Author: Lynn

I’m writing this on my phone, because if I go on my computer I will get sucked in and end up wasting my writing time. The voice recognition on my phone doesn’t like my accent that well. I’ll correct any major issues later because my phone does not make editing easy.

It’s 11 o’clock and I just lost about an hour of time trying to get one of the Lightning Deals on Amazon but the site was having trouble.

Anyway, no more of that crap. ;) I have lots of writing to do!

I got started at 9 o’clock this morning. I put in edits, & I ended up with 110 words. Then instead of getting started writing on that particular story I went ahead and moved to another story and put edits in on it. I ended up with seven additional words, lol.

Now it’s time to go back to the first story and work on it. I’m trying to finish it today because it’s a short story so that I can move on to something else.

I stayed up quite late last night trying to fix myself a production schedule and do some thinking about what I planned. That means I’m short of sleep, and that has a tendency to make me unfocused.

I’m going to be fighting that all day, but I think it’s worth it because I did come to some nice realizations last night, and I did get a nice production schedule laid out.

12 PM: 316 words

I was just starting to get into new material when the alarm for my hour break went off.

3:06 PM: No progress

I’m not doing well sticking to the writing today. I’m feeling all messed up and hung out to dry and maybe it’s lack of sleep, but I have a hunch it’s related to visiting a certain forum too often lately. Ugh. I’ve got to learn to let this stuff go! Anxiety makes it so hard for me to write, and I have no idea why I get anxious reading forums anyway. It might be the conflict. Conflict makes me so nervous. I get a sick stomach. In fact, I have one now, because I posted! I shouldn’t have posted! I can’t really delete it now though.

Thank God I’m mostly anonymous, because you know what? Most writers are assholes. :D I’m probably one too. I have a high opinion of my work, and I pretty much always think my opinion is the most reasoned. I should ignore the fact that I wrote something there and get back to writing my books. I really wanted to write so many words today.

Oh, oh, oh. I should pull up my hosts file and block the site. That’s about the best way I know of to take care of that kind of thing. The only problem is that when I do that I’ve usually just posted something and I end up unblocking it so I can respond. Nope. I need to make a rule and then let it go.

New rule: I can only visit that forum (and the TPV blog, because I waste a lot of time there!) between 8–9 PM and only if I don’t have something I’d be better off doing. If I’m tired and have already called it a night, sure. If I just want to procrastinate on doing something I have the energy to do and should really be doing, then no visit. :D

Is that rule too complicated to be successful?

Nah. I can make it work.

I need to start a series of posts that keep me accountable for all these little rules I have. And my schedule. And other stuff. What’s a blog for anyway? Well, this one’s an exercise in egotism, mostly. ;)

And holy crap. Look at the time. It’s 3:52 and all I’ve accomplished here is a long ramble about my anxiety issues. :o Back to work!

4 PM – End of scheduled writing
I’ve only written 322 words. That accounts for some minor edits and deletions, but mostly I just didn’t get started on time and then I couldn’t stay focused. I start after 11 AM, stopped at 12 for a break (when I would have normally taken lunch), restarted before 1 PM, stopped just before 4.

 

I stuck to the schedule today! Yay! I’m quite excited. I feel like I’m settling in again. I wrote 2,321 words today, and that was split almost evenly between two books. When I was writing, I felt like I was doing well with letting things flow.

Now, off to read a bit before bed, and then tomorrow I try going back to 9–12 & 1–4 for the next 7 days. Wish me luck sticking to the schedule. :)

My routine is all messed up and I’ve been having a lot of trouble trying to get my writing schedule restarted. Today I finally had a little success at that. Admittedly, I’ve had a few days where I thought I was getting back on track only to have it all fall apart the next day. I’m not going to let that happen tomorrow.

Tomorrow I begin a new streak with my schedule, a new beginning, if you will. Today was day one and one day doesn’t make a streak. ;)

I decided this morning that 10 am is a better start time for me right now. I just can’t seem to get going before 8 am and that doesn’t leave enough time for me to start on time every day at 9. So no more 9–1. The rest of the summer the schedule is 10–4.

I went back to 6 hours because I have so much to write this month and next and I think I can make it work. I’m hoping not having a break in there won’t be a big deal. We’ll see tomorrow. :) Now, off to write for a while before calling it a night.

I had planned to get started writing again today, but I stayed up way too late again last night working on a cover for a second book in my new pen name series. I just wanted to get a feel for how easy or hard it’s going to be to create them. This one has taken a LOT longer to come together for me, but I finally came up with a title that interested me and have gotten a look I like. I’ve spent most of the day so far on that.

Yes, I regret not writing! And not sticking to my schedule! I blame it on weak impulse control caused by lack of sleep. ;)

I AM going to get this out of the way today and do some writing this evening, even if I have to do it half asleep. :)

However, I’ve been thinking of the benefits of putting up the cover on my new pen name’s website and I’ve just about decided it’s worth finishing so I can do that.

Also, I say with feeling that although I understand the concept of ROI, my brain isn’t cooperating with me today. This cover’s never going to be perfect and it’s probably as good as it’s going to get, and yet… I am still at it. Maybe I should give that some thought before I let myself make just one more tweak. ;)

I am so ridiculously worked over about this new pen name novel. In all likelihood it won’t sell a thing. I mean, first book, new pen name, blah blah blah. And yet, I still have this horrible sinking feeling that I’m not ready to put this one out there. I’ve given this book entirely too much importance in my life and this is me saying, “Fuck that.” ;) I can’t work under that kind of pressure! :D I need relief!

Anyway, I did finish the copy edit. I didn’t write yesterday because I decided to do something stupid that turned out to be pretty awesome. I made my own cover for the pen name book even though I had a perfectly nice cover that I bought from a designer several months ago.

I had a couple of reasons for doing that.

• I decided I absolutely do want a print edition sooner rather than later, but I bought a cover only for an ebook and I’d have to pay to get the cover made print compatible.
• After living with the original cover for a while, I realized a few things about it that I’d rather I’d had done differently, but I didn’t want to hassle anyone to make changes and I definitely didn’t want to pay for them, especially considering how I’ve been feeling about this book.

The interesting thing is that as usual, the cover took me about 5-6 hours until I had a look I was happy with, then another 1-3 hours to replace the comp photo with the purchased photo and get the sizing and layer mask correct. But I now have a great layout and template for future books in that series. Since I hope the book sells better than I expect it to, I’ve thought it through enough to know I want to write a lot more books in the series, maybe as many as 20. Yep. That’s 20 whole books. Which would be a lot of covers and a lot of dollars, and a LOT of extra dollars for print covers, if I had stayed with the designer of the original cover.

I also feel like it’s a better cover than I had before, and yeah, I had to get a second and third opinion on that because I was really worried I was just imagining that the cover was better. But my name is more prominent (not bigger, just a lot easier to read!) and the book now looks like it can easily be part of a series. I’m tempted to create a second cover for the potential second book just to see if I’m right about that.

I wonder if I need to let the designer know I decided to go with a different cover? If you know the answer to that question, please let me know! I am terrible at knowing how to handle stuff like this.

I really like my new cover though. I still kind of wish I’d gotten at least some writing done yesterday. My excuse for today is that I’ve been planning to publish this book all day. Hasn’t quite worked out like that. :) I did spend about 4 hours writing and rewriting the description for the book. I’m still not sure it hits all the right notes.

Now here I am, trying to get the formatting done, and it’s 8:11 pm and I’m still stalling. I know it’s because of how I feel about this book. I just can’t let go of this feeling that I’m not ready to put it up. I have to get back to my other books though and they won’t wait. So, I need to get this book published before I go to bed tonight.

If I do just stick it in KDP Select like I was thinking I’d do, this shouldn’t take too long. Not nearly as long as usual. :) I mean, wow. All I have to do is finish setting the doc up in Word, import to Jutoh, and a few minutes later, I’ll have a mobi to check in the Kindle Previewer. I could have this book published by 10 pm if I just get to work…

And that’s my cue to get busy.

I wrote about 2,419 words. My effort to just let it all come out and fly wasn’t really successful. I mean, I wrote from 9–1 and after accounting for breaks and interruptions (I had a big one), I probably got in about 3 solid hours of writing, maybe 3.5. So about 700–800 words an hour. This was split between two books. I wrote somewhere around 1,400 words on one story and then switched to another for the last 1,000. Neither of these books are one of the two I had planned to choose between as my next book.

I finished the read through of Book A (new book for the new pen name). Now I need to make the last few corrections I noted and get started with that formatting. :) Wish me luck!

 

If you can’t tell from the title of this post, I just rewatched one of my favorite inspirational YouTube videos.

It’s made me realized I’m not getting anywhere by waiting on myself to feel like finishing the copy edit on that book. Not just the copy edit either. I keep waiting on myself to feel like formatting it, writing the description, and getting it published. I feel no particular urgency to get those things done. I’m still riding the coattails of my last release and that makes it easy to just wait until I feel like getting it done.

Big mistake in the long run, and I do recognize that. If I wait until I need it published then the book’s success or failure becomes so much more important than it is right now. It’s a new pen name after all and I have no idea how it will do. Having one in the wings is great, but having two or three is better. :)

So, tonight I finish reading the book. With only 25% of the book to go, my Kindle believes it will take me 1 hour 5 minutes to finish. If I double that because I read super slowly when I’m doing this kind of read through, that’s still just two hours.

I need about an hour to revisit my description and ten minutes or so to pick keywords. As for formatting, I can have my Word file ready in a half hour of solid work, and an EPUB less than five minutes later. If the EPUB validates, I’ll generate a MOBI, which will only take a few seconds in Jutoh.

I’ll be saving that work for tomorrow after my writing time ends at 1 pm.

Since I’ve decided to try out KDP Select with this book, that’s the sum total of the work I’ll need to do at the moment.

So, this means I should expect myself to have this book published by tomorrow night.

Later, I’ll do a paperback (probably the middle of July) if the book is selling a reasonable number of copies. If it’s selling poorly, I’ll make a new cover for the book and replace the professionally designed cover I purchased. The reason I’ll change the cover is so that I can do a paperback edition at no added expense. If the book is selling well, I’ll hire the original cover designer to make a paperback cover for me.

I’ve been studying some stuff lately to help me make better covers and I’m tempted to try it out on this book either way, because if it does sell well, I’ll be turning this puppy into a series ASAP. :)

It never hurts to be optimistic—at least not until your dreams are crushed. Then it kinda hurts. ;)

If nothing else, my copy edit time today reminded me that the book doesn’t suck. I wish I’d had the guts to write another 30,000 words on it, instead of ending it so soon, but I really need to write my other books. Anything I want to expand on for these characters can be worked into the follow up books as side story. I love revisiting characters through the eyes of other characters. :D

 

This morning I was supposed to write from 9–1. At 9 am sharp, I opened my computer, looked at the files I had open (I usually hibernate with everything as is) and decided to copy edit the book I finished two weeks ago instead of work on my new story.

This is funny because I only started the new book a couple of days ago to avoid having to do the copy edit, and here I am copy editing that book to avoid writing the new one.

All in all, I’m having a hard time seeing this as a failure to write. ;)

And surprisingly, I reached the end of my note taking and decided to put off reading the rest in favor of some writing after all. I’m down to about 25% of the book left to read through on my Kindle.

So I did a little of both today. I’m thinking I’m going to do more of one or the other after a short break. Maybe I’ll even get the book finished and formatted this evening. That would be a nice accomplishment. :)