Category: Challenges

Challenges are a way of pushing myself to do better. I find them especially useful for getting myself out of a rut.

Day 12 of the daily accountability challenge

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You may not have noticed, but I had to go back and change the days of the challenge in the titles for the last two posts. Somehow I got off on my numbering and had two day 7s. :D

Oops. It’s fixed now.

I also accidentally dropped “daily” from the post title starting at day 7. LOL. It makes for a shorter title, but I’d really rather not leave it out! The daily part of this is what’s keeping me honest. :)

Accountability for 9/20/23

Yesterday, I worked on multiple stories, so I’m now firmly back into my multiple stories challenge.

I like working on multiple stories concurrently, instead of focusing on only one project until it’s done. This works best for me, most of the time, as I’ve said in the past. My word counts go up, and my motivation stays high. I need both of those!

Before I called it a night, I had written 2,448 words, across 3 stories.

That means I again reached my goal of 1,300 words a day. I’m hoping to stay there for a while. Winning my September on-track challenge depends on it. If I want to stay a full-time writer, I do have to write more than I have been. No question.

Most of the new words were for one story (a novel I want to finish soon), but I did finish a short story I started a few days back and do some minor corrections and get back into another novel that I’ll soon be working on more diligently, if all goes well with the current novel. :)

Day 7 of the accountability challenge

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Accountability for 9/15/23

Yesterday, I had several things to do that took me away from writing.

I was also still working on finishing a story I wrote and thought I had finished. When I went back through it, my writer voice said, nope, there is more you can do here to make this the story it’s meant to be. So I worked on that, and I am really, really happy with the things I’ve added to it. I had skipped a few potential scenes to expedite my way through the story, but it kept bothering me. I just couldn’t let go of the feeling that I hadn’t really finished the story.

On top of that, I’ve felt like I’m fighting off an illness for the last several days (I feel feverish even now while I’m typing this). And I’m still adjusting my sleep patterns, so there’s that. I’ve been feeling off kilter for two days now. I’m hungry at the wrong times of day, and my energy levels are also up and down at the wrong times. Basically, I’m suffering self-imposed jet lag. :)

All in all, I only wrote 154 words yesterday, on 1 story.

But I made progress, and I can’t call that a failure. Today, I think I’m going to get back on track. It’s just a feeling I have, but I’m going to push for it.

September on-track challenge

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Back on 8/20/23, I decided on a daily word count for my daily goal going forward. I incorporated it into my spreadsheet so I could keep up with my progress, and even made a note to myself: do not delete even if I get really behind →. That arrow points to day 1 of the tracking.

As you can see, I have gotten really behind. My challenge for September is to cut into that negative number. So not only do I want to stay caught up for the rest of the month, I want to catch up a bit on that on-track number. :D

Anything will be a win, but I specifically would like to get the number back into the mid-20k range.

Day 6 of the daily accountability challenge

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Accountability for 9/14/23

I had another unintentional day off writing, for the most part.

I did write 102 words, on 1 story.

I realize I seem to be pretty far from reaching my daily writing goals, but I do think the daily accountability posts are helping. And there are always things that get in the way.

But there will be days where nothing goes wrong, and I’ll get the words in. I don’t doubt it.

That just isn’t now.

Today, I almost forgot to write this post, but that’s because I started work on a story as soon as I could instead of letting other things get in the way. That’s a win, all by itself.

I also finally started last night trying to shift my sleep pattern to an earlier bedtime and an earlier wake-up. I really think that’ll benefit my writing, so I’m glad I was able to get that started.

Still, I didn’t go to bed with nothing written, and that’s another small win. :)

Day 5 of the daily accountability challenge

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Accountability for 9/13/23

I had an unintentional day off writing. I made three book covers (finalized 2 of them) for a series. It took all day.

I meant to make time to write, but I just got too tired. It was already 3 a.m. when I realized I was not going to get to the writing yesterday, and I decided sleep was more important.

Unfortunately, when I get tired, sleep always becomes more important. That’s why I had hoped to stick to writing earlier in the day. Hasn’t happened so far. Even today, I’m actually just getting started.

As long as I stick to writing for the next few hours, I’ll be fine. But that means I can’t delay any longer, so I’m going to end this here.

Zero words yesterday.

Not zero progress, because book covers are of course a necessity in publishing. But I could have managed it better, I think, so hopefully I will remember that the next time.

Day 4 of the daily accountability challenge

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Accountability for 9/12/23

Whoops. Almost forgot to post today, and that’s because there’s very little to report for yesterday.

I wrote only 51 words yesterday, on 1 story.

Why so few? And what went wrong?

For most of the day yesterday, I worked on publishing related activities that took my focus off writing.

  • Finalizing title choice
  • Finalizing cover design (needed that title!)
  • Generating the cover files I would need for publishing
  • Adding the ebook front and back matter to the manuscript file
  • Preparing the project file in Jutoh for the EPUB
  • Writing description (sales copy!)
  • Adding a web page to my author site (for the story)
  • Updating related web pages on my author site (for the story)
  • Writing a blog post (but not yet posting) to announce the publication of the story (it’s not published yet!)
  • Writing (but not yet posting) a post for Patreon (to make live when I publish)

It took me a lot longer to do just about everything I did, and that’s a problem with my ability to either control my use of time or estimate how much time I really need to get certain things done.

Still, I was pretty shocked when I realized how late it was and that I hadn’t written anything all day.

I had already decided to stick to writing more novels instead of short stories and novellas going forward. Seems like this was a great example of why I need to follow through on that. I lose a lot of time once I switch into publisher mode.

Publishing absolutely interrupts my writing.

Nowhere in my head does it make sense that those things took up my entire day. And yet, there wasn’t anything else of note in my day to account for the lost time.

If only I were better at beating back my perfectionist tendencies—perfectionism does nothing but make everything harder than it has to be.

I’ll finish getting these few that are in progress done, and then I’m going to be putting the short fiction to rest for a while.

Day 3 of the daily accountability challenge

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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

Day 2 of the daily accountability challenge

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Accountability for 9/10/23

Yesterday, I worked on multiple stories for my multiple stories challenge. My plan is set up around working on multiple stories concurrently, instead of focusing on only one project until it’s done. This is still something that seems to work very well for me.

I’m happy to have found that out. The creative dry spell I’ve been stuck in really felt like it was never going to end, but this has really sparked my interest in all my in-progress stories again.

Something I’m realizing from this (and probably not for the first time, but I never seem to remember the first time, or the second, or third) is that my interest is tied very closely to how often I am active within a particular story. The longer I go between writing days, the more my interest in that story wanes.

I finally reached 1,300 words in a day.

Before I called it a night, I had written 2,286 words, across 2 stories.

That’s my best single day word count since 12/16/2021. It felt like it took all day (and looking back, it really did for the most part), but I’m probably rusty. ;D

The reason I was focused so tightly on just two stories is because I was pushing to finish a short story I’d started a while back (May, I think?). I also wrote a chapter for the serial I have going. These were the specific goals I set out to reach yesterday, and I’m so happy I finally had a win. :D

Day 1 of the daily accountability challenge

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Accountability for 9/9/23

I was going to write a big post detailing how I’ve decided to tackle the goals I’ve set myself going forward. But no. It’s a waste of time. :D Best just to sprinkle it in a little like backstory. Info dumps never do anyone any favors. They kill momentum, and drag out the pacing.

Yesterday, I worked on multiple stories. I think I’ll call this my multiple stories challenge. It’s simply that I have set my plan up around working on multiple stories concurrently, instead of focusing on only one project until it’s done. This works best for me, most of the time, as I’ve detailed extensively in the past.

I haven’t yet reached 1,300 words a day. But before I called it a night, I had written 844 words, across 6 stories. Some of those were just corrections I needed to make, most were new words.

Attempt to write 60,000 words in July

Lynn

I’m off to a slow start this month on a big goal. My current best word count for a month is 57,249. I want to write 60,000 words this month to beat that.

Every so often, it’s a good idea for me to try to beat one of my previous records. This feels like a good time to try.

Practicing

Lynn

I’m practicing writing more. By the new year, I want to get my week’s word count up to 16,800 and keep it there. It’s going to be hard to do with the holidays in the way, but I think it’s possible. I’ll probably have a few really good days and a few very low days, but it will all add up.

This is all because I’ve dumped using averages to tell me anything about my writing.

I took a hard look at all my numbers a while back and realized that the data I’ve collected is nothing but a series of outliers. Meaning averages don’t tell me anything useful about myself or my writing habits other than that sometimes I write a lot and sometimes I hardly write at all.

The thing that will be more useful to me than averages is a quota.

I had thought about sticking with a daily quota but it leaves more room for failure. It’s easy to miss a day here and there.

But if I use a weekly quota, it’s still short-term enough to keep me focused (I think, evidence still to be accumulated) but not as dependent on me having a good day every single day. (2,400 words a day every single day is a big ask for me. But some days with bigger word counts and some days with smaller word counts is more realistic.)

On the surface, this really isn’t any different than pushing for a daily average word count of something or other, but underneath, there’s a different mindset at play when trying to hit a weekly word count target versus trying to maintain a certainly daily word count.

1,200 words an hour—Attempt #2

Lynn

Even though I didn’t reach 1,200 words an hour yesterday, I did finish one of the things I needed to finish writing. \o/

Today, I need to finish a different thing, and do some editing of a lot of chapters. Typo hunting, continuity, clarity, that kind of thing. I’ll be doing my best not to be tempted to change anything else, because that way lies madness. :-)

Results—

Not even close.

I think, and this is me being proactive here, I’m going to pause this particular challenge and come back to it when I’m working on a different project. This one is a little tricky because I have to stop and look up information a little more often than usual (from books in the series that I wrote quite a while back).

1,200 words an hour—Attempt #1

Lynn

I didn’t finish what I wanted to finish yesterday (or the day before) so I’m building some accountability into today with a short challenge.

1,000 words an hour is usually a stretch for me. I’m not a really fast typist. I only come in around 60 words per minute when I’m pushing myself. Sure, that’s 3,600 words per hour typing speed, so it’s not that slow, but that is not writing time. I write much, much slower than I type.

So a 1,200 word an hour challenge is just the thing to try to push me past my internal critic and get some real writing done. Even if I fail, the push to write faster will probably help get past critical me. :-)

See you later for an update. :D (To this post.)

Final results—

I never made it to 1,200 WPH today. My best session was 441 WPH.

I’ll be trying this again, probably tomorrow. I have some reading / typo hunting to finish first, but if I make it through that, I’ll be writing again.

Writing today

Lynn

I have finally made it back to writing. :) It took a while, longer than I expected for sure, but I’ve moved on to the next step in my plans for a fresh start in 2022.

Before November 1st, I am going to finish one more work in progress. I think I need to write between 10,000 and 20,000 words to finish it. I’m hoping it needs fewer words than that, but I don’t think it will need more. If it does, it will become the longest book in that series.

In November, I’m going to write a long delayed book.

And then in December I’m going to finish the rest of my works in progress.

Daily writing – Sunday, Jan. 26, 2020

Lynn

I’m changing the way I title these posts for my own benefit. I want the day in there so I can keep track of where I am in the week, and I like the way “progress” fits in my mind better than “daily post” which feels like an obligation. This is a blog, and it’s a very casual one at that, so putting that feeling of obligation in there takes something I like and makes it unpleasant. I still plan to do a daily post, I’m just changing how I view them, internally. :)

(I have since changed my mind a bit on this. I’ve retitled these posts “Daily writing – ” because I think it accomplishes the same thing but separates them a little better from my “progress” posts. Basically, “Daily writing – ” doesn’t feel like an obligation to post, it feels like an opportunity to talk about the daily writing.)

Now, on to today’s progress.

I wrote 238 words today, and I had to jump to one of my other stories to get started, because I’m still not in the mood to write on my novel even though I really need to get this thing done. I wrote 104 words on the short story (same one as yesterday) and then switched to the novel and started weaving together those parts I’d written out of order that I mentioned in yesterday’s post, and that’s how I got the rest.

The No More Zero Word Days streak is up to 174 days now, far exceeding my former 122 day record. I’ve had some days where I just wanted to drop it, but I’ve managed not to do that. Re-reading that post I linked to reminded me of why this time is different and it’s given me some added motivation to keep going.

Tonight, I start reading through my previous days’ writing in the mornings and at night again. I’ve found that helpful in the past, because it keeps me grounded in my story.

This is what some people would probably call cycling, except I do it on my phone. I highlight stuff that needs fixed (missing words, etc) and then those are the things I do first when I open the computer to write. This is exactly how I do my final read through and copy edit. Send my book to my phone or Kindle tablet and read it like a book, adding highlights and notes to things that need fixed. Works like a dream. :)

On to tomorrow.

New focus on a daily quota

Lynn

It’s getting late in November now and this year is almost over. I’ve taken a look at the year, and although I’m very happy to report that my writing slowdown of 2017 and 2018 is behind me now, I haven’t reached my goal to have my best year ever. ;D

By a lot, to be frank.

But it’s still possible!

My best year’s word count is 268,191 from 2013. To beat that, I need to write 51,800 more words this year.

Technically, my best year-end average daily word count is 798 words from 2012, but that was the year I started tracking (and started writing to sell), and I only wrote for half the year. If I want to beat 798 words per day, I need to write 74,879 more words this year.

Counting today, I’ve got 39 days to do it.

That’s 1,323 words a day—or 1,915 words a day. Since both of those fall below the magic 2,000 words a day I’ve been aiming to hit for what feels like forever, I’ll take the high end, thanks. :D

So here goes. Starting today, I’m going to get myself to a 2,000 words a day average and then I’m going to keep it. Whatever it takes.

I wanted to do it this year, but I didn’t, so I’m going to start it now, and I’m going to do it!

With all those holidays coming up, I think I’d better get a few words in the bank, too. :D

Maybe by next year, it’ll be such an ingrained habit, I’ll be able to keep it going all year.

I forgot I was going to post about NANO

Lynn

I forgot I was going to post about NANO this year. It doesn’t really matter now, because I’ve pretty much bailed on the NANO website. I never log my writing (except for the last day) on the day I write my words, and the new site only just now started even showing the tally of daily word counts (I think it’s sessions really, not even by day). I can’t edit my word counts by day and so it has me with all kinds of weird lumps on the progress graph.

Here’s a comparison shot of what we had to work with on the old site and what we have now.

Screen shot of old nanowrimo stats Screen shot from new nanowrimo stats page

As for the other changes, the NaNoWriMo stats page is a cluttered mess. I don’t like it and I’m not feeling the love for NANO this year, for sure.

Overall, in almost all ways, I do not like the new site, to the point that I finally realized I just don’t want to go back to it. I can do better charts and graphs on my own spreadsheet anyway.

So this is my last NANO post of 2019. I’ve decided I’m not going to participate this year after all.

On that note, I’ve adjusted my November goal to writing 60,000 words of fiction this month.

I’ve never had a 60k month. Probably ever, even before I started tracking in 2012. I know my NANO win in 2011 was just a 53k month and that was the best month I think I’d ever had up to that point with writing fiction.

A lot of rambling about writing and a second challenge

Lynn

Decided to give the “no timers” challenge a shot again after looking at my current run of daily word counts and comparing them to the run I had in April and May in which I didn’t use timers. The numbers so far are promising even after what I thought was a bad start but really didn’t end up being that at all.

The challenge runs for a week. I’ll update at the end of that time. (Updated below!)

As for now, today, I’m just trying to pep up my mood. Writing at my desk is getting me down. The weather went from HOT to COLD and didn’t stop for a break between them, so I’m kind of bummed, and my weird back pain isn’t helped by anything it seems. Standing sucks, sitting sucks, lying on the bed sucks.

After months of this, I’m starting to get annoyed. So I moved back to the desk, because the couch writing was hurting my leg.

I’m really short, and couch writing means sitting with my legs crossed under my laptop to support it. Lately, I’ve been dealing with what feels like a nerve pain in my thigh and knee, brought on by a switch in couches about a year ago. Biggest mistake I’ve made in a while. The current couch is a nightmare for my writing. I really miss my old one, but remember the mention of basement mold several months ago? Yeah. I would have switched it out by now, but the mold got the old one. :-(

All this to say that finding a comfortable writing spot lately has been really hard. I don’t do well writing when I’m not comfortable.

I had to go back to my dining room chair, too. It does hurt my back a lot less, but I’ll be honest, I have no idea why, because there’s no support at all. I have to sit completely weird on the hard chair to keep my legs from going numb (short, remember? and my feet can’t rest flat on the floor when I’m sitting back in the seat).

When I say hard, this chair is just a hard wood chair with spindles for a back and bars under the seat to support the chair legs. I use them to support my legs. :D I also prop my legs up on the window sill under the back of my desk.

My desk is in front of my windows and they’re nice, tall windows that let in a lot of light and have a relatively low window sill that seems to be at the perfect ottoman height when I’m in my chair at the desk. :D It’s not super comfortable, because it’s wood with an edge, but it gives me something to rest my feet against and gives me one more position I can switch to when the last one starts to bug me.

Anyway, I’m totally rambling this morning. I think I made my coffee too strong. ;-)

One thing I’ve kept up is the daily writing. The “no more zero word days” challenge is going well. I’ve had a few days where I’m not exactly proud of how much I wrote to keep the streak alive, but it counts, and that’s okay. I’ll get better if I keep going.

It started on 8/6 and yesterday was day 74.

How am I staying on task without the timers that I’ve said again and again give me a way to focus and stay on task? Numbers.

Remember the numbers I mentioned in this post (Today’s goal: 3,200 words (day 6)) and this one (Today’s goal: 3,200 words (day 4))? I haven’t forgotten those numbers. They’re still the numbers I’m chasing. Except sort of not.

Look, I’ve had to take a hard look at how I decide what to write next, and it always comes down to the need to write what I’m most interested in writing next. So I took my 3,200 words goal and said to myself: Hey self, if I write 3,200 words a day every day, then what needs to get written will eventually get written. That’s just the way it is.

So I took that to heart. But then I realized that sometimes I don’t know that I’m in the mood to write something until I start writing it, so I changed it up. Just a little.

I decided that if I want to write 3,200 words a day, the easiest way to do that for me is to write a little each on every story I’m interested in writing, and when something catches my interest hard, I can just keep going.

It’s working.

I finally got back to the stalled novel yesterday. Wrote nearly 1,900 words on it. And it all started because I wanted to write 525 words per story yesterday, on 8 stories.

Every story I’m working on is one that needs finished, the sooner the better, so no words are wasted following this method.

And it frees me in a way that my creative muse seems to really like.

So here’s the math.

3,200 words ÷ 8 stories = 400 words per story.

If I want a 1,000 words a day streak, which I’m really trying to get off the ground, I need 125 words per story on the 8 stories.

It’s an effortless number, really, so the 1,000 words a day streak is something I’m really pushing for at the moment. Yesterday was day three of that. I’m going to give it a week before I start calling it a streak, but I definitely have my sights set on sticking that out.

Anyway, more rambling, and it’s really time for me to turn my focus to writing. :D I’m feeling strangely talkative today and have no one around, so I might start another post in which I detail out my effort to get that first 125 words on each story, and then go for the 400.

Then move on to trying to fix some big issues I think I have in my stalled (but not stalled anymore) novel. It needs some work. More than usual, and I’m not sure what to make of that.

Maybe I really should scrap the biggest portion of what I have and start over. I don’t know. I hope I figure that out soon.

Later. :D

Update for the “no timers” challenge. It ran a week. I decided to extend it, indefinitely.

I was wrong about the numbers, but even after running them again and seeing that I definitely wrote more words on the days I used timers over the long-term (all time), I gave it some additional thought and decided that the thing is skewed in favor of timers because whenever I felt focused enough to write, I was using them. I need a lot more time of no timers to decide if there really is a long-term difference.

 

 

Day 51 of no more zero word days

Lynn

Yesterday was day 51 of my challenge not to have another zero word day. :)

I wrote 1,873 words.

Right now, I’m trying to get to a comfortable 3,200 words a day. Which I know sounds like a lot, but even for me, with an average pace of 500 words an hour, that’s not a ridiculous amount of daily writing, especially when distributed between multiple stories (giving me plenty of time to refuel the muse per story).

Here’s the math, again, just for show.

3,200 ÷ 5 hours = 640 words an hour

Five hours of focused work is a lot. Most research shows that people working an 8 hour job typically do between 3 and 5.3 hours of productive work. There’s nothing more productive for a fiction writer than writing fiction. :-)

But I’m happy to give writing 5 hours of my focused time each day if I can manage it. :)

That’s the biggie for me. I tend to be able to get 2-3 focused hours of timed writing and that’s where it all kind of falls apart. Long breaks, distractions, and the desire to read all end up keeping me from getting more time in. I’m working on it! :D

Also, I ran across a little something this morning that has me convinced that I shouldn’t bother experimenting with timer lengths any longer. I use 20 minute timers most of the time, although I do try longer and shorter ones sometimes, but according to this: “Attention span begins to decay significantly after just 20 minutes. Therefore, after 20 minutes of intensive study, stop.”

I didn’t follow up with the sources, but I’m willing to take it at face value because of my personal experience and experiments with timers of varying lengths.

I am apparently fully within the group of people this applies to. I’ve been using 20 minutes as my preferred timed writing sessions for years now, ever since I discovered that they don’t cause me to feel so interrupted as a 15 minute timer does and that I don’t find myself glancing at the time left before the timer dings.

(Confirmation bias, I know. If you know of a source that reputably disputes this, feel free to drop it in a comment, otherwise, I’m perfectly happy to accept this as true.)

:D