Month: November 2016

I’ve let myself get behind—by a lot

Lynn

I have a deadline coming up, very much a “can’t miss this date” deadline. It’s making me anxious.

I mean, technically, I could miss it. The date is still listed as tentative, but in my head, I know it’s not a deadline I need to miss. I don’t want to miss it. The fact is, though, that it’s really getting beyond my current capabilities to reach unless I have some kind of breakthrough in my writing.

So here I go trying to force that breakthrough.

I’ve found a schedule I don’t remember having tried before, and I’m going to try it today.

It pushes my pace a little bit, but nothing out of reach (~667 wph needed to stay on track). Where I’ll have the most trouble is just focusing on start and end times for my sessions and actually doing them when I’m supposed to do them. Five minutes late getting started is no big deal, but my history shows that I tend to get behind early, start every session late, until it’s snowballed and I’ve eliminated massive swaths of writing time just by letting five minutes here and there become twenty.

Here’s the plan.

1.5 hour writing sessions where the goal is 1,000 words each session. (Yes, I’ve tried this part before.)
.5 hour breaks between sessions (This is where it’s different. The writing sessions are all evenly spaced all day long.)

Here’s where I’ll update results.

12:00–1:30 – 1,296 words – Woo hoo! Things are off to a good start.
2:00–3:30 – 977 words – Only 1.23 hours, because I’ve fallen pretty far behind. I’ll have to skip the next session to get back on track. I’m hoping I can get ahead with some better word counts for the next couple of sessions. I had just enough time before 6 to finish it off before I started that one. :)
4:00–5:30 – Skipped to catch up
6:00–7:30 – 840 words – I’ve fallen behind again. It’s 8:17 and I have half an hour on this one to go. I’m going to keep going with it at this point.
8:00–9:30 – Skipped, because I was still working on the previous session.
10:00–11:30 – Skipped because I’m exhausted and I’m going to bed early so I can start off strong tomorrow.

If I get behind, I’ll cut a session or break short and move on to the next session.

If this goes well, I’m going to try it again tomorrow, starting earlier and taking a full hour between sessions (if I want—it certainly won’t be mandatory). The only reason I’m not doing that today is that I’m starting so much later than I planned when I came up with this idea last night.

Now, gotta go. I’m already 15 minutes behind. Yeah, I know. Not kidding. :o

**This might seem like it hasn’t gone well, but considering how badly I fail at this and how often, I’m actually really pleased with what I accomplished using this schedule. I’m definitely going to try the slightly modified version tomorrow, with the hour between sessions and see how that goes. I don’t yet know if the longer breaks will help or hinder my ability to stay on track.

One more attempt to have a 6,000 word day

Lynn

The plan: Write in one hour blocks until I reach 6,000 words!

It’s almost 11 am this morning, and I’m starting so late because I had a really late night. On the other hand, I happen to know that one of my rare 5,000+ word days happened on a day when I started writing after 11 am, so that doesn’t have to stop me from doing this. Also, family will be clearing out shortly and my quietest time today is going to be this afternoon and evening, so it seems like a great day to work on setting a record for myself.

Time to get started. :)

**Nope. Came up very short. 1,178 words. I just couldn’t get started until late, and then when I did, my pace was pathetic at < 300 words per hour.

Word count post for Nov. 10–11, 2016

Lynn

Nov. 10: 2,369
Nov. 11: 2,612

Daily average since 9/19: 922 words.

The average is going up again! Finally.

On these days, I had two false starts on my attempt to write 6,000 words in a day, but today I plan to try that again. Interruptions, distractions, and my own inability to get past those things severely affected the time I spent writing, while my inability to stop tinkering with my words kept my pace too slow and stopped me from gaining any momentum.

Can I write 6,000 words today?

Lynn

No? Yes? Maybe?

The plan: three blocks of writing time that last three hours each, during which I need to write 2,000 words so I end up with 6,000 words total for the day.

8:30 to 11:30 – 1,162 words

12:30 to 2 – Make up time.

2 to 5 – Was 1 to 4 until I added make up time.

7 to 10 –

Yesterday’s writing challenge a bust—much like the election

Lynn

As someone who voted Libertarian in this election, I’ll just say that the candidate representing me didn’t win. No surprise there.

The fact that I didn’t spend the day writing? Very much a surprise. I fully expected myself to be able to concentrate enough to write—but I just couldn’t get started.

Today I’d like to try again. The only problem is that it’s already 1:20 pm. I stayed up WAY too late into the early morning watching the election results. I had to make up that sleep time because I felt terrible when I tried to get up at 6:30 in the morning. I went back to sleep until about 8:30, but I still feel pretty bad, and I have a headache that comes from a rough, and late, night of sleep.

Anyway, I’m going to give it a try today despite the last start. Can’t win if you don’t play, as they say, and there’s always an available excuse for not playing.

All the points of the challenge remain the same, except for the timing of the three 3-hour blocks.

But three 3-hour blocks is still the plan.

See you back here at the end of block #1. I’ll update below!

Block #1
1.5 hours: 398 words

Need to get this next book moving

Lynn

I need to get this next book moving, and I need to do it in a hurry. I’m already so far behind I’m not sure I can catch up.

Time for a challenge.

I plan to aim for my best word count in a day ever tomorrow: 6,000 words.

I have 3 blocks of 3 hours each scheduled. (And I’ll go vote during the break between block 1 and block 2.)

I need to write 2,000 words in each 3 hour block.

I need to write 667 words for each hour in each 3 hour block.

As in, I really need to keep my pace up. A big part of this challenge will be keeping my breaks as short as possible. My historical average pace isn’t that great—and 667 wph is already pushing it. The less time I actually write during each hour, the faster I need that pace to be.

I really need to reach that 2,000 words during each block.

Side benefit of this challenge? Working this hard, it’ll be impossible to find time to worry over the election!

Now, off to bed to make sure I’m ready to get started when I need to start tomorrow. :)

Disheartened by a bad book

Lynn

I can’t make people like my books. I can’t really change what and how I write, or if I could, I wouldn’t want to, because then I just wouldn’t want to write. I don’t always enjoy the process of writing, and it’s the story, written the way I want it written, that carries me through when I’m feeling that way.

Writing is hard for me.

Sure, sure. There are people who’ll say that’s dumb, that writing isn’t hard, but those people? They don’t know how it feels to be me. I love making up stories, but writing them down, in some kind of coherent way, is really damn hard work. There are lots of days when I’d rather clean bathtubs all day than try to make sense of the stuff in my head and put it down in readable form.

I do the best I can with everything I write, and I do try to improve. And I recognize that not everyone is going to like what I write—especially because I write primarily for me.

All that doesn’t change the fact that it’s still disheartening when I realize I’m not writing things other people enjoy in the same way I do.

I’m pretty sure my last book didn’t hit the mark with a great many people. I had that realization after I accidentally saw a review I really didn’t need to see and went looking for evidence to support it one way or another—and it was an accident, because I never would have gone looking for it but one retailer in particular emails me reviews and I can’t stop them from doing it.

Probably not my best idea today.

What I found was that this latest book is my lowest rated book on Goodreads, by nearly a star. The thing I liked most about the book is the thing really not loved by most other readers. People do not seem to be liking this book. I’ve had a few 5 star ratings, but no reviews to go along with them, while the reviews I do have are all pretty negative.

Right now, I’m feeling like I’m just not that great a writer. My books have flaws, some of those flaws pretty major, but other than continuing on as I am, I’m not sure there’s anything I can do about it.

I’m doing the best I can. I just have to keep going, write what I write, and hope people continue to buy my books despite those flaws.

Book cover mockup: Made with GIMP

Lynn

So, since I’m still anti-reveal about my pen names (and if you figure them out, don’t tell me!), I just wanted to post something that shows a little of what a DIY author can create with GIMP, which is an open source alternative to using Adobe Photoshop, and free to use.

I also wanted to show off a bit of the stuff I’ve learned, since I talk a lot about studying cover design.

For my mockup, I didn’t worry about much other than mood, and I did this very quickly.

Misty Mockup

Here are the stock photos I used (all properly licensed from Dreamstime). :)

Misty Composite

I still don’t have an eye for design. But I have learned a lot and do think I can make a decent cover these days. Which is a good thing, because I decided a while back that I can’t do the hiring out thing. I wasn’t satisfied with either experience (not the quality of the covers—the experience).

I am not an expert designer, by any means, and no one is going to mistake that looking at this cover, but I really just wanted to show that you don’t have to use Photoshop to make decent DIY book covers if you’re a self-publisher. And if you practice your skills, you can make covers that are more than good enough to put on your books.

Also, who knows, but maybe I’ll start another new pen name someday soon and use this cover! :D