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. ;)

Even passive time tracking is just a distraction

Lynn

I mentioned ManicTime in a previous post but said I had uninstalled it. I did. I also went back and reinstalled it, making a setting change that allowed it to get much closer to the kind of passive time tracking I wanted. I changed the “away” time activation from 10 minutes to 1 minute. Every time I stepped away from the computer for more than 1 minute, ManicTime recorded me as away and didn’t record time on whatever window I happened to have in focus on the screen.

That was great.

Until about an hour ago when I realized I really don’t need this distraction. And yes, it’s a massive distraction, even running completely in the background, simply because I know it’s there and I’m tempted to check my time log every time you turn around.

So earlier tonight, I uninstalled the program, again.

The truth is, I have only one plan for this year, and that plan is this: write more.

I hope to accomplish that by writing every day.

As of the 20th of this month, that’s been true. I’ve written something every day. Some of the entries on my word count log for the last six days are minuscule because of this read through project, but they’re there, and I know I’ve put in effort.

Maybe not as much effort as I hope to build up to putting in, but we all have to start somewhere. Muscles take time to grow. ;)

Revising is not a good idea; how to fuck up a story

Lynn

I had to make a few changes to my book. I try not to do much when I go back to already written material, but in this case, I had an issue I couldn’t work out and when the solution came to me, it meant adding a few things. I don’t know what it is about how I write, but it’s almost impossible for me to write something and just plop it into the middle of an already written scene. It just never seems to fit in and I have to work to make a place for it.

So I did that with the fix and probably tweaked a bit more than I should have.

Yep, I know I did. How do I know?

Because I got through chapter 13 last night, and when I reached 15, I had some stuff that totally didn’t make sense anymore because I’d gone back and put stuff in related to it thinking I’d skipped that issue altogether and yet there it was, fully fleshed out in a later chapter.

Ugh.

This is where I just leave it, fix chapter 15 so it won’t matter and KEEP GOING.

Like I said, I try not to get caught up in making the kinds of changes that count as revising. I cycle through my document as I go, building and growing the story, and most of the time I do end up cycling from the beginning at least once, but it’s best if I do it when the story is fresh—not when I’m trying to get the story back into my head.

When the story isn’t fresh, I’m much more likely to make mistakes like this and end up in revision territory, and I do not like revision. I can’t keep the various versions of a story straight—all the bits and pieces float around and I get confused about which ones are really there and which ones I’ve deleted. It’s best I stay as far from that as possible, because that’s the kind of stuff that makes me hate writing. And feel blocked and have to move on to another story for a while or just not write.

So anyway, yes, I’m still working on getting through this story to arrive at all fresh blank empty pages, but I’m a lot closer now than I was. To be honest, if I don’t finish it today, I’m going to—

You know what? It doesn’t matter, because I’m going to get through it today. I’m going to do it and that’s that.

Still making progress, but still much too slow

Lynn

I’m making progress on this book, still, but it’s still too slow. I mean, really, way too slow. Yesterday, I ended with a net gain of 274 words. Today I’ll spend as much time on the book as possible, so we’ll see where I end up.

As of this moment, I’m on chapter 9 and it should be nothing but a basic read through fixing typos until I hit a specific scene where I need to add in some stuff that goes along with the fix I made several chapters back. Then at chapter 17 stuff gets kind of messy. I have several scenes written that went in one direction before I doubled back to 17 and took off in another. We’ll see if they eventually join up. I’m hoping. I really like them.

It boils down to just needing to make sure I actually get the time in that I want to spend on the book today. That has been my biggest issue the last few days, not writing too slowly. (Just a little of that. :D) Mostly it’s just a factor of time. I need to get started, stay focused on it, and do that for most of the day.

I really believe I can do it. The only thing stopping me is me.

Too bad I’m not still drinking coffee. It’d come in really handy right about now.

How many hours did I work last year on writing?

Lynn

I figure about 40 hours per book for publishing tasks. I can double that to 80 if I want to include every last thing I do like studying book cover design and process tweaks like creating new Word style sheets and so on.

I wrote 220,071 words.

My speed range is 250–1200 words per hour, with the vast majority coming in between 400–600. My all time average back when I was tracking that was 541 wph.

That’s 407 hours for the writing.

I wrote 3 novels and 2 novelettes last year. I’m going with 80 hours each because I don’t want to undersell the effort I put in.

That’s 400 hours on publishing.

That’s 807 hours total.

That’s 15.52 hours a week for 52 weeks, or 16.14 hours a week for 50 weeks.

So 16 hours a week.

Holy crap. I’m barely working a part time job.

The numbers make me feel pretty good about the money, but it shouldn’t. I mean, no matter how much I earned per hour, I still only worked about 16 hours a week. My gross income is nowhere near where I want it.

Then there’s this: There are so many books I want to write, and I’m not getting them written at my current level of effort.

Next year, I’m going to revisit this calculation.

This year I’m going to be trying to level up. :)

We’ll see how it goes without timers, schedules, or goals to direct that effort. Honestly, I haven’t done all that well in years past using them, so I’m not that worried it’s going to hurt anything. I expect it will help (in the long run).

I’M NOT YELLING

Lynn

Yesterday was a bit of a letdown. Sure, I wrote, but my net word count came in at 9 words. I spent some time working, but I also spent A LOT of time doing I don’t know what, because I didn’t do any web reading except for a single visit to DWS’s website yesterday morning and some late evening searches. I didn’t read any fiction, except my own book, and I didn’t do much of anything else either.

So where’d the time go? I have no idea.

One thing I know: I don’t believe I worked as much on my book as I wanted to. I think if I had, I’d be further along.

I made it to chapter 6 at 12:56 PM (from my notes) and finally reached chapter 7 at 4:36. Yes, I did some minor deleting and redrafting in that scene, but I can see it wasn’t very much at all now that I’ve looked over it this morning. Just a few lines here and there, definitely not 2.5 hours worth (the missing hour and a half is lunch). Except, yes, it probably was 2.5 hours because I tend to get lost in that stuff, tweaking and rewriting sentences until I finally hit on one that just feels right.

It’s not the best way, that’s for sure. I wish I didn’t do that kind of thing. I can’t tell if it’s perfectionism, or if it’s just the way my brain works.

As of this morning, I am still only halfway through chapter 7, which means I know I didn’t do much after 4:36 PM. I know that because I read through this chapter a few days ago, and I remember thinking there wasn’t a lot to fix here. Maybe one or two lines. So I should have gotten through this section quickly. Yet I’m still there.

Anyway, all that said, today I have things to do that mean I won’t be home for a chunk of the day but I still need to make some SIGNIFICANT progress on this book today.

Last night, at about 7:02, I installed RescueTime. 12 minutes later, I uninstalled it. Then I installed ManicTime. I loved it, really, but it didn’t do the ONE THING I wanted, which was record only active time in a document. I don’t care how long my document is open and in focus on my screen. I need to know how much time I spend working on that document—writing time. So I uninstalled it too.

Then I found Timekeeper for Word, which could give me the exact info I want. Except it’s for Word 2016, 2013, or 2010. I don’t write in my Word 2016 install. I tried to, for a while, but I couldn’t stop hating it. I use Word 2007. I opened Word 2016 anyway, just to see if I could convince myself it would be worth going to if I could have this awesome record of my time spent writing.

Nope. Couldn’t do it.

So I’m back to basics. I’m just going to jot down my start and end times today in my notebook and leave it at that. All I really want is something to tell me how much time I’m spending on my writing, since I’m not using timers, schedules, or explicit goals this year to tell me what I should be doing and how badly I’m failing.

I just need a rough figure so I can aim to do better. :) Getting better is important to me, and I want to write a lot of books this year, because life is short and who knows when my time will run out. I don’t want to look back from my deathbed (if I’m given that moment) and think about all the time I didn’t spend writing when I could have. And I will, because that’s me.

*I’ve been using all caps as emphasis in email and text since the late nineties and I’m sick of holding back because some other people have decided it means I’m shouting at them. If you don’t like all caps in text, I suggest you not read my blog. :D

Making progress

Lynn

I’m making progress on this book but you sure wouldn’t know it by my word counts. Yesterday I came in at 328 words for the day. Gah.

Still, I’ve solved a major problem with the story and I’m just trying to get everything to line up now.

Something of note: this story is way more fun than I thought it was. I like it a lot. :D

How to not write a lot of words

Lynn

I feel asleep at the computer last night. Well, mostly I feel asleep if you count head bobbing and momentary lapses in consciousness.

So no, I didn’t make it through my book so that today’s writing could go more smoothly. In fact, I kept tinkering with that particular scene I mentioned yesterday until the head bobbing and lapses in consciousness caused me to read the same two lines in the story about twenty times.

Today, however, I finally figured out why I kept tinkering with that scene, fixed the thing I needed to fix, and am so glad it’s done. The scene is also much more in line with what I wanted. I’m pretty happy with it right now.

I adjusted some chapter breaks (about 4 or 5 of them) and now I need to finish the read through edit I’m doing for about 14 more chapters. To be honest, I’m not really editing. I’m just fixing stuff so the damn story can start moving again. :D

As for the chapters, I like to have chapters of about 2,000 to 2,500 words, and definitely not more than 3,000 to 3,300. I usually have several good breaking off points in a chapter, so it wasn’t hard to find new cliffhanger style endings for the new chapter breaks. :D

Only one chapter defeated me and I had to leave it at 3,140 words. There just wasn’t a good place to split it and I liked the ending it currently had too much to bury it in the middle of the next chapter.

I’ve managed to gain 169 words today so far doing this and I’m hoping not to spend too much more time on that and get on with the real writing soon.

Since I’m not anywhere near where I’d need to be right now to have a 5,000 word day, I’m going to quit hoping for that and just write as much as I can.

So no more breaks for me until I’m ready to call it a day on the writing. WIFI is going off the minute I post this, and I’m going to hide my damn tablets and phone. (Okay, I just turned them off, but that should serve the same purpose!)

Word count minuscule, but I wrote

Lynn

Yesterday I wrote. My word count was minuscule, but I went back to a scene giving me trouble and spent a few hours on it. I didn’t gain much word count, but I did make progress with the story.

Today I’ve been doing the same. By the time I quit, I want to have the story at a place where I can really pick up speed tomorrow. As of right now, I want to try to make tomorrow a four to five thousand plus word day.

It might not happen, but that’s kind of where I think I want tomorrow to go. I have to get the complications with this story straightened out first though. I can’t write at the pace I need for a high word count if the story isn’t moving along smoothly.

Whatever happens, I did start my effort to write every day yesterday and I’ve continued it today. I’m now on a two day streak. ;)

I am so behind

Lynn

I’ve written 2,065 words this month. Let me just say that’s not where I imagined I’d be at this point in the month.

Since I have a book to finish, I’m going to have to try to write today and keep writing until I’ve written a damn lot of words. :o

To do that, I’m going to have to kick this damn perfectionism I’ve got going on to the curb. I keep letting people in my head, but they’re not even the main problem. I’m the problem. I’m the critic from hell. When I’m in one of my moods, nothing is ever good enough. I can’t write fast because I can’t stop criticizing what I’ve written as I write. I also over write. Seriously. I spend way too much time trying to draw a picture of the images in my head with words, and I’m starting to realize just how dumb that is. It’s limiting. I need to lean a little heavier on the reader’s imagination.

Or something like that.

Anyway, I’m about to have a late breakfast. It’s 11:07 am, but I stayed up until 2 in the morning so I’m not that surprised. What sucks is that I’ve actually been awake since 7 and I’m already tired.

But a writing day it is today.

Also, I’ve decided that today is the first day of me writing every day. I’m going to do it. I’m afraid to commit, but I’m kind of in a contrary mood today and by damn I’m going to start writing every day if I have to glue my fingers to a pen to make it happen.

I have to start writing more and that’s just all there is to it. I can’t be happy as a writer if I don’t, because writing stokes the desire to write more, and not writing just makes me apathetic and write even less over time. I can’t afford that unless I want to find another career.

And I don’t. I like this one just fine.

Update to my previous post

Lynn

Today, instead of writing, I went ahead and reformatted a couple of books that have new covers, because those paperbacks need to be updated to match. I wasn’t going to do this yet, but as soon as I said I wasn’t going to do it, the idea was in my head and I couldn’t resist.

Surprisingly, it didn’t take long—my new style sets are really consistent, for a change—until I started tweaking stuff. Then of course it took a lot longer. I formatted 2 paperbacks in about 4 to 5 hours. But even with all the tweaking, that’s nothing like the time I used to spend creating my paperbacks.

Since I’ve been working on so many paperbacks at once this time, it was really easy to get my style sets consistent. And since I had recently reformatted my master files for these two books, I had the books set up just right to work with my fresh new paperback style sets. I changed my style set, adjusted my title pages for a consistent look within each series, and printed to PDF.

Still, I was dealing with some perfectionism and a lot of little gotchas. I swear I had to print to PDF about 10 times each for each book before I was done because of little things I forgot to check or fix beforehand.

Anyway, I’m done now with the paperbacks until I have time to work on those covers and I’m going to write, even if only for half an hour or so.

I’ll say goodnight now, and plan to post my progress tomorrow. I have books that really must be written, and dammit, I really want to write them. Time to start doing that!

Procrastination as a productivity booster

Lynn

So I posted about wanting to write every day and the very next day I finally start those paperbacks I’ve been putting off for half a year.

Funny how procrastinating on one thing can lead to a boost in productivity on another. My guilt over not writing pushed me to work hard on the formatting and kept me working until it was done.

I became a little obsessed with them to be frank. But I finished the formatting last night and now I need only to finish up the paperback covers to go with those newly formatted books.

I’d still like to reformat my older books, but writing needs to take priority now.

I also spent yesterday preparing my tax return. I just about finished it. :) I’ll confirm my numbers when the 1099s come in but I’m confident in my record keeping and am glad to have this out of the way early this year!

Today I intend to start letting myself write every day.

Stalling

Lynn

I started a post, didn’t want to finish it, then started another and didn’t know what to say. At this point, I realize I’m stalling. There are stories to be written and I need to write them.

Turns out I was not ready for writing today after all

Lynn

I spent part of the day renaming files and changing my mind repeatedly about a couple of my file naming conventions.

I couldn’t decide if I was happy with the lower case and hyphens for my image names or not. In the end, I went with not, and renamed all my image files with the same case I’m using for the rest. I actually did this a couple of times—back and forth.

I also couldn’t decide if I wanted to name my old files “old1” “old2” or “ver1” “ver2” and then I couldn’t decide if I liked using “Cover” in my cover image file names. I decided not.

Basically, just a bunch of second guessing of stuff that doesn’t matter at all.

I have a sneaking suspicion that perfectionism has found a way to slip in and I’m going to have to do something about it.

During the process of navigating through every folder in my writing directory, I came across some fiction I wrote back in 1994–1996.

Oh my. I wasn’t sure if I’d improved that much as a writer, but this particular book proved it. If I could go back in time and tell myself anything to help speed up my development, I’d tell 19–21 year old me to use more contractions. :o

Also, it’s literally one of the first times I’ve read something I’ve written and can’t remember even a teeny tiny bit having written it. I mean, nothing is coming back to me about this, except for the odd fact that apparently I named my kid after two of my characters from this book—the hero and the heroine’s dead brother. Poor kid. :o

My chapters were ridiculously short. But I can see that I was learning. The writing gets a little better as the chapters go along. Little being a relative term in this context, for sure. ;)

Here’s a screenshot of a bit of one of the stories.

I thought those old versions of that particular book had been lost, but apparently I’ve been bringing them along with me in my writing folder with every migration to a new computer.

They’re buried deep, but they’re there.

After that bit of nostalgia, I found myself sorting and deleting email and trying to come up with a better system for handling my archives. I spent a lot of time on that and all I really decided was that there wasn’t a better system. I deleted some junk, saved a few files and deleted some non-junk, and got the number of emails in my email archive below 5,000. :) That’s over multiple accounts, with my primary account making up about half that with 2,273 emails according to Thunderbird.

(I have many email addresses and I refuse to consolidate them all. I’ve tried that and I didn’t like it one bit. I need to compartmentalize to be comfortable.)

I also started reading a new book today.

The thing is, I knew as it was happening that what I was doing was a mistake. I just couldn’t stop myself. Frankly, it felt a little compulsive.

On the other hand, I feel like maybe I’m done now. I hope so. I really don’t want to rename any more files. It’s making me crazy.

Tomorrow, I won’t let this happen. But today? There’s no way to deny it. I failed to be a writer today.

The last writing streak ended yesterday

Lynn

I ended yesterday with zero words written for the day. I had a full day away from home and I just didn’t have the energy to get started. I actually consciously looked at my writing streak in my daily word count log, said, “Neh,” and closed the computer.

Wondering what that big number is in the image? That’s my cumulative word count since I started tracking in 2012.

Anyway, on to make today the beginning of a new streak. I both want and need to make some significant progress today on this book I’m working on.

Today is the first day this year that both of my kids are back in school. I have no reason to put off getting back into this book and fixing the problems it’s giving me. I’m ready.

The writing streaks are dead—sort of

Lynn

I’ve let the writing streaks end. Last night, I wrote, but I deleted and then wrote and then deleted, and I had a negative day and just couldn’t climb out of it before I was too tired to continue. I’ve been staying up way too late and 1 a.m. last night did me in.

However! There is a however. :D

I wrote. So technically I have a new writing streak to replace the old two.

148 – 12/30
172 – 12/31
203 – 1/1
209 – 1/2
246 – 1/3
277 – 1/4
345 – 1/5
470 – 1/6
(35) – 1/7

 

  1. I’ve written fiction every day

I’d love to know how much I wrote yesterday, because I have a feeling my >100 words streak would still be alive, but that’s not how I count words and I’m not going to change that. It’s not necessary anyway. I have no goals, am using no timers, and following no schedule. A broken writing streak isn’t breaking any kind of commitment to myself.

I’ll just let a new one happen.

The writing streaks live on

Lynn

Yesterday, at the twelfth hour, I did some writing and managed 470 words.

Another small win and another day to add to my streaks.

148 – 12/30
172 – 12/31
203 – 1/1
209 – 1/2
246 – 1/3
277 – 1/4
345 – 1/5
470 – 1/6

The streaks are:

  1. > 100 words each day
  2. increasing number of words each day

At some point, the increasing words per day streak will end. There’s no way around that, because I do want to write a lot of words on a daily basis. But for now this is a great motivation to keep going.

I’m finding the challenge of doing better every single day not to be much of a challenge at all. Part of that is probably because I’ve let myself write on a variety of stories (all stories I hope to finish writing and publish within the first three to four months of this year assuming I eventually reach four digits with my daily word count). That’s led to me having no trouble at all getting out some new words each day.

I don’t know, it’s kind of making me rethink my ban on writing concurrently on multiple stories.

I’m not sold on backing off the ban yet, but I do notice my motivation to write everything increases when I’m writing on anything. That matters when I’m having a tough time getting myself started. I’ve said it before: Getting started is the single most difficult thing for me when it comes to writing (or anything else).

Anyway, off to work on paperback formatting for some books and then to do some writing.

(By the way, I love this font. Firefox says it’s Libre Franklin, and I’m seriously considering downloading this to my computer and using it for my notes.)

(And I did, and yes, it definitely wasted some time, because I got lost looking at fonts. But I’m away from there now and clicking publish here! Time to get to work.)

Another day goes down in favor of the streak(s)

Lynn

And another day goes down in favor of the streak(s).

148 – 12/30
172 – 12/31
203 – 1/1
209 – 1/2
246 – 1/3
277 – 1/4
345 – 1/5

  1. > 100 words each day
  2. increasing number of words each day

Although I thought I would write more today, in the end, I’m pretty satisfied that at least I wrote something.

Maybe tomorrow will be the day I break out and write lots of words.

Now, I must go to sleep. It’s 12:55 p.m. and that’s already much later than I wanted to conk out tonight.

Another day, another win

Lynn

148 – 12/30
172 – 12/31
203 – 1/1
209 – 1/2
246 – 1/3
277 – 1/4

Last night I made time to write again and in the process managed to keep both my streaks going for another day. :)

  1. > 100 words a day
  2. Increasing word count every day

Another small win for me in the new year. :D

Hey, small wins are serious business!*

Today I’d like to write quite a lot more but I had another late night despite hopes otherwise and I have a headache this morning. Only it’s really not morning anymore. It’s noon and looks so dreary out that I don’t doubt for a minute snow’s on the way.

It’s time for an evil glare out my window. I really don’t like snow. >_<

Anyway, off to do some writing or paperback formatting. Haven’t decided yet. The truth is if I procrastinate writing to do the paperbacks, I’m okay with that. One of them has needed to be done since June. :o

*I read an article about small wins a long time ago that has stuck with me… Ah, I think I’ve found it: https://hbr.org/2011/05/the-power-of-small-wins

Another day to add to my streaks!

Lynn

The streaks continue. :)

148 – 12/30
172 – 12/31
203 – 1/1
209 – 1/2
246 – 1/3

  1. >100 words a day, and
  2. increasing words per day

I’m up to almost a page a day now. :)

I’ve been writing so few words because (1) kids are still home for the holiday/winter break and (2) I spent the last two days working on a massive spreadsheet project I’d been putting off for a couple of years now.

I thought having all my title sales in one Excel workbook would benefit me, but after getting it done, I’m just not sure I didn’t waste a lot of time on this. As someone who will write a book I want to write regardless of the possible payoff, I don’t have any need to see my sales broken down by title or series (which is what I did).

Not only that, but there weren’t any surprises there either. I’ve apparently been doing just fine consolidating in my head the information I gather from the individual sales reports from each vendor. I’d created a very realistic picture of where my money was coming from and the books were all doing just about what I thought they were as far as revenues go.

I don’t think I’ll update the spreadsheet going forward. I won’t delete it outright, but I see no need to keep it current.

I just don’t care how much each specific book brings in, and I don’t even really care how much each series is bringing in. I write these books because I really want to and I’m willing to take my chances with them.

Now, time to go write some words for today. I have to get to bed earlier tonight. I’ve stayed up two nights in a row until 2 a.m. working on that stupid spreadsheet. I need a better night’s sleep tonight so I’ll feel liking writing lots of words tomorrow if I decide that’s what I want to do. :D

The streaks continue!

Lynn

I’ve added another day to my two writing streaks. My word counts are minuscule but I’m trying to build momentum during a time when I have a lot of distractions going on around me and I’m settling into a new year.

148 – 12/30
172 – 12/31
203 – 1/1
209 – 1/2

  1. >100 words a day, and
  2. increasing words per day