Day: January 26, 2017

Even passive time tracking is just a distraction

Lynn

I mentioned ManicTime in a previous post but said I had uninstalled it. I did. I also went back and reinstalled it, making a setting change that allowed it to get much closer to the kind of passive time tracking I wanted. I changed the “away” time activation from 10 minutes to 1 minute. Every time I stepped away from the computer for more than 1 minute, ManicTime recorded me as away and didn’t record time on whatever window I happened to have in focus on the screen.

That was great.

Until about an hour ago when I realized I really don’t need this distraction. And yes, it’s a massive distraction, even running completely in the background, simply because I know it’s there and I’m tempted to check my time log every time you turn around.

So earlier tonight, I uninstalled the program, again.

The truth is, I have only one plan for this year, and that plan is this: write more.

I hope to accomplish that by writing every day.

As of the 20th of this month, that’s been true. I’ve written something every day. Some of the entries on my word count log for the last six days are minuscule because of this read through project, but they’re there, and I know I’ve put in effort.

Maybe not as much effort as I hope to build up to putting in, but we all have to start somewhere. Muscles take time to grow. ;)

Web reading challenge: day 4

Lynn

I started this challenge on January 23rd, making today day four.

I haven’t cracked once since I started it, but it sure hasn’t been easy. I seek out distractions when my brain gets tired of focusing on one thing and it’s been interesting to notice just how often that really is.

That said, I think this is a powerful and important challenge for me and I have every intention of sticking it out until the end of February.

Revising is not a good idea; how to fuck up a story

Lynn

I had to make a few changes to my book. I try not to do much when I go back to already written material, but in this case, I had an issue I couldn’t work out and when the solution came to me, it meant adding a few things. I don’t know what it is about how I write, but it’s almost impossible for me to write something and just plop it into the middle of an already written scene. It just never seems to fit in and I have to work to make a place for it.

So I did that with the fix and probably tweaked a bit more than I should have.

Yep, I know I did. How do I know?

Because I got through chapter 13 last night, and when I reached 15, I had some stuff that totally didn’t make sense anymore because I’d gone back and put stuff in related to it thinking I’d skipped that issue altogether and yet there it was, fully fleshed out in a later chapter.

Ugh.

This is where I just leave it, fix chapter 15 so it won’t matter and KEEP GOING.

Like I said, I try not to get caught up in making the kinds of changes that count as revising. I cycle through my document as I go, building and growing the story, and most of the time I do end up cycling from the beginning at least once, but it’s best if I do it when the story is fresh—not when I’m trying to get the story back into my head.

When the story isn’t fresh, I’m much more likely to make mistakes like this and end up in revision territory, and I do not like revision. I can’t keep the various versions of a story straight—all the bits and pieces float around and I get confused about which ones are really there and which ones I’ve deleted. It’s best I stay as far from that as possible, because that’s the kind of stuff that makes me hate writing. And feel blocked and have to move on to another story for a while or just not write.

So anyway, yes, I’m still working on getting through this story to arrive at all fresh blank empty pages, but I’m a lot closer now than I was. To be honest, if I don’t finish it today, I’m going to—

You know what? It doesn’t matter, because I’m going to get through it today. I’m going to do it and that’s that.