ten minutes before I was supposed to quit (sarcasm alert!).

I’ve tried relying on my love of writing to keep me going without goals but my natural tendencies toward procrastination make that a terrible idea; I’ve failed miserably to get any appreciable amount of writing done at all without them.

But then when I set goals and I fail to meet them, I feel bad. I mean, really bad.

Setting goals based on things out of your control is never a good idea. And I can’t control my word counts. I can’t know how well the writing is going to go for any particular scene, book, day, hour, or month. Sometimes it goes well, and sometimes, I delete more than I write.

It’s hard to remember that word counts are out of my control. Sure, I remember right now, but will I remember tomorrow or next week when my deadline is closing in on me? Probably not.

A word count quota is the kind of goal that feels completely rational and within my control, until I have a bad day and manage 200 words in four hours because I had to delete a ton of work and couldn’t get moving on what was left. Then I feel like I’ve failed at something that should have been easy, and even though I know rationally that this is silly, the irrational parts of me (and there are a lot of those!) do not care. In the least.

There’s only one path left for me and the only reason I have for not taking it is because I see it as a failure.

If I loved writing, wouldn’t I want to do it all the time?

I feel dumb writing that out because I’ve known for a long time that working to your passions doesn’t mean you’ll never have to make yourself work again.

I love writing. I love having written. I love publishing my books. When I’m in the mood. Sadly, I’m not in the mood as often as I should be. In fact, I’m not in the mood a whole hell of a lot of the time because I tend toward moodiness as a general rule. And yet, if anyone cares to know, writing fiction is the one thing I’ve loved almost my entire life and it irks me that there’s someone out there that’s going to read this and say: “Well, she just doesn’t love it enough or she wouldn’t have to make herself do it.”

I need a schedule and I know it. Even if I can’t stick with the schedule most of the time and even if I choose on more days than not to skip writing, at least I’ll have some framework to keep me aimed in the right direction.

A system is made up of goals and habits, and habits can form around schedules more easily than they can form around random events that occur throughout the day.

So here’s the challenge. I’m going to make a schedule. Every day will be a challenge to stick to it. I’ll probably fail more often than I succeed. Maybe if I’m lucky some good habits will develop around the times I’m supposed to be writing that will make it work over the long-term even if I have a lot of short-term failures. If not, well, how’s it any worse than what I’ve already got going on?

No more searching for the best system, no more word count quotas or goal-setting, no more excuses. It’s time to move on from all that and settle in. The remainder of 2015 is going to be the year of the schedule.

The only requirement for myself is that if I choose not to write during the times I’m supposed to write, I have to admit that to myself. It’s a choice and I need to be responsible for it.

I won’t stop myself from writing outside the scheduled times, but if I don’t write when I’m scheduled to write and end up not writing as much as I should, I want to end the day knowing I had an obligation to myself and that I chose not to meet it.

I can’t keep avoiding the one system that is guaranteed to give me the opportunity to write more just because I’ll have to face how often I choose to fail.

Systems are made up of goals

Lynn

Systems are made up of goals. I’ve been thinking on this a lot the past week or so, after doing quite a bit of reading about goals and systems. I was having a difficult time working through certain ideas, the main one being that goals are somehow inherently different than systems (and they might be, but not in the way you think). Don’t set goals, some people say. Create systems instead. Work the system and all will be well.

Except… I couldn’t stop thinking that this doesn’t make any sense. How can you create a system that takes you where you want to go if you don’t have some vague idea of where that might be (a goal)? No matter how I thought about it, I couldn’t come up with a system that didn’t have goals built right into it.

Then it occurred to me that so many of these articles gloss right over the fact that goals come in all sizes and scopes. As soon as I realized that, I also realized that the authors of all these articles are trying to redefine what a goal is so that they can separate goals from systems—and by doing so, essentially claiming that most small goals (the daily kind) aren’t goals at all.

That’s not how I see it. A goal’s a goal, whether it’s the concrete goal of writing 100 words in the next 20 minutes, of writing every day, of sticking to a writing schedule, of writing 1,000,000 words over the next year, or the more abstract goal of just doing your best to write as often as possible.

I know now why this concept of systems versus goals didn’t want to sink in, why it didn’t make sense to me: every example I’ve found of a system is just a collection of ever smaller goals that for some unfathomable reason no one wants to call goals.

Finally, the systems versus goal debate makes sense (a focus on small goals versus one large goal).

Whew. I feel better. ;D

Now that the issue of semantics is past, I can focus on the real issue: setting up my goals as a system so that they make it easy to get where I want to go without setting myself up for failure.

What kind of system will inevitably lead to the future I want without me having to commit to a win/lose scenario such as “write 5 or 8 or 12 books this year?”

Smaller goals make it more likely I’ll have frequent wins, and lots of small wins are more motivating than one huge win (and honestly, how often do we get these huge wins even when we do the best we can?). Lots of small wins equals more motivation, and failing to reach a huge goal can definitely be demotivating if one doesn’t view it in the right light (and how often do we do that?).

How can I set myself up for lots of small wins when I already have experience that says if I aim for a daily quota I’m just going to disappoint myself? That, unfortunately, is going to require some more thought.

The mindset of a dedicated re-reader

Lynn

I think re-readers have a different mindset than people who don’t reread. I’ve begun to believe the difference in mindset comes down to why you’re reading. Are you reading to find out what happens, or are you reading to experience certain feelings? People who don’t reread often ask why those of us who do choose to. For me, it’s because I know what I’m going to feel when I read a certain book and that’s what I want.

That’s the same reason I reread my own books. I want those feelings I got when I wrote/read it the first time. Rereading is easier than writing an entirely new book so I can experience those feelings again. There’s a trade-off though. Doing the former satisfies an itch, doing the latter helps my bank account. ;D I’ve had to learn to sacrifice quick rewards for long-term benefits.

People who don’t reread often just want to know what happens in the story, and once they know, they’re done. Why revisit?

Lots of authors think it’s crazy to want to reread your own books long after they’re done and published. Some people think it’s ego driven. I can tell you right now that this has nothing to do with ego. I’m not reading my stuff and thinking, wow, what a great writer I am. I’m enjoying the story and how it makes me feel.

I happen to like rereading very much and I think the non-re-readers are the crazy people. ;)

*This post was inspired by this comment on someone else’s blog.

This month’s goal is to finish two books

Lynn

I didn’t make it to the end of the book I wanted done in March, so April’s goal has become to finish two books this month. Both books are already started—one is almost complete already. The other sits at 15,000 words or so.

It’ll take approximately 1,365 words a day to finish both these books, assuming my length estimates are close. This is considerably less than the 2,000 a day average I want to end up with this month, so this shouldn’t be a problem.

Getting started every day is the hardest part. If I ever find something that works consistently to get me started early and often… well, that’ll solve 99% of my productivity problems.

Changing my assumptions about my writer self

Lynn

I’ve been thinking about the fact that I need to become more productive with my writing. This is my full-time career and I need to be more cognizant of that fact sometimes. I’m not really sure how to move forward though because I’ve tried all the usual stuff over the last two and a half years: rigid schedules, flexible schedules, word quotas, book quotas, time quotas, all of that, and I still haven’t broken through my own resistance to regular, consistent, daily writing. I’m honestly at a bit of a loss as to what to do. None of those methods have helped me at all. There doesn’t seem to be anything left to try. Right now I’m just trying to focus on the enjoyment I get from writing, hoping that will make a difference. Do I just give up and accept that I write as fast as I write and that’s it?

I read something recently about challenging assumptions. Maybe that’s what I should focus on. I should challenge my assumptions about myself as a writer.

Assumption: I’m a slow writer.

Am I a slow writer? Let’s see: I had to refer to my archived time data (I stopped logging time on 3/18/2015), but a few formulas later, and I see something a bit surprising.

I wrote more than 500 words an hour 56% of the time, more than 800 words an hour 17% of the time, and more than 1,000 words an hour 5% of the time. Is that slow?

I see the 1,000 words an hour figure dropped regularly by other writers, and I have no way of knowing what kind of copy they turn out: finished or rough draft work. I don’t guess it really matters, because almost anyone I know considers a novel a month fast. 2,000–4,000 words a day is what it would take for that, writing the way I do (clean drafts, final copy). 56% of the time I can write 2,000 words in less than 4 hours. So 56% of the time I can produce at a highly prolific pace, working less than 4 hours a day.

This belief that I’m a slow writer doesn’t seem to have a lot of basis in reality.

Really, this just emphasizes that I need to worry a lot less about how fast I write and worry instead about how often I write.

I don’t write often enough and I don’t stick with it long enough. That’s the crux of the problem I’ll need to solve if I want to be prolific.

March was a good month

Lynn

I could have ended the month a little closer to my goals, but overall the month wasn’t bad. I wrote a bit more than 26,000 words and they’re solid words that won’t need more than a typo and clarity check when I’m done. That’s important to me, because I don’t do the shitty first draft writing that some writers advocate. It just doesn’t work for me, and believe me, there were years in there where I tried. Those were my most unproductive years as a writer, and I don’t ever plan to go back there.

April is going to be better. I’ve stumbled on a method of work that seems to be helping me produce more words each day. If it holds out, maybe April will be my first 2k-a-day month.