Day: September 12, 2023

Day 3 of the daily accountability challenge

Lynn

Accountability for 9/11/23

Yesterday, I continued working on multiple stories for my multiple stories challenge.

My word count dropped below 1,300 words, which is a bummer.

Most of my day was spent working on a cover and title for a short story I finished the night before. I’m not a great cover designer, not gonna lie about that, but as I’ve said before, I don’t really want to let other people do my covers. Since I self-publish, I get to do what I want. :D Since so much of what I do when I design covers is just play around until I get something I’m satisfied with, I can end up spending a lot of time on it.

That’s what happened yesterday. That and the title issue. This story needed a title and I had a really hard time coming up with something I was happy (enough) with. Still not sure it’s the best, but it will work. Time to move on. The story will either sell or it won’t, and I plan to be working on something else when I find out.

Late last night (sometime after that last post I made), in an effort not to go to sleep with a big fat zero in my spreadsheet for the day, I wrote 621 words, across 2 stories.

Only two again? Yes. I was too tired to get to work on another one. :)

And you know what? Despite not reaching 1,300 words for the day, I feel like it was a win. :D

Of a longstanding practice

Lynn

I’ve had a looooogstanding practice of counting my words as of whatever the date was during the day, no matter how late I stay up writing, instead of logging words based on the clock and the actual date.

For example, it’s 12:49 am and Tuesday now, but in my head it is still Monday, 9/11/2023 instead of Tuesday, 9/12/2023. So all my writing up until I go to sleep and reset the date is Monday’s writing.

However—

I’ve been doing so much writing after midnight lately that I’m always a day behind on my spreadsheet, and it’s driving me a little crazy tonight.

I’m sure I need to wait this out instead of changing my longstanding practice. My spreadsheet covers more than 10 years of daily word counts now. And I’m not sure how I would deal with a midnight deadline in actual practice.

What if I wrote the words at 11:50 pm–12:10 am and forgot to update the spreadsheet in between? Or if I forgot to record the words until the next morning but can’t remember if it was before midnight or after midnight when I wrote them?

I think the messiness of it all would not be pleasant. :o

Maybe what this is really telling me is that I need to start going to sleep earlier so this isn’t an issue at all.