Author: Lynn

Trying to work around the schedule

Lynn

It’s my biggest wish to be able to keep to the writing schedule while I go through the motions of preparing to publish a book. I can’t say that I’m winning the first round in that fight.

I’ve just finished a cover that literally took me the longest it’s ever taken me to make a cover. I broke down at one point and drafted an email to the designers of a cover I had made for a book for a different pen name, because this experience was just so bad that I couldn’t imagine trying to do another one. I hate designing covers. Honestly, I just hate it. I think I know why. I really don’t like doing stuff I’m not good at, and I can’t seem to get good at making covers. They’re all just passable. Adequate. And tbh, I’m so tired of that.

Because of that cover taking three days instead of the 5 to 6 hours I expected, I’ve written much less than I wanted to write over the last three days. I stuck to my schedule half the day Friday. None on Saturday. Half again, today. I’ve racked up just under 2,000 words for those days total. If not for the schedule, I know in my heart I wouldn’t even have that.

So yay! Another win for the schedule.

Tomorrow (kids will be in school) I attempt to stick the schedule again, while making time before and after to edit the book I’m preparing to publish and maybe even get to the formatting. Boy am I going to be busy…

A great first week of the schedule

Lynn

The first full week of the schedule has gone great. I didn’t have any of the problems I expected and I wrote more than I thought I would. I also had my first tough day today, although only because I had such a terrible night’s sleep last night after I woke up with a headache before one and couldn’t get back to sleep until nearly four-thirty. I still managed to work for the majority of my time and ended the day with a better word count than my lowest day this week.

Gotta say, I’m thrilled at the success I had this week. I wrote 14,400 words and ended the first full week of the schedule with a daily average of 2,057 words.

This change in attitude has really made a difference in my work habits and given me back my enthusiasm for writing. I’m absolutely brimming over with the desire to write. :D

I think that change in attitude has been just as important as the lucky break I had when I picked my work times, not realizing I was choosing work times that were just different enough from those I’d tried in the past to make a difference. I’m so glad I didn’t let myself overthink that decision.

Having a good run with the schedule

Lynn

This schedule is working wonders for me right now. I feel different about this one in a way I wasn’t expecting but am thrilled with. My word counts are better than I hoped for and I’ve set no quotas at all. My only plan is to stick to the schedule as closely as I can as often as I can. That meant stopping half an hour early today because of a family obligation. I still ended the day with my best word count since I started following the schedule.

I knew when setting the schedule that no schedule can work for every day all the time. But I gotta say, this one is working so much better than I expected. I mean, I hoped, but I really wasn’t expecting it!

This might be my best schedule ever

Lynn

I enjoyed another day of writing on a schedule today. The easy success of the last few days has made me think, wondering what the difference is between this schedule and those that came before. I finally think I’ve come up with several reasons to explain why it might be the best one ever.

  • I start later. 9 am is quite late for me. I’m usually up at 6 on weekdays but I sometimes sleep later on weekends. 9 am means the schedule works no matter which day it is without adjustment. Usually, I set up schedules that start really early and I’m always making adjustments.
  • The break between 12 and 1 is only an hour. Meaning I have less time to prepare food and less time to get sucked into watching TV or reading a book once I sit down to eat. Because I’m eating less at mid-day, I don’t get so sleepy afterward. Usually, I set up schedules with big breaks so I’m more rested when I get back to it. Unfortunately, I’m usually too rested and don’t want to!
  • I don’t have a quota or run the timers so the only pressure I have is the pressure to stick to the schedule. Usually, I have competing pressures because I usually do set word count goals and I run the timer and keep track of how much I produce. That’s a lot of added pressure. It’s nice being able to just focus on sticking to the schedule.

Anyway, I thought I had another reason but I can’t remember it just yet. If I do, I’ll add it. :)

Made it another day with the schedule

Lynn

Day two of following my new schedule went well. I stuck to it and probably got in about 5 hours of writing total after necessary breaks and one short, frustrating period of time where I thought seriously about taking a quick nap. I didn’t, but boy did I come close.

To recap:

Yesterday — 1,343
Today — 2,201

I wrote more today. Not by a lot, because I’m still stuck on this ending, but it is coming along.

Survived day one of the schedule

Lynn

I’m quite proud of myself. I wrote almost the entire six hours scheduled and I started on time at 9 and then at 1, although I admit to two interruptions and one almost nap that lasted about five minutes. All in all, I’d guess that I actually wrote for about 5 hours total.

My word count for that time amount of time sucks. Two reasons: I’m at the end of the book and endings always trip me up, and I’ve been stuck here for days so I’m not surprised it’s been a bitch trying to write my way out of this mess.

I have 1,011 words more than I started with and all of it was added to what I already had in the scene (which is now so long that it’s been split across two chapters). Anyway, it’s coming along and I’m pretty sure this is the climax, to be followed by a fun twist in the wrap up section that will leave a thread for the next books in the series. This series could go on for a long while. I really like writing it when I’m not pulling out my hair because of it. ;)

I’ll be writing more this evening because I’m at the point where I just need to get this book done, but I am taking a break before I get back to it. 3 hours is long enough for one sitting!

My final schedule

Lynn

I didn’t waste any time sitting down and sketching out a schedule after I wrote my little essay today. It was actually a bit of an eye-opener for me. I had no idea how strongly I believed that doing something you love means it should be easy to make yourself do it.

I really feel like I’ve had something of a breakthrough with that one. I’m almost always excited by whatever I’m writing once I actually get started. That’s a big deal because I find getting started insanely difficult even on the best of days. I’m like a rock that won’t roll when I have something I need to do, and that applies to so many areas of my life that you can take it as a general rule for my behavior. You can count on it. If I’m consistent in nothing else in my life, I’m consistent there.

Anyway, without wasting time optimizing the schedule or anything because it really doesn’t matter if I do—there’ll always be days where it just won’t work out well—I set my writing times: 9–12 and 1–4.

I’m going to try to get into a habit of turning off my WIFI at 9 and 1 sharp.

Any day that I don’t have obligations or outside interruptions, I plan to hold myself accountable for using that time for writing: I can write at other times throughout the day if I want, but I have to try to write during those times specifically, even if that means I just end up sitting with my computer and staring at my document.

I’m not setting a word count goal or quota for any of this, but I’m still interested in where I’ll even out with my daily average. Whatever it turns out to be, I’ll be satisfied as long as I’m putting in effort to actually write on my schedule.

The plan is to avoid shifting my writing times even if it means I end up not writing some days because I procrastinated my way through my scheduled writing times. I really hope that doesn’t backfire, but I feel like it’s a necessary step to keep me from messing with my schedule too often. I’m counting on it being easier to start and sustain a habit if I stick as close to the schedule as possible as often as possible.

If I were trying to squeeze writing in after a job or as a part time venture, I’d do things a lot differently. It would make more sense to just try to write as much as possible and go from there. But I’m not, and frankly, I’ve tried that and it worked when I had a job, but it doesn’t work now. I have so much more time available now that I procrastinate too much. Also, I just don’t need to do that anymore. I love writing, and I might be a little obsessed with it sometimes, but I actually don’t want to spend every spare moment I have doing it. I want free time that I can enjoy guilt free. I want to read and watch TV and keep up with my family and get together with my friends once in a while.

I hadn’t realized how much pressure not having a schedule puts on you to work all the time—and how that weighty feeling can lead to so much procrastinating.

Anyway, that’s the schedule. Wish me luck. I see good things in my future. :)

Reasons matter: a rambling essay

Lynn

I’ve decided many times over that a schedule is a bad idea for me. It occurred to me today that my reason for this isn’t exactly rational: A schedule puts me in a position of having to consciously face the fact that I’m choosing not to do something I’ve already decided I need to do, something I know I need to do.

I’m undisciplined when it comes to work (tbh, I’m undisciplined about most everything in my life). Deadlines don’t help. I still don’t usually become inspired to work until the very last moment and only the most serious of consequences is enough to get me going soon enough that I’m not absolutely scrambling at the last moment to get done on time.

This makes me ill suited to the career I’ve picked for myself, I know. It’s a struggle, but it’s worth it because I love earning my living by writing fiction.

I’ve tried to come up with some kind of system that doesn’t hang on goals but that’s just a mind-bending exercise in futility. You can’t have a system without goals of some kind. It’s impossible. I’ve tried to come up with a system that relies on me aiming at a targeted word count, but I keep coming back to the fact that I put it off until the end of the day and I just can’t get enough done in the time I end up with. I decided I would write until lunch every day; then I watched myself not start writing until lunch and wow, I sure produced a lot of words getting started ten minutes before I was supposed to quit (sarcasm alert!).

I’ve tried relying on my love of writing to keep me going without goals but my natural tendencies toward procrastination make that a terrible idea; I’ve failed miserably to get any appreciable amount of writing done at all without them.

But then when I set goals and I fail to meet them, I feel bad. I mean, really bad.

Setting goals based on things out of your control is never a good idea. And I can’t control my word counts. I can’t know how well the writing is going to go for any particular scene, book, day, hour, or month. Sometimes it goes well, and sometimes, I delete more than I write.

It’s hard to remember that word counts are out of my control. Sure, I remember right now, but will I remember tomorrow or next week when my deadline is closing in on me? Probably not.

A word count quota is the kind of goal that feels completely rational and within my control, until I have a bad day and manage 200 words in four hours because I had to delete a ton of work and couldn’t get moving on what was left. Then I feel like I’ve failed at something that should have been easy, and even though I know rationally that this is silly, the irrational parts of me (and there are a lot of those!) do not care. In the least.

There’s only one path left for me and the only reason I have for not taking it is because I see it as a failure.

If I loved writing, wouldn’t I want to do it all the time?

I feel dumb writing that out because I’ve known for a long time that working to your passions doesn’t mean you’ll never have to make yourself work again.

I love writing. I love having written. I love publishing my books. When I’m in the mood. Sadly, I’m not in the mood as often as I should be. In fact, I’m not in the mood a whole hell of a lot of the time because I tend toward moodiness as a general rule. And yet, if anyone cares to know, writing fiction is the one thing I’ve loved almost my entire life and it irks me that there’s someone out there that’s going to read this and say: “Well, she just doesn’t love it enough or she wouldn’t have to make herself do it.”

I need a schedule and I know it. Even if I can’t stick with the schedule most of the time and even if I choose on more days than not to skip writing, at least I’ll have some framework to keep me aimed in the right direction.

A system is made up of goals and habits, and habits can form around schedules more easily than they can form around random events that occur throughout the day.

So here’s the challenge. I’m going to make a schedule. Every day will be a challenge to stick to it. I’ll probably fail more often than I succeed. Maybe if I’m lucky some good habits will develop around the times I’m supposed to be writing that will make it work over the long-term even if I have a lot of short-term failures. If not, well, how’s it any worse than what I’ve already got going on?

No more searching for the best system, no more word count quotas or goal-setting, no more excuses. It’s time to move on from all that and settle in. The remainder of 2015 is going to be the year of the schedule.

The only requirement for myself is that if I choose not to write during the times I’m supposed to write, I have to admit that to myself. It’s a choice and I need to be responsible for it.

I won’t stop myself from writing outside the scheduled times, but if I don’t write when I’m scheduled to write and end up not writing as much as I should, I want to end the day knowing I had an obligation to myself and that I chose not to meet it.

I can’t keep avoiding the one system that is guaranteed to give me the opportunity to write more just because I’ll have to face how often I choose to fail.

Systems are made up of goals

Lynn

Systems are made up of goals. I’ve been thinking on this a lot the past week or so, after doing quite a bit of reading about goals and systems. I was having a difficult time working through certain ideas, the main one being that goals are somehow inherently different than systems (and they might be, but not in the way you think). Don’t set goals, some people say. Create systems instead. Work the system and all will be well.

Except… I couldn’t stop thinking that this doesn’t make any sense. How can you create a system that takes you where you want to go if you don’t have some vague idea of where that might be (a goal)? No matter how I thought about it, I couldn’t come up with a system that didn’t have goals built right into it.

Then it occurred to me that so many of these articles gloss right over the fact that goals come in all sizes and scopes. As soon as I realized that, I also realized that the authors of all these articles are trying to redefine what a goal is so that they can separate goals from systems—and by doing so, essentially claiming that most small goals (the daily kind) aren’t goals at all.

That’s not how I see it. A goal’s a goal, whether it’s the concrete goal of writing 100 words in the next 20 minutes, of writing every day, of sticking to a writing schedule, of writing 1,000,000 words over the next year, or the more abstract goal of just doing your best to write as often as possible.

I know now why this concept of systems versus goals didn’t want to sink in, why it didn’t make sense to me: every example I’ve found of a system is just a collection of ever smaller goals that for some unfathomable reason no one wants to call goals.

Finally, the systems versus goal debate makes sense (a focus on small goals versus one large goal).

Whew. I feel better. ;D

Now that the issue of semantics is past, I can focus on the real issue: setting up my goals as a system so that they make it easy to get where I want to go without setting myself up for failure.

What kind of system will inevitably lead to the future I want without me having to commit to a win/lose scenario such as “write 5 or 8 or 12 books this year?”

Smaller goals make it more likely I’ll have frequent wins, and lots of small wins are more motivating than one huge win (and honestly, how often do we get these huge wins even when we do the best we can?). Lots of small wins equals more motivation, and failing to reach a huge goal can definitely be demotivating if one doesn’t view it in the right light (and how often do we do that?).

How can I set myself up for lots of small wins when I already have experience that says if I aim for a daily quota I’m just going to disappoint myself? That, unfortunately, is going to require some more thought.

The mindset of a dedicated re-reader

Lynn

I think re-readers have a different mindset than people who don’t reread. I’ve begun to believe the difference in mindset comes down to why you’re reading. Are you reading to find out what happens, or are you reading to experience certain feelings? People who don’t reread often ask why those of us who do choose to. For me, it’s because I know what I’m going to feel when I read a certain book and that’s what I want.

That’s the same reason I reread my own books. I want those feelings I got when I wrote/read it the first time. Rereading is easier than writing an entirely new book so I can experience those feelings again. There’s a trade-off though. Doing the former satisfies an itch, doing the latter helps my bank account. ;D I’ve had to learn to sacrifice quick rewards for long-term benefits.

People who don’t reread often just want to know what happens in the story, and once they know, they’re done. Why revisit?

Lots of authors think it’s crazy to want to reread your own books long after they’re done and published. Some people think it’s ego driven. I can tell you right now that this has nothing to do with ego. I’m not reading my stuff and thinking, wow, what a great writer I am. I’m enjoying the story and how it makes me feel.

I happen to like rereading very much and I think the non-re-readers are the crazy people. ;)

*This post was inspired by this comment on someone else’s blog.

This month’s goal is to finish two books

Lynn

I didn’t make it to the end of the book I wanted done in March, so April’s goal has become to finish two books this month. Both books are already started—one is almost complete already. The other sits at 15,000 words or so.

It’ll take approximately 1,365 words a day to finish both these books, assuming my length estimates are close. This is considerably less than the 2,000 a day average I want to end up with this month, so this shouldn’t be a problem.

Getting started every day is the hardest part. If I ever find something that works consistently to get me started early and often… well, that’ll solve 99% of my productivity problems.

Changing my assumptions about my writer self

Lynn

I’ve been thinking about the fact that I need to become more productive with my writing. This is my full-time career and I need to be more cognizant of that fact sometimes. I’m not really sure how to move forward though because I’ve tried all the usual stuff over the last two and a half years: rigid schedules, flexible schedules, word quotas, book quotas, time quotas, all of that, and I still haven’t broken through my own resistance to regular, consistent, daily writing. I’m honestly at a bit of a loss as to what to do. None of those methods have helped me at all. There doesn’t seem to be anything left to try. Right now I’m just trying to focus on the enjoyment I get from writing, hoping that will make a difference. Do I just give up and accept that I write as fast as I write and that’s it?

I read something recently about challenging assumptions. Maybe that’s what I should focus on. I should challenge my assumptions about myself as a writer.

Assumption: I’m a slow writer.

Am I a slow writer? Let’s see: I had to refer to my archived time data (I stopped logging time on 3/18/2015), but a few formulas later, and I see something a bit surprising.

I wrote more than 500 words an hour 56% of the time, more than 800 words an hour 17% of the time, and more than 1,000 words an hour 5% of the time. Is that slow?

I see the 1,000 words an hour figure dropped regularly by other writers, and I have no way of knowing what kind of copy they turn out: finished or rough draft work. I don’t guess it really matters, because almost anyone I know considers a novel a month fast. 2,000–4,000 words a day is what it would take for that, writing the way I do (clean drafts, final copy). 56% of the time I can write 2,000 words in less than 4 hours. So 56% of the time I can produce at a highly prolific pace, working less than 4 hours a day.

This belief that I’m a slow writer doesn’t seem to have a lot of basis in reality.

Really, this just emphasizes that I need to worry a lot less about how fast I write and worry instead about how often I write.

I don’t write often enough and I don’t stick with it long enough. That’s the crux of the problem I’ll need to solve if I want to be prolific.

March was a good month

Lynn

I could have ended the month a little closer to my goals, but overall the month wasn’t bad. I wrote a bit more than 26,000 words and they’re solid words that won’t need more than a typo and clarity check when I’m done. That’s important to me, because I don’t do the shitty first draft writing that some writers advocate. It just doesn’t work for me, and believe me, there were years in there where I tried. Those were my most unproductive years as a writer, and I don’t ever plan to go back there.

April is going to be better. I’ve stumbled on a method of work that seems to be helping me produce more words each day. If it holds out, maybe April will be my first 2k-a-day month.

Word count has become my biggest obstacle

Lynn

My daily word count has become my biggest obstacle over the last few years. I’m not sure exactly when it started to overtake every other writing concern I have, but it has and I’m not feeling great about that. I know my daily word counts are important. They’re intricately tied to success as measured by revenue because you can’t sell what isn’t written.

However, I’m also feeling a bit like the excessive focus on word count has had some side effects that I’m not really happy with, the biggest and scariest of which is a diminishing enjoyment of writing.

I know I need something to keep me going in the right direction, but … some days this need to measure everything just gets old. I want to love writing so much that I can’t wait to get started and hate to have to stop. Some days I still feel like this. Less so lately though. It’s hard for me to love writing when I’m constantly disappointed in myself because of writing.

Still, although I’ve axed my timer and my time data (archived it, to be exact), I won’t be abandoning my daily log of my word count. I love having that list of numbers. What I don’t love is looking at it and feeling bad about myself when there’s a blip where the numbers drop or a zero shows up.

On the other hand, I do love a good writing streak. For the moment, I’m going to focus on writing every day (that getting started thing is really important) and worry less about the actual quota. I want to end up with a nice average, but “average” means I don’t have to be so hard on myself for any particular day’s word count if I have a reasonable mix of bad days and good days.

What I’m learning: Consistency is important, but it’s probably better if I’m not rigid about it. I want to write every day, but some days are going to be more fun than others and it’s going to be easier to stay at it longer. We’ll see where that gets me in April.

32 day streak

Lynn

I’m now at 32 days of writing fiction every day. Unlike with previous streaks, this one has no quotas, time or words. My plan is simply to see how many consecutive days I can make it writing fiction every day.

Really and truly, getting started is the hardest part for me. When I do get started, I usually do better than I expect. Like last night. I thought I’d get nothing, but then I decided I wanted to keep my streak alive, want, in fact, to create the best streak I’ve ever had, so I started writing. 439 really decent words later I stopped and went to bed because time had gotten away from me. (A really good thing when it comes to writing.)

I’ve said before, if I eliminate all the zero word days I’ve had in the past and replace them with as little as 50 words, I could have written 15,000 words more than I have since I started writing to publish. If that number had averaged 200 words, that’s an entire extra novel.

Averages are powerful things and I don’t think it’s a stretch to imagine I could average 200 words a day for all those days that might be zero word days otherwise.

My ultimate goal is still to reach and maintain a 2,000 word a day average, but these small steps are helping me get there. After a really bad streak of low productivity that lasted more than a year, I’m happy to see improvement.

Why I don’t offer writing tips (most of the time)

Lynn

I’ve been writing for about twenty-five years. It’s really funny that fifteen years ago, I had a site devoted to giving out writing tips. Nowadays I don’t feel qualified to give out writing tips, despite the length of time I’ve been writing fiction. Or maybe it’s that I’ve learned in the meantime that writing tips are a bit worthless. I only discovered true happiness with writing when I finally tossed aside all the tips that had taken up residence inside my head and wrote what I wanted, how I wanted. Sadly, that’s only been in the last ten years or so.

I freely admit that maybe I needed those tips at the time so that I could become the writer I am today. Then again, maybe they delayed my development as a writer. I’ll likely never know.

I also freely admit that I am far from done learning how to write. The difference these days is that I learn from reading others and practicing my own craft, trying to find ways to get the words out so they translate best to the biggest portion of my reading audience. (You can never please everyone, and you’ll go mad if you try.) That’s not to say I don’t read select craft books, because I do. But I avoid the kind of tips that proliferate online in favor of in-depth discussions of topics meant to help writers write good stories.

How can I offer advice to others when I still have so much to learn?

Still, sometimes I want to say to some writers I see scouring the forums and blogs for the secret to better writing: Stop! Just write. Write and write and write, and complete things. Even the terrible things. Finish those stories you start, because that’s how I learned. I took a giant leap forward when I finally started finishing the stories I started.

In the end, though, I have no idea if what worked for me will work for them. Maybe they need those tips. Or maybe they’re just delaying their own development as writers. We’ll likely never know.

I don’t offer writing tips because I don’t feel qualified. I know only what works for me as a reader and a writer. And I use adverbs when I want and I write run on sentences and I quite often mix my metaphors. But it’s what I want and how I want and my writing hasn’t been the same since. It’s lovely to own your art as uniquely yours.

248 words today and a posting hiatus

Lynn

I wrote 248 words today and I think that’s it for me today. I won’t be writing any more tonight. That headachy feeling has never gone away today and I’m calling it a night early to see if some extra rest can knock it out before tomorrow.

To meet my personal deadline for this book I need to up my daily quota for the next several days. Not by a lot but just enough to catch up a few off days.

I also think I’m about to stop these daily posts. They’ve been great but I’m letting them take up more time than I really should be. So… hiatus! I might return to posting after I finish this book. We’ll see. :D

1,284 words yesterday

Lynn

I wrote 1,284 words yesterday. I ended up with a late start last night and just never caught up, coming in about an hour and a half short on the time I should have spent writing.

I’m not having a lot of luck today, either, tbh, but I shall persevere. I’m feeling headachy.

Trying not to fall back into old habits

Lynn

I cut my morning session short. I’m trying not to fall back into old habits here but I just couldn’t bring myself to finish the last hour and seven minutes of writing this morning. Afternoon really, since the writing started late and I broke for lunch and that was what got me. I watched the new episode of Castle as a treat during lunch and … that led to more tv because tv is always more appealing that trying to get through a tough spot in my book. :(

Anyway, I’m back at it for my evening session. I’m just starting fresh with the 2h 5m and trying to finish that—maybe I’ll be lucky enough to really get moving on this book. I can catch up without having to finish that extra hour tonight if I can write 765 wph tonight. I won’t be caught up with yesterday’s missing words but I’ll at least not be any further behind. To catch up totally, I’ll have to write 1,025 wph tonight. I’m going to try, I mean why not?, but it might take more inspiration than I’ve got at the moment!

Trying anyway. :D