Category: Writing

Posts about writing. Writing is my work but since I work better when I pretend work isn’t work, I mostly call it fun—even when it isn’t. ;)

A new month and a fresh start

Lynn

I’ll take whatever opportunity I can find for a fresh start. My word counts haven’t been where I want them the last few days, nor even before that but at least then I had enough time invested that I didn’t feel like a slacker, but today is the first of a new month and I plan to use that to push for my goal word count of 3,000 words.

So far, I’m on track I’m happy to say. Especially since I can’t ever tell if I’m going to write fast or slow during any one session until I’m actually writing.

Sessions are 20 minutes, goal is 250 words per session or 750 wph.

  • Session 1 = 349 words
  • Session 2 = 281 words
  • Session 3 = 247 words

Total for 1 hour = 877 words

Pace = 877 wph

Yay!

I’m going to try out a new format for blogging today. I’ll start with these smaller posts about my progress and then do a summary post at the end of the day.  I just kind of like things in little packets. ;)

 

 

Word counts for the last 6 days of writing

Lynn

Date—Words
6/25/17—694
6/26/17—1,063
6/27/17—592
6/28/17—0
6/29/17—604
6/30/17—251 (might increase, might not)

Not great by any means but I’m happy that I’ve been writing again. I’m also happy that I seem to be in a mood to push myself to improve. I don’t want to stagnate.

Today was supposed to be a day off, because I had a meeting with a friend planned. Those plans fell through, probably for the best, because I woke up with a stiff back and no will to go anywhere. :) I haven’t written much today because of that, but I’m trying now to at least do some writing before I call it a night.

 

A good night’s sleep is a big deal

Lynn

Yesterday, I took the day off. I hadn’t planned to, to be honest, but I had to be away from the house, and by the time I returned, I was done for the day. I was so tired (and a bit headachy) that the thought of opening my document and writing almost put me to sleep on the spot. So mostly I just moaned about how I needed to go to bed early, and then I did.

I went to sleep two hour earlier than the night before and about four hours earlier than the two nights before that. This morning I woke up early and didn’t feel half bad, if I do say so myself.

I don’t actually feel great right now but my words per hour rate this morning was ridiculously higher than it was any of those other days. My average after two sessions is 768 wph. Since my goal wph is 750, I consider that as good as gold. It’s definitely a mark in favor of getting to bed early. If my remaining sessions go as well as the earlier ones, I’ll reach my goals today with just a little concerted effort.

Unfortunately, it’s 2:12 pm right now, so I really do need to get back to work instead of wallowing in my caffeine-less misery. No coffee, no real teas and a definite dip in energy levels.

On that note, it’s interesting how last night and this morning kind of proved the point I was going for in the version of this post I started yesterday but never got around to finishing.

I’m trying to retrain myself to go to bed early enough to feel good getting up early (because I wake up early regardless, such as today at 6:40 am). My most consistent month ever came about when I was getting up relatively early, getting started by 7 and keeping WIFI off until noon or 2,000 words, whichever came first. It could come to that again. ;)

Another big challenge I’m facing with this is that I can’t seem to get my sessions compressed into a reasonable time period. I’m going to keep trying.

Getting to bed early did seem to help, which is exactly what I suspected. I’m an early waker and that makes it difficult for me to be productive when I stay up late and start my day either sleep deprived or later than my natural rhythms tell me to.

Tomorrow, I’m going to really push myself to write early.

As for right now, I’m going to restart my writing, focus on keeping my words per hour rate high, and see if I can make progress on compressing my sessions into a reasonable time period. :)

Plan: Take no longer than 1.5 hours for every three 20 minute sessions. :D See you back here in about (probably in a follow-up post).

Wish me luck!

Removed duplicate text

Lynn

I followed up on last night’s plan to do at least half of the minimum number of writing sessions before I allowed myself any internet access. I did six!

DAILY ACCOUNTABILITY

Session 1 (20 min): 119 words
Session 2 (20 min): 37 words
Session 3 (20 min): 103 words
Session 4 (20 min): 2 words
Session 5 (20 min): 98 words
Session 6 (20 min): -240 words
Session 7 (20 min): 71 words
Session 8 (20 min): 26 words
Session 9 (20 min): 128 words
Session 10 (20 min): 69 words
Session 11 (20 min): 96 words
Session 12 (20 min): 185 words — Of course this was my highest word count of the day. And I’m too tired to keep it up because it’s 11:58 pm and I need sleep!

My aim for all these is 250 words each. So yeah, I’m a little off the mark.

Today’s blog post title is from a note to myself on the last session I did before I broke for lunch.

The note refers to the fact that I found a 332 word chunk of text that I needed to delete, half of it a portion of a scene I copied instead of moved to an earlier place in the story. I must have forgotten to delete it after the fact, but I usually just move the text, so I’m not sure what I was thinking when I did it.

The exciting thing is that to end up at -24 words, I had to have written more than my 250 words in that last session so here’s hoping I can keep that up now that I’m back from my late (2 pm) lunch.

Well, that’s a bummer. I realized after the fact, once I’d finished session 7 that -24 was a misprint. I should have written -240!

It’s been proven a sad fact that four hours of writing takes me all day and I have no idea why or how that happens. Writing everything down doesn’t even seem to help. I can find the big things; it’s the little bits of time that just seem to disappear.

June 23 session notes

Lynn

So today hasn’t been the kind of writing day I’d hoped.

At the end of session 5, I am sitting at 12 words for the day. It hardly seems possible but the problem is that I spent so much time reworking what I had for chapters 1 and 2 that I went through four sessions before I dug myself out of negative numbers (I deleted more than I wrote).

Then I left for a while. I stayed gone longer than I meant to but I needed to get away for a while, because I was starting to hate this story.

Prioritizing my daily writing is a commitment to myself I need to keep, so I can’t let this happen again tomorrow. But tomorrow I hope to be up and about earlier after a good night’s sleep. I definitely won’t be staying up until the early morning hours tonight.

1 hour and 40 minutes of writing today isn’t great, but it’s a start.

I’d stay up and do the rest of the sessions if I didn’t need so badly to get my sleep patterns back into some kind of order so I can start early each day.

As much as I hate to admit it, because I do like staying up late, I am a morning person. I wake up before 7 most mornings and staying up until 2 am just doesn’t give me the kind of sleep I need to be at my best the next day, even if I manage to go back to sleep. It’s never truly restful once I’ve woken up to the sun.

So that’s the update for today.

Sessions logs are below.

Session

Words

WPH

1

-87

-261

2

2

6

3

9

27

4

12

36

5

76

228

Too much time reading for clues

Lynn

The blog post titles are a lot easier to come up with now, and they aren’t any more obscure than they were before, so that’s a win. :)

Today’s word counts

Session # Words WPH
1 46 131
2 84 240
3 32 91
4 99 283
5 57 163
6 61 174
7 166 474
8 239 683
9  72 206
10 0

Today’s title comes from a note on my session log. In it, I’m laying the blame for my low word counts in my first three sessions on the fact that I spent a lot of time during them reading through my previous books looking for clues to characterization and plot.

Yes, that’s my handwriting. Could be better, but it is what it is! :)

Unfortunately, my word counts didn’t improve a lot after I stopped doing that.

I don’t record session logs in my spreadsheet—there’s really no room for it—so writing them down seems like a good way to start paying attention to just how often I’m meeting my goal number of sessions.

I could put them in OneNote, and I have in the past kept up with sessions in my journals, but I really don’t like that. Also, the logs get kind of lost in the midst of all my ramblings, so… this seemed like something I wanted to try.

I’ve devoted one of my favorite notebooks to tracking them and I’m loving how accountable it makes me feel to write down the number of sessions I want to do. I can’t stand the idea of wasting that nice paper, so I’ve felt compelled to fill those slots today! Only two more to go before I call it a day.

Also, yesterday I didn’t find time to write a post because I actually got started writing really late and didn’t use timers. I wrote 813 words yesterday—on the wrong book.

Okay, so I’m planning to write that book next, so it’s not exactly wrong that I spent time on it, and I admit, I’ve needed a breakthrough for the opening of that book for a good long while and I had one last night, but I really need to finish this other book first so I do feel a little unhappy that I managed to write 813 words but that none of them were for the right book!

4:52 pm and a 2,800 word goal

Lynn

Today started off well enough. I finished organizing (cleaning out) my music directory. Doing that was a better use of my time than (re)organizing my email again, but that’s not possible any more because sometime last month I deleted all my email. I saved a few particular pieces of interest to a few relevant folders and I absolutely did delete thousands of emails. They’ll never be seen again. I kept only one backup, stored in an inaccessible location, with the intent to delete it at year’s end. I don’t doubt that I will too.

But that’s all beside the point. The point is that I need to write some real words today and I’m really getting tired of failing.

So I’m not going to fail anymore.

Missing a goal once in a while is no big deal and doesn’t feel anything like failure. Missing a goal every single time is not a good thing. There are repercussions to that kind of repetitive failure. I’m done with that. I just can’t be that person, that kind of writer, any longer.

So, despite the fact that it is now 4:59 pm, I’m going to sit my ass down and I’m going to write 2,800 words this evening.

To make it easy, I’m going to break it down into 21 minute sessions. I’ll do as many as it takes, but I’m planning for 10.

During at least one of those sessions, I want to reach the best word count per hour I’ve ever reached, and I’m going to reach it by having fun with this damn book. I love the characters. There’s no reason it should be so damn hard to have fun.

Now, I’m going to go trim my fingernails so I can get my first session started.

Session # Cumulative Words WPH
1 29 82.85714
2 54 77.14286
3 72 68.57143
4 82 58.57143
5 142 81.14286
6 251 119.5238
7 285 116.3265
8 0
9 0
10 0

Okay, so I’m calling it a night. It’s 12:29 am and I’m disappointed at my speeds tonight. I spent a lot of time redoing a chapter but I’m glad I did it, because I like what I’ve got now better than what I had.

I’m 3 sessions short of the 10 I wanted to do. I’m also short a ton of words. On the other hand, I totally don’t feel like a failure, because I literally did the best I could tonight. I took short breaks when I had to, and I focused hard when I wrote. I just can’t always predict what kind of writing day I’m going to have. This was one of those days.

So all in all, I’m satisfied. But one thing for sure: I’m going to do better tomorrow, because I’m going to start a lot earlier and I’m going to put in the extra sessions if I come up short on word counts like I did this evening.

But 12:33 pm is too late to keep going if I want to get some sleep tonight. The one thing I can count on is waking up at 7 in the morning and not being able to get back to sleep. I need to go to bed before it gets any later.

See you here again tomorrow.

Today’s challenge progress

Lynn

The writing isn’t going well today. I set out a challenge for myself this morning and I’ve fallen so far behind that I’m not seeing a way to catch up. On the other hand, I see no reason not to continue for as long as I can and see just where I do end up.

This chart is how I’m keep track of the challenge. The numbered columns (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) stand for the session number, and the numbers below are my word counts.

 Sessions ~To Go~ 1 2 3 4 5
5 1,272 3 55 84 86
5 1,500
5 1,500
5 1,500
5,772

Since I’m aiming for 300 words each, you can see I’m very far off the mark today. I’ve had to do a lot of reading of previous books to look up stuff and that’s really slowed me down. I’ve also done some editing of previously written stuff for this book and that has slowed me down. And then there’s the fact that I’ve just not been good at making myself sit and write the sessions like I should be doing today. The fact that I haven’t even finished the first block of sessions says that quite clearly.

Anyway, I’m not going to linger over this since I do want to keep the sessions going while I’m having a little success at that part at least. I’ll update again later. :)

ETA: I ended with 228 words. Seriously. I don’t know if I’m ever going to learn how to be a steady, consistent writer.

An experiment and a challenge: 6,000 words today

Lynn

I had a plan for today.

Aiming for 3, 7, 7, 3 x 21, 300 words every 21 m

Then I realized I was getting started much later than I needed to for my original plan to work the way I wanted. It’s 11:03 am.

I need a new plan.

I’m going to stick with the 4 blocks but swap up the number of sessions for each one.

5 1,500
5 1,500
5 1,500
5 1,500
 Aiming for: 6,000

This is both a challenge and an experiment. 21 minute sessions seem to be a good length for me and doing a few of them in a row doesn’t feel like a push I can’t handle. Doing four blocks of them might be, but I’m not going to know if I don’t try.  I really want to reach this 6,000 words in a day milestone.

In fact, it’s part of a bigger challenge I want to set to finish this book I’m working on in 9 days. Today is the test to see if I’m anywhere near ready to take on something like that.

I’d say I need to work up to it, but I binge write and take very long breaks between books, so it just isn’t realistic to expect me to work up to it by writing every day a little more than the day before. I’m ready to accept this about myself and try to make the most of my ability to dive into something wholeheartedly and become a little obsessed until I’m done. That’s my real strength and I’m ready to work with it instead of against it. :)

My next post will contain my updates on today’s challenge.

So how is 2017’s “no goals, no timers, no schedules” plan going?

Lynn

I’ve taken a lot of time off writing lately. I don’t know what’s to blame, but I’m going to take a stab in the dark and say I might have set myself up for this.

So how is 2017’s “no goals, no timers, no schedules” plan going?

Let’s keep this simple: Not well. At all.

What does that mean for the rest of 2017? I’m really not sure. I’ve spent months now at loose ends and I’m not liking it. My plan for no plan was supposed to take the pressure off and let me recapture my love for writing. What’s happened is that I’ve realized that without something behind the scenes pushing me I am very content to write only when I’m desperate to get something down.

Doesn’t happen as often as I had hoped. :o

Then again, I can look back at my history, when I was writing entirely for fun, and see that I didn’t write all that much or that often, and when I did, it was because something “fun” like NaNoWriMo was going on or I had fandom buddies egging me on. (I say egging, but around here, it sounds much more like agging which isn’t even a word, but that’s the south for you.)

Anyway, it’s time to end the break and do something to get started again. I guess that’s one experiment I can call done and done.

Might be time to take up the 6,000 words in a day challenge again. I’m going to think about it.

Building better writing habits

Lynn

I’ve had a slow start to the year and that’s not what I want, so now that I’ve caught up some publishing stuff I needed to get caught up, I’m turning my focus back to writing.

I want to write more this year. Write more words, write more books, write more often.

Unfortunately, my word counts this year aren’t that great.

1/1/17 1/31/17 3,507
2/1/17 2/28/17 22,886
3/1/17 3/31/17 689

It’s time to focus on writing more by writing more often. :)

I’m going to spend some time and energy trying to build some better writing habits.

I’m stressed, so of course I decided to rename all my files

Lynn

I’ve been feeling stressed this week, after a book release that’s going nowhere fast. I expected this one to do better and it hasn’t. So as usual, when feeling stressed, I turned to my computer for solace.

I decided it was imperative that I rename all my files.

Yes, I know I just renamed them all barely more than a month ago, but at least I’m not reorganizing email again. :)

I spent most of yesterday and all of this morning and early afternoon renaming 12,000+ files. I used a bulk renamer where I could, and then went through every directory and tidied up where necessary.

Basically, I abandoned Pascal case and went back to dashes between words. I also stopped putting the full title of my books in most of my supporting files in my publishing folder.

I really wanted shorter file names, if only because I found myself annoyed at the long file names in the file tab in Adobe Photoshop Elements and GIMP when I was working on those paperbacks. I want (need!) to be able to see the differentiating parts of the file name when I’m working with similarly named files and I couldn’t, but I also still wanted my files named in a logical order.

So I went from files named like this: MyBookTitle-Cover-PaperbackBackText.psd to this: cover-mbt-pb-back.psd

pb = paperback (everywhere)
mbt = acronym for My Book Title

All lowercase and dashes for ease of reading.

And I use that acronym in my daily word count log and a few other places so I recognize most of my books right off the bat from those letters. :)

Then, of course, they’re in folders named for the title of the book so there’s really no reason not to use the acronyms to shorten those file names.

I tested a couple of folders side by side with files named in various formats, and it was obvious at a glance which one I found easier to read. Skimming is easier when the first part of every file name isn’t the same book title!

It seems kind of silly that wasting all this time on renaming my files has made me feel better, but it really has. I feel lighter and less stressed now and I’m about to get started on a story.

By tomorrow, I expect to be ready to get back to my challenge to write 6,000 words in a day. But today is out.

I have a few obligations to deal with that preclude me being able to put in the time I’d need to even come close this evening to a high word count, so I’m just going to work my way back into a story and enjoy that—and maybe click through my folders a few more times and enjoy the neat and orderly look of my files. ;)

Paperbacks are done

Lynn

I still need to proof them, order the print proofs, and proof them too, but I am done with formatting.

Tomorrow I start writing again, and I’m happy about that even if I still don’t know exactly what I’ll be writing.

I need another day before I restart my 6000 words in a day challenge, because I also need quite a bit of time free tomorrow to go over those digital proofs.

But yay for the fact that I’m finally caught up with that. :)

No time to ramble tonight so toodle-oo. Be back tomorrow.  :D

And that answers that question about my paperback covers at CreateSpace

Lynn

Got this just a short while ago:

Congratulations!

Your interior and cover files for xxxxxxxxxxxxx, #xxxxxxxx meet our technical requirements for printing.

The next step in the publishing process is to proof your book:

FOLLOW THIS LINK TO GET STARTED:

Which I assume means the embedded fonts in the paperback cover are A-okay.  There was no additional message about corrections made for me, on my behalf, or anything like that, so this answers the question of whether or not the PDF cover files would be accepted by CreateSpace with fonts embedded instead of being flattened into the image. Should’ve guessed, really, but I just wasn’t sure.

I’ll be ordering a proof to check this out and compare the quality of print to the covers I didn’t embed fonts for (sending only a flattened image PDF to CreateSpace), and scouring over the digital proof from CreateSpace. If the quality of the text appears better, I’ll definitely be doing this extra step from now on. If it isn’t any better, then I’ll just use GIMP, and only add Elements into the mix when I need to use a font that brings out that unfortunate GIMP text rendering (?) bug.

Also, I discovered something with this round of paperback creation. I’ve consistently had a problem with my PDF cover as exported from GIMP having a transparency that CreateSpace fixes for me. I’ve not had that problem this time. The difference? This time when GIMP popped up the little message during the PDF export, I unchecked all the little boxes for things GIMP was offering to do for me during the export. And now, no transparency warnings from CreateSpace for the three covers I exported directly to PDF from GIMP. Pretty happy to have figured that out. I was exporting a completely flattened image to PDF so there shouldn’t have ever been any transparency anyway, but obviously something GIMP was doing during the export on my behalf was creating it.

I am not going to finish those paperbacks today

Lynn

Dang it. I’m not going to finish those paperbacks today. I got caught up with tweaking the look of the interior and spent too much time on the cover of one of them today (perfectionism is a trap), and here it is just about bedtime for me (oh, my tired eyes!) and I’ve submitted the files for only one paperback today.

So 2 down and 5 to go. Except I’ve realized that I still need to correct a book I found an error in a few weeks ago, so that means 6 to go. But that one doesn’t need a cover, just a few changes to the interior.

I’m very close to finishing a second tonight, and I think I’ll try to get it submitted before I call it a night. The other paperbacks are just going to have to wait. I want to do some writing tomorrow before I come back to them, maybe in the later afternoon. We’ll see.

I definitely want to wrap these up ASAP, because they’re one of the few things left that I need to do sooner rather than later, and when I’m done with them, I can truly focus for a while on just writing my books.

I’m going to finish those paperbacks today

Lynn

I’m going to finish those paperbacks today. All of them.

I’m not going to batch process them the way I’d planned either. I’m just going to start one and work it all the way to the end. Format the book, then make the wraparound cover.

Since I’m not worrying about creating the perfect paperback style set in Word, things are going much more smoothly now, and faster. I swear, that perfectionism bug is hard to get over. I’m going to quit looking for the perfect system (in anything I do) and just concentrate on finding one that works, something that makes my work easier, even if it’s not the easiest it could possibly be, because setting things up to be the easiest it can be is fraught with trouble. One little thing breaks and I’m right back where I started (example: the paperback style set for yesterday’s book).

What happened, you ask?Ah. Let me tell you. :)

Since I use a slightly different paperback interior look for every series, I had to create a generic set of styles and then modify the set for each series. So I ended up with six sets. It was a lot of work. And I’m not sure I finished it, because as I said yesterday, when I went to use the style sheet for the paperback I was creating, the set for that particular series didn’t work right. My copyright page styles were all messed up, my paragraphs indenting where they weren’t supposed to, things like that.

I’ve decided it just isn’t worth the trouble to maintain these style sheets. My ebook style set works great and I’ll just modify those styles on a per book basis going forward. It’s just easier that way. Sure I do a bit more hands on adjustments, but sometimes easier doesn’t turn out to be faster when you look at the entire picture.

So I’m moving on. I’ve got a system now that is working and I’m just going to keep doing it this way for the foreseeable future.

Paperbacks are taking longer than I had hoped

Lynn

I finished one paperback today.

Meaning I have 6 to go.

:o

Here’s what went wrong. My paperback style set didn’t work. I’m not sure if I didn’t finish it, or what, but when I applied it to the document, only a few basic styles changed and the rest just kind of … broke. I don’t really know of a better way to explain it.

So instead of getting frustrated and trying to create a new style set (which was my first inclination), I just made manual adjustments to the styles, got everything the way I wanted it, and then saved over the old style set with the new ones.

It’ll either work or it won’t, but I got one paperback done today and that’s all I care about.

While I was doing all that, I used OneNote to create step-by-step list of what I need to do to make sure I don’t forget anything during the formatting.

Now, I’m calling it a night. I got up way to early again today and I’m too tired to stay up. :)

One more day

Lynn

I’m delaying the resumption of my challenge one more day in favor of catching up some stuff I’ve been putting off for months. 

It’ll feel good to get that stuff off my back. 

Plus, I have two stories to choose from for my next project and I just haven’t decided which one to do. One’s a short story and one is a novel. I’d thought about going right to the novel, but decided to do the short story first as a break, but now I really don’t want to do either. After I catch up some stuff today, I’m going to read what I’ve written for both stories already and hope it helps me decide. If that doesn’t work I’ll give myself permission to work on multiple stories until something clicks with one. :D That should do it.

Would you believe I’ve written almost 5000 words today?

Lynn

Believe it, because it’s true. I’ve written almost 5000 words today, on the first day that I’ve taken a break from my 6000-words-in-a-day challenge since I started it twelve days ago.

Oh, the irony.

ETA: Scratch that. I have written 5000 words today. 5,100 to be exact.

ETA2: And I came in at 5,816 words for the day which is a new record for me. I also created a personal record for time spent writing: 10 hours and 33 minutes.

Two-thirds of 6000 is 4000 (challenge update)

Lynn

I made it past 4000 words again. But I am done. More than nine hours of writing went into those words and I’m finally just pooped. I need to get on a better pace for this to happen. I’m taking a day off the challenge tomorrow and the next day, then I will try again.

I am still planning to write every day though so don’t go thinking I’ve given that up already. :p