Month: May 2016

Follow up to the summer routine post

Lynn

I said yesterday that I’m trying to start a summer routine, but nope, it really didn’t work. I ended up writing in scattered sessions throughout the day, and just one day of feeling like I was supposed to write on schedule was enough to make me rethink the idea of an artificially constructed routine.

I did manage 4.5 hours of writing, but did none of the other stuff I’d hoped to also do yesterday. And honestly, 4.5 is not 5. My goal is 5 hours and 3,933 words minimum. So I’m happy I did what I did, but I’m sad that I keep falling short of what I want.

Hours Words Session WPH
1 650 650 650
1 1454 804 804
1 1777 323 323
0.5 2293 516 1032
1 2840 547 547

I’m really tired of disappointing myself time and again, but I don’t think a schedule is going to get me into a routine (and that plan yesterday really was mostly a schedule).

The problem is that if I don’t find a way to get into a nice routine, I’m going to end up never doing anything but writing—even though I won’t actually be writing that much, because I never do!

In other words, when I put too much focus on meeting a writing goal, I hesitate to do anything other than writing, afraid I’ll set off my obsessive tendencies and not meet my writing goals at all because I’m too busy being obsessed with something else. So although yesterday would have been a good day to finalize the cover for the pen name book, I didn’t, because I was afraid I would become obsessed with that and spend all day doing cover tweaks instead of writing. Because, to be honest, I’ve done it enough times to know that’s exactly what’s likely to happen.

I really need to figure out how to split all this up into a work day that makes good use of my time and doesn’t make me feel like I’m wearing a straitjacket.

Today I try to settle into a summer routine

Lynn

My summer routine this year?

Try to write for 4 hours before I stop for lunch, then finish my last hour right after lunch but before a nap. That way I won’t find myself spending my time on other things and then, when I don’t have enough time left in the day to write for 5 hours, agonizing over why I didn’t meet my goals.

I like the idea of this routine a lot. Unfortunately, it’s very common for me to like a routine in theory and then not be able to stick to it to save my life. I’m going to give this one a shot today.

That means stopping this post right now and getting to work ASAP. I’ll use a lot more than 4 hours for those 4 hours of writing and I don’t want to waste time before I get started!

 

Excuses: too hot, too tired, and too little focus

Lynn
Hours Words Session WPH
1 1071 1071 1071
1 1728 657 657

1,728 words total in 2 hours of writing. If only I’d put in more hours! At today’s pace, I would have made my word count goal easy.

Here are the reasons why I didn’t reach my five hours of writing goal. Or, let’s just call them excuses.

First, it reached 82 degrees Fahrenheit in here today and stayed there for most of the day. It’s still 80 as I type this at 9:20 pm. I’m wilting in the heat. I can only boggle at how people without A/C make it through the summer around here. I couldn’t do it—not without feeling like I’m suffering great distress. The laptop gets too hot to get comfortable with, and my wrists get sweaty against the frame around the keyboard. Sure doesn’t make writing fun or interesting.

Second, I didn’t get enough sleep last night, because, of course, I started reading a book at bedtime. I knew better and I did it anyway. I was ready to kick myself today for that mistake, but alas, it was too late to do any good.

Because of #2, and possibly #1, I had no ability or interest in staying focused today when the normal interruptions that come from having kids at home interrupted me. I gave in and didn’t write almost every time I sat down to try. I spent most of the day procrastinating.

So instead of a really good day of 5 or even 6 hours of writing, I got 2.

Still, I wrote something, and that’s always a win. Hell, I almost made it to 2,000 words, and there was a time when I would’ve considered today’s word count a good day’s work.

I LOVE this new faster pace I seem to have settled into. I haven’t changed my writing at all, so I still don’t know how or why I’ve gotten faster. My only guess is that it’s because I’m doing my best to put my writing time to use writing what I’m most interested in writing at any given time. (Although that’s not strictly true for today’s writing, because I really should have let myself write a bit of something else for a while—that might have been enough to get me past some of today’s procrastination.)

Tonight I really do have to get a good night’s sleep. I know I’ll do better with my goals tomorrow if I do, even in the heat.

Reached five hour goal today

Lynn

I find it funny that the moment I stop a challenge, I immediately find it easier to focus on what needs to be done.

I reached my five hour writing goal today, although I admit, I’m nowhere near my word count goal.

Hours Words Session WPH
1 318 318 318
1 618 300 300
1 1161 543 543
1 1382 221 221
1 1847 465 465

Total: 5 hours, 1,847 words, for an average of 369 wph.

On the other hand, even though I haven’t reached my word count goal, I am now officially past the material I needed to fix and I had just started to write some new stuff at the end of my last session.

I’m thinking of writing some more tonight, but we’ll have to see how I feel after a break, because I absolutely want to get to bed early tonight. I feel like I’m at my most creative and productive when I get more sleep and I want to give myself plenty of opportunity for that after several nights of less than optimal bedtimes.

This writer does not subsist on coffee and tea; she needs her sleep! :)

ETA: I did write a bit more, although not as much as I’d hoped to.

0.46667 2220 373 799.286

So new total: 2,220 words, 5.47 hours

But look at that! A major improvement in my pace now that I’m writing new material again! ;D Whew! I’m excited about tomorrow. Finally, some momentum again!

Now, must get some sleep so I feel good tomorrow and can write nice and fast.

And as an aside, my A/C is still broken and it’s starting to get hot around here. :o I’m getting worried that the part I need won’t arrive before it gets really hot. And I hate leaving my windows open: I just found a bug floating in my glass of water. Yuck. I’m too delicate for this crap. ;)

Failed the challenge five out of five days

Lynn

So, I failed the challenge five out of five days. I am stopping that particular challenge, because obviously eight hours of writing in a day is just not going to happen right now. Maybe it’s the fact that it’s the end of the school year and my routine is a mess, or maybe it’s just because I almost never write for more than four to five hours in a day and it’s like exercise, I’ll have to work my way up to it. Either way, that challenge is done.

I’m going to resume jumping between stories, with an eye toward working as much on the book I want to finish ASAP as I can without bogging down in it, and I’m going to enjoy myself.

Every day, my main goal is to get in my 5 hours of writing, and 3,933 words, and take time off writing to publish so I can enjoy that process too.

Well, that all needed saying, and I feel better now.

Multiple stories at once: seventh week & summary to date

Lynn

I thought I’d list this week’s progress and then list out how I’ve been tracking from the beginning and maybe even compare it to this time last year and a few of my more productive 7 week periods from the past just to see if there’s anything there to learn.

Thursday—Wednesday, May 19–May 25

(9)
907
1,201
951
1,511
730
1,299

Total: 6,590 words.

My pace was down significantly this week too, the average coming in around 356 wph.

I worked only on the book I was trying to finish this week. Not even one word for another book.

As I said in another post, this week has been the second week I’ve had to get through that is completely out of my routine because of the end of the school year for my kids. I did better than last week, but not by much.

I don’t honestly know how much of that to blame on the messed up routine and how much to blame on trying to work on only one story. I’ve decided the latter is just not going to work, not even with me knowing I need to get this book I’ve been trying to finish finished. As soon as I started telling myself I needed to work on one book and one book only, my word counts plummeted.

So, I’m backing off the deadline. It was a personal deadline anyway, and it’s not the end of the world. It feels like a big deal, but I’ll just have to let that go in favor of getting more words so I end up with more books, faster.

Now, for the summary.

Week 1: 21,873
Week 2: 10,959
Week 3: 16,927
Week 4: 11,948
Week 5: 11,282
Week 6: 4,296
Week 7: 6,590

Total: 83,875 words

To compare previous 7 week periods:

  • Last year: 7 weeks ended 5/26/15: 40,035 words
  • My highest word count from any 7 week period since I started keeping records ended 3/24/13: 89,587 words
  • The highest I’ve made it during any other 7 week period is in the low 60,000s.

I believe the downward trend in my word counts isn’t something problematic so much as it’s a result of my shifting routine with the end of the school year.

The next couple of weeks should provide evidence of that, or to the contrary if it turns out I’m wrong. Still, I’m convinced this method is exactly what I needed to increase the number of words I write every month and that it has serious long-term potential for me. :)

New “finish the book” challenge: day 5

Lynn

I should be nearing the end of this book I’m trying to finish. Alas, I’m not any closer than I was when I started, except that, really, I kind of am. I’m about to start into new territory and I do expect the writing to go much faster now.

I’m trying for at least 8 hours today and hoping to see some really great words per hour after the first hour or so. Let’s how far I can take this thing. ;)

I’ve been desperate to get back to writing on my other stories and increase my daily word count, but I’m almost there. Just half a book to go! :o

Hours Words Session WPH
1 25 25 25
1 847 822 822

This does seem to prove that I’ll speed up once I can focus on all new material. I have one more bit to go and then all previously written material will be behind me. :)

On the other hand, I stayed up too late last night, got up late this morning, had to take aspirin for a pulled muscle next to my spine between my shoulder blades that’s been bothering me for several days, took a nap to make up for some of last night’s lost sleep, and am only at 2 hours total for the day even though it’s already 1:30. So…back to it quickly now. At least lunch is over with!

Hours Words Session WPH
1 25 25 25
1 847 822 822
1 1183 336 336

Total: 1,299 words

Hmm. I can explain. Unfortunately, the explanation doesn’t really do anything but make it clear that me and lack of sleep don’t work well together. I just never had the energy for my story I should’ve had yesterday, and I do blame lack of sleep.

New “finish the book” challenge: day 4

Lynn
Hours Words Session WPH
1 91 91 91
1 720 629 629
1 847 127 127
1 1187 340 340
1 1025 -162 -162
1 1195 170 170
1 1144 -51 -51

So, a lot closer to 8 hours today, but… nowhere near the progress I needed.

Total: 7 hours, 1,144 words (net SO MANY deletions and rewriting that I don’t even know how much I actually wrote and deleted to day—all I know is it was a lot because what’s left, even thought it’s the same place, same characters, nothing else is the same).

(Update—I did not stop after all, but the extra time didn’t gain me anything. I actually lost more words. I ended the day with 730.)

I do not hate this book, but I’m damned well ready to get past this scene I’m stuck in so I can get on with this story.

It’s all come together okay, now, though, and I’m on the last scene that I have to piece together because of story changes.

I still have no idea what happened with this book, but, as usual, I’m learning something, even if it’s to ignore problems like this in the future and just keep writing. Because I’ll be honest. I have no idea if any of these changes have actually made this a better story. All I know is that I’m about to pull out my hair.

New “finish the book” challenge: day 3

Lynn

I should just give up on this challenge. I’ve written for 2 hours this morning and accumulated 861 new words. I’ve written 26,979 words of this book and I’m stuck around the 14,000 word mark trying to make it all fit together. I really just don’t know what happened with this book. I’m making my way through it, though, and it’s going to be okay. And I’m not giving up, because I don’t want to, even if common sense is telling me there’s no way I’m going to make this deadline.

Here’s my progress so far today. (I should also say that I definitely have limited time today and won’t be able to write for at least 3 hours this afternoon. So, back to it before I waste any more time.

Hours Words Session WPH
1 674 674 674
1 861 187 187
1 1029 168 168
0.16667 1121 92 552
1 1307 186 186
0.53333 1511 204 382.5

Well. I might get my hours in today but it sure doesn’t look like I’m going to get my words in!

Totals: 4.7 hours, 1,511 words

Honestly, no idea how I ended up so short on time.

On another note, I had to face the fact that I need a new plan for getting this book I’m trying to finish finished. I think I came up with one that’ll work, but I’m going to see how tomorrow goes first before I commit.

I did not get all the way through the draft fixing things today. I’m at about 20,756 words into the total of 27,626. All those 1,511 words for today are additions I made (net of the deletions). I’ll be honest. I bet I wrote a LOT more than 1,511 words today. Those deletions killed my numbers.

Anyway, on to tomorrow, and I just bet, once I get past this fix it thing, this book will take off again. I remain hopeful. :)

New “finish the book” challenge: day 2

Lynn

So, today is off to a slow start. It’s 9:01 am and I’m just about to have breakfast. I’ll be back shortly to start writing, and the goal is 8 hours of writing, at least. Preferably 9 or 10 if I can do it. I don’t know that I can. 8 hours seems to be a challenge in and of itself. The goal is also to finish by 9 pm.

6:31 pm update

Well, I’ve spent all day avoiding getting started with this. I finished reading a book—third book in less than a week, and when I was done with it, I started reading another. But I’m finally ready to stop avoiding this book, because I’ve finally accepted why I’ve been avoiding it. (This is why I should still be working on multiple stories, even now, because if I’d given myself permission to work on something else, I’d have gotten a lot written today, and on several other days this past week. I really believe that.)

It comes down to those words I saved and that I need to keep saved because I don’t have enough time to write more words to take their place if I delete them. Some of those saved words just aren’t going to work with the story, and since I’ve bridged that gap in the story and am back at them, it’s time to start fixing those bits so it all works together.

This is important to me, because I want to love this book. I’ve had too many books lately that felt like a chore to write and I DO NOT want writing this book to become a chore.

But, truly, I hate piecing a story together. I’m much more at ease when I start a book and just keep going, going back to fix little bits here and there, little bits, mind you, that are very, very little bits. Deep breath.

I’m going, now, to get started. It’s 7:01 (had small interruption that made this post seem to take longer than it really did to write). But now I’m settled. I’m going to spend 3–4 hours writing and then call it a night. It won’t be enough, but it’ll be much better than what I have now.

Goal: 5,567 words. Let’s see how close I can come to that original goal in those 3–4 hours.

Hours Words Session WPH
1 186 186 186
1 663 477 477
1 951 288 288

So far my pace is underwhelming.

More like: ouch.

After adding in the third hour, I have to say I’m calling it a night. Because of several interruptions, I’ve had to stay up until 11:20 pm just to get those three hours in.

I’m nowhere near where I should be on this book. Tomorrow is going to be a make or break day for this challenge.

New “finish the book” challenge: day 1

Lynn

Last week was terrible for my experiment.

  1. I didn’t really write on multiple stories at all
  2. I’m seriously behind on the one book I MUST get out this month
  3. End of the school year is here and it’s killing my routine—one more week to go before I can settle into a new one
  4. I had enormous resistance to writing, and so I spent a lot of time reading, which I shouldn’t have, but it’s a given that when I start to feel overwhelmed, I self-medicate with distractions—thank God I’m not a drinker

I’m still going to try to meet my deadline. Consider it a challenge. The latest I can finish the book in question and reasonably expect to publish it when I need to publish it is the 26th. I’ll have to have my best week of writing ever to do it. But I haven’t missed a hard deadline before and I don’t plan to miss this one.

Today I’ll be writing for 8 hours, word count irrelevant. 8 hours is the goal.

Of course, I’d like to keep my speed up and have a record-breaking day of writing, but that might not happen. It’s okay if it doesn’t. I estimate I’ll need a minimum of 43 hours of writing this week at a much slower pace to finish on time. That means 8 hours a day until it’s done. And yes, 8 hours of writing a day is actually a lot more time than it sounds like because those 8 hours don’t include even one pee break. :o

So, I’m off to start writing. This is going to be one crazy week.

Challenge: 8 hours a day of writing until the book in question is done, starting today.

Progress

Hour 1: 391 words

I’m in a terrible hole in this book that I just can’t seem to dig out of. I’m definitely hoping for some easier writing soon, but I’m afraid that’s going to be an unfulfilled wish today. I have a long way to go to merge the new stuff with the old stuff.

Hour 2: 610 words | 1,042 cumulative

The numbers don’t add up, I know, but somehow I got distracted by the story and wrote for 10 minutes during the break between hours. That’s where the extra 41 words come from.

It’s also already much later in the day than I need it to be, so I’m going to have to really focus on getting these sessions done before it’s too late to actually get them done and still get to bed at a reasonable time tonight. Sleep absolutely has to come first. Not getting enough of it is probably the number one reason I fail to meet goals.

Total: 1,201 words

I didn’t even come close to the 8 hours of writing I wanted. Will have to try again.

Multiple stories at once: sixth week

Lynn

Thursday—Wednesday, May 12–May 18

306 2 stories
0
3,618 2 stories
372 2 stories
0
0
0

Total: 4,296 words

Ouch. This was a terrible week when it came to writing. Honestly, it wasn’t much better for anything else either. It’s the end of the school year and my routine is completely out of order and I’m just trying to keep writing and make it through one more week of this. Plus, heating/A/C unit is still down, awaiting repair, and last night was graduation.

 

6,000 word challenge for today

Lynn

I’ve never written 6,000 words of fiction in one day. I want to do that this month. In fact, I want to do it today. It’s 11:22, but there’s still time.

6,000 ÷ 7.5 hours = 800 wph

I need to aim for 800 wph or more to get this done today, because that’ll use up about all the time I have left in this day, and I do have a few things other than writing I need to do too.

So, yeah, I’m probably being optimistic I can do this today, but I like being optimistic. :D

I’ve written half a book in an effort to avoid writing half of another book

Lynn

Friday was the first zero word day I’ve had since April 20th. I recovered yesterday, sort of, doing 1 hour in the morning, but then only managed to restart at nearly 7 pm. Can I explain what happened? Really, no. I just didn’t want to get started again.

I came very close to reaching my goal word count last night despite that by jumping into another story instead of continuing to fight for words. I ended the day with 3,618 words in 3.8 hours, a pace of 952 wph.

I’m now beyond 28,000 words on that story, mostly from writing on it when I’m not interested in writing on something else. My goal is about 50,000 words for that book, meaning I’ve written half a book while trying to avoid writing the second half of another book. There can be no doubt that working on multiple stories is helping me beat my usual issues with low word counts.

This is the breakthrough I’ve been looking for. It just proves that the best way to find what works is to keep trying, in every variation possible.

I thought I’d tried working on multiple stories as a way to increase my word counts, and I had, in a sense, but not in this exact configuration. 1 hour blocks, switch at will, stick to the stories that interest me but at least try the others once in a while to keep them fresh in my head, ignore deadlines, ignore the part of my brain telling me write this today, and get started on anything, because as long as I start, I’m getting somewhere.

Finally, I’m feeling the lack of a heating unit this morning. The temperature in here is 66° F. Not bad, honestly, but I don’t like being cold, and sitting at the computer and typing doesn’t keep me warm. My fingers are already feeling stiff.

Still, I have a ridiculous number of words to write today, and also need to download some images from my Dreamstime subscription before I cancel in a few days. Another month’s renewal is going to be a waste of money, because I have credit for 294 images to download already. I have no idea how I’m going to download so many images over the next few days and get all my words written and deal with getting another of my books ready to publish to meet a May publishing deadline and deal a bunch of personal things this week.

I really don’t multitask well and I don’t handle switching my focus all that well either. I’m already feeling overwhelmed.

Best way to get over that is to pick something and just do it. I’m going with writing. Here’s to a good day. I’m going to try to break my 6k word barrier again. Post coming up for reporting today’s progress on that. :D

Writing delays and deadline approaching

Lynn

Yesterday I wrote:

Time to get to work now, and I’ll report back later with the results! I’m hoping to get all the way through the book today, and add about 4k words to the story.

And then my A/C and heating unit died.

So yesterday did not turn into a stellar writing day. In fact, I wrote only 306 words, and I’m lucky I did that. I don’t find it easy to concentrate when I’m anxious. I waited for the serviceman to come out and one of my kids came home from school early, feeling bad, and then I got the bad news about the unit.

It’s in a really bad way that’s going to cost me out the nose to get fixed, assuming it’s not just more economical in the long run to buy a new unit altogether.

Yep, that bad.

Today, I’m struggling to let it all go long enough to get started on my book—I honestly thought I’d be writing by now, and maybe finishing my second hour up.

Against my better judgment I’m still trying to catch up by finishing one particular book this month. I’m down to 8 days until I pass up my deadline. I need at least 3,526 words a day just on this book to now maybe reach the end of the book in time. If it goes long, I’m in trouble. If I miss a day, I’m in trouble. If I use all my time writing on some other story, I’m in trouble.

Let’s just admit it: I’m already in trouble with this book.

I’m just going to ignore the part of my brain trying to tell me I can’t do this, because of course I can do this. I’ve shown these past 5 weeks that I can write 3,933 words in as little as 4 hours. Worst case scenario, I can still write 400 words in 1 hour, and that means I can write 3,526 words in 9 hours. I can write for 9 hours. I don’t really want to, but I can.

So no excuses. I can do this. I can finish this book in 8 days, and maybe have a little writing left for other stories too.

I just need to get this one book out of the way so I can have what my write multiple stories at once experiment seems to be promising me: total writing freedom while writing many more words than before. :)

It’s time to quit putting it off and get started. I have somewhere to be later today and I’d like to finish my writing before I go so I can end this day feeling accomplished.

Multiple stories at once: fifth week

Lynn

Thursday—Wednesday, May 5–May 11

701 1 story
1,656 1 story
747 2 stories
256 1 story
1,613 1 story
3,728 2 stories
2,581 1 story

Total = 11,282 words

I didn’t feel like I was writing multiple stories this week, probably because I’ve been panicking a bit about a book I’m trying to finish (which is something I hope will be over soon, but there are 2 books that I just really need to get caught up on).

I worked on 2 distinct stories this week. The only day I really broke out on, I spent most of my writing time on that second story. That was what helped me realize something was wrong with the other one, because I could still write faster and easier when I was working on something else. (And this is a great example of why the multiple stories method is really working for me to increase my word counts.)

Overall, it was another week that was much lower in word count than I’d hoped since I’m aiming for 27,533 for a full writing week, but I still did much better than my average.

I’ve now had 5 weeks in a row where I’ve written more than 10,000 words each week.

My current total words written since I started this experiment is 72,989 words. Not the 98,333 words a month I want to reach eventually, but a damn sight closer than I’ve ever been in the past. :D I’m pleased.

This experiment continues to be a raging success.

Panic on hold

Lynn

After going back to the beginning and starting through the book adding stuff, I started to have a feeling I’d been too hasty in deleting all those words yesterday. So I recovered them, then kept going through the book. I added just over 2,500 words in the first 4 chapters and a new chapter 5. I realized some things about the story that had been bothering me, and this stuff I wrote yesterday, I’m very excited by it.

I’m gonna be upfront here and say that some of that decision could have come from the last 2 videos from Dean Wesley Smith’s Originality Workshop series that’s freely available on YouTube at the moment. Even if you don’t want to bother watching any of the other videos, those 2 are worth watching multiple times.

Anyway, after listening to those 2 about 3 times each, I decided I wasn’t being true to what I wanted from this story. I remember reaching a point where I wondered what readers would think about a choice I had to make, and I remember quite clearly making the safe choice for that reason. But it wasn’t right. It wasn’t what this story needed. So I fixed it. And boy, do I love what’s there now so much better.

I didn’t do much rewriting, but I did do some—although I’m positive I was going at it creatively, not destructively. To me, destructive rewriting is when I’m just trying to make something sound better in my head. Creative rewriting happens when I need to make changes to create a better story—in this particular case, creating something I like better. Those are two different types of rewriting, in my opinion.

As a general rule, I don’t think rewriting does me any favors so I avoid it as much as possible. On the other hand, if the story isn’t coming out the way I want, I don’t see any reason not to rewrite sections as I’m trying to work my way into the real story. In all honesty, what I’m talking about probably isn’t even rewriting so much as it’s just part of the writing process. I mean, I’m only 19k-ish words into a story I fully intend to land around 50k.

It really made me more excited about what I was writing to revisit the opening chapters. Something to note is that I originally wrote this opening back in February 2015, so there could be other factors at play in the rewriting thing, such as that I’m just in a different place creatively speaking now than I was then, so of course the story had to change.

Whatever the reason, I just started to feel like my first few chapters of this book weren’t the same book as the ones that followed and something had to give or I was going to flame out with this story. (Because of the way I work, I often start books that I don’t get back to for months or years at a time. I’m trying to fix that with the multiple stories method.)

And I do admit, this has been an unusual case. This is as close as I’ve ever come to feeling a need to just scrap a story and start from scratch.1 Yesterday, I admit, at one point, I panicked a bit, remembering a quote DWS has repeated a few times on his website about steaming piles of crap, but I ignored it, because I had this feeling that my problem with this story wasn’t that it was a bad story, but that I’d failed somewhere along the line in the telling  of it.

Then I figured it out, and things started to fall together. I have a new chapter or two to finish today, and then I have more story to go through, and I have a decision to make about my character that’ll determine just how much I’ll have to fix going forward, but I’m very hopeful I’ll be keeping the vast majority of those words I thought about deleting yesterday. :D

Now that I think about it that way, nope, I really don’t see any of what I did yesterday (or am planning to do today) as rewriting, because I’m very much still in the process of creating this story.

Time to get to work now, and I’ll report back later with the results! I’m hoping to get all the way through the book today, and add about 4k words to the story.

1^ I came just about this close back in January 2015, but I think this one was closer. I ended up loving that story. I still do. I did a good job with it. I just wish more people would find that series and like it because I love it enough to want to keep writing it, but hardly anyone’s buying. Bummer, that.

Time to panic

Lynn

I just deleted 11,117 words, after deleting 1,442 words last night from the same book. I’ve gone from being comfortably in the middle of this book to being all the way back to the beginning. This is absolutely the most words I’ve ever deleted from one story at one time.

I’m hoping desperately that it was the right decision. Progress on this book has been pathetically slow and I just haven’t been happy with this story for the majority of the book.

So, today is a day of recovery for this book.

I hope to figure out how I want to go forward, and if by the end of the day I’m not thrilled with a new direction, I’m going to pull up the copy of the doc I made before I deleted anything and force myself to keep going with it.

I’m already behind on this book, again, and my May deadline is—as usual with any deadline—about to bite me.

God, I hate deadlines.

Multiple stories at once: fourth week

Lynn

Thursday—Wednesday, April 28–May 4

2,260 2 stories
3,228 2 stories
1,439 1 story
1,009 2 stories
595 2 stories
2,330 3 stories
1,087 2 stories

Total: 11,948

Definitely under where I’d like to be, but it still works out to a daily average of 1,707 words which is considerably better than my 2016 daily average of 779, or my 2015 daily average of 685.

So, still a ways to get where I want to be: 3,933 words on writing days, or approx 3,233 daily average, for 98,333 words a month, but much closer than I’ve been in the past (as a whole, not my recent past—I did much better last week and the first week).

Since I started this experiment, my daily average has increased dramatically, more than doubling to 2,033 words a day. :D I call that success.

I worked on 5 distinct stories this week.

It’s Friday—What?

Lynn

I’ve failed every attempt this week to meet the challenge I’ve set myself to break 6,000 words. In the last 7 days, I haven’t even broken into the 3,000 range.

See? 1,439; 1,009; 595; 2,330; 1,087; 701; 0 (today)

Today’s 0 won’t be zero because I’ve already started writing.

My last >3,000 word day was last Friday.

I’m not really sure where the blame for this lies. It’s just been a rough week and the writing hasn’t been easy. I think I’m making the obvious mistake of pushing myself to write more on one particular book and because I’m having issues with that story, I’m stalling out a bit, and it’s creating the beginning of that vicious cycle of writing avoidance I’ve talked about many times in the last couple of weeks as I try to keep myself working by only working on what I want.

Unfortunately, I’ve committed to finishing a particular book this month and I mean to meet that commitment.

But I guess I don’t trust myself. I’m worried that if I just write, without keeping an eye on how much of my time is spent on that particular book, I’ll screw up and realize I’m too far behind to catch up before my personal deadline hits. The 20th is the latest I need to finish this book and have a chance of meeting my commitment, and that’s 15 days from now, or about 2,321 words every day, or somewhere around 3,200 words for 11 out of 15 days.

Honestly, these are totally doable numbers. It’s 2 to 3 hours at my current year’s wph rate. My daily goal is 5 hours of writing. That still leaves me plenty of time to switch between stories and try to get my momentum up before I hit this book.

So why has this week been so bad? I think because I just haven’t remembered this stuff that I just wrote. I mean, I don’t have to work on this book every moment I’m at the computer writing. I just need to focus on reaching my 5 hours a day (maybe 6 until this book is done) and try to start at least a few sessions with this book every day. If they don’t get off to a good start, I can switch back, but I don’t think that’s my problem. I think it’s just the resistance to starting at all. :D

Going forward, I just need to catch up with this particular book and one more and then I can let go of all deadlines and really stick to writing only what I want when I want. I expect I’ll be more than able to keep up with reasonable releases within my series then just because I write so much faster when I keep switching between stories.

So, I guess I’ve just worked out a few thoughts I’ve been struggling with. Let’s see if it helps today be a more productive—and interesting—writing day.

Now, time to get back to the fiction. Tomorrow and Sunday both will have me short of writing time if I’m not careful and I can’t really get any more behind than I already am this month. Plus, I don’t need to fall back into the habit of making my writing take all day. There are other things I need—and want—to do sometimes. I’d like to get to a place where I can do those things and still count on being able to hit my daily writing goals!