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. ;)

Sprinting in Discord

Lynn

If you’re in many writing themed servers on Discord, you’ll probably know all about sprinting and sprint channels. What it is is something like a chat with features specifically for people sprinting to get words.

Most use a bot that you set as a timer with something like _sprint for 20 in 3 which translates to start a twenty minute sprint in three minutes, for me and whoever joins me. Then you join the sprint with a beginning word count, and when it’s over, you update your word count and it tracks the numbers for you, doing all that pesky math if you want it to.

I don’t need it for that, because I use my own spreadsheet. But I like the community of it when I’m having a hard time focusing.

Today, I realized that although I like the community of it, I never seem to get in flow doing them in the same way I can when I run my own timer, and I rarely end up with any appreciable word counts after even long sessions of them.

Basically, time spent in the sprinting channel does not translate into a commensurate number of new words.

This is probably a case of me liking them the way I like chocolates and candies. They’re delicious, but they aren’t doing me any favors.

So, this is my post to myself to say I’m not going to do them anymore.

I can hang out in Discord when I want to chat about writing with other writers, but using it for sprints is not a fit for my personal work style. It’s time I admit that and take the necessary steps to make sure I’m writing to my fullest potential when I’m focused enough to do it.

Sometimes, it’s hard for me to remember the things I’ve set my mind to do and not to do, but writing things down sometimes helps. I won’t say always, as the dining room chair I am now doing my writing in again reminds me. My post about that is coming sooneventually. ;D

Ah, the critical voice

Lynn

Critical voice is that part of yourself that wants you to be perfect. Since perfection doesn’t exist, that voice will win any argument it starts.

The trick is not to argue with it.

It’s that person at the party that you can’t have a discussion with because they aren’t really listening, they’re just thinking ahead to their next rebuttal. But, but, but…

You can’t argue with those people (why are you trying?) and you can’t argue with your critical voice.

It knows all your secrets and it knows all your weak spots.

It knows mine.

I’m going through my own battles with critical voice right now. I recognized today that something I thought wasn’t even related was, in fact, just a sign that my inner critic had gotten the best of me.

When the critical voice is winning, it’s hiding from you. It doesn’t want you to realize it’s there, because you might fight back.

But you can’t attack it directly, with words, with reason. It’s not reasonable. And it will win.

You have to put it in a closet, or in the ground. You have to bury it, and ignore it, and pretend you don’t see its ghost out of the corner of your eye. It will hide in the shadows and it will claw at your brain. The moment you look at it and say I know you’re there, it will go into hiding again, to wait, to lurk, to sulk.

Face it and it will hide. Ignore it and it will lose.

Give it a voice, and you’re the one who loses.

It can feel like an unending effort to ignore something buried so deep inside you that you can never cut it out.

It’s worth it. Writing is never more fun than it is when you’re completely, unabashedly ignoring your inner critic.

I see critical voice as one facet of perfectionism. Perfectionism will destroy your soul. It will kill every creative thought you have. So guard against it. Fight tooth and nail to keep it out of the light and out of your head.

Here are some of my favorite links about critical voice for further reading. Some address critical voice directly. Some talk about things that are a sign that your critical voice is making trouble, even if you don’t recognize it as such.

Back to the drawing board

Lynn

After several days of the 20 minute writing blocks, I realized I was having a lot of trouble with the getting restarted part of this. Every session ends with the need to restart, unless something (usually a person in a sprint room on discord) was keeping me from taking a break.

Even though I kind of knew this going in, I thought the sets of blocks might be enough to keep it from being a problem. I am ever the optimist, unfortunately. It’s part of my problem with planning—I can’t be realistic to save my life.

I also kept trying to schedule the sets, because to reach the word count I’m aiming for (3,000 words) I would need three or four sets (possibly more). I knew there was little chance of success if I waited until bedtime to try to do four sets of these.

But schedules really don’t work for me, even if I make a point of allowing myself to stay flexible. There’s just something about them that triggers all the wrong thoughts in my head. I didn’t have even one success at starting when I had scheduled a start.

After several days of failing to do the number of sets I need, I realized last night that there are just so many points of failure that this plan makes no sense for me.

I reevaluated and came up with a new plan.

Today I’m going to try to eliminate as many points of failure as I can by using a timer for one long block of 3 hours.

As soon as I finish this post and close this window, I’m going to start that timer.

I won’t stop it for breaks, that way I’ll keep my need to get back to writing at the forefront of my thoughts and not get distracted.

After the timer goes off, I can catch up anything I was tempted to do during the breaks.

If I feel like today was a successful trial run (even if I don’t reach my 3,000 words), I’ll add a rule for tomorrow to get started within an hour of waking up. :D I’m tracking my successes and failures with the Loop Habits app on my phone, and I’ll add that as a habit to track.

I’m only three hours behind today so that’s not so bad. It’s still early enough to be called an early start.

Well, back to timed writing!

Lynn

My 2022 goals are off to a slow start. The plan is to publish something (novel, short, whatever) every month. I’ve lost some momentum into this new year because I got sick early in the month, and I’ve had a hard time getting moving again.

Last night, after the umpteenth time waiting too late to start (even though I stay up late sometimes, I haven’t been lately, and I haven’t had any willpower at all left once it gets late, so no matter how many times I tell myself I can just get started anyway, it doesn’t happen).

So, new plan.

I want to finish a book, but since “finish the book” isn’t really working for me as a daily goal, today’s is simpler: write 3,000 words (which will probably finish the book). So many mind games. It’s hilarious. But whatever works!

I’ll do 20 minutes 4 times, take a break (or not, depending how I feel), then repeat this a few times. That will get me between 3–4 hours of writing. Which might be enough time to get to 3,000 words.

(I want to write about 90,000 words a month this year, which is insane for me, but I’m seriously tired of dragging out the time it takes to write all these books I want to write. If I really want to write them, I’m going to have to speed up! And there is absolutely no good reason why I can’t write that many words. I am not physically incapable of it, and I have enough ideas to last the rest of my life and beyond. Mental hangups just do not count as real limits. I can do it. Once I break through this barrier, it will get easier. I just have to keep pushing until I crack the wall.)

So, anyway, that’s the goal today. 3,000 words. I’ll report back at intervals, much like I used to do, and keep myself accountable to getting these 20 minute sessions in.

Update #1

I finished the first set. 694 words and 1.333 hours (20 x 4) and I came it at 521 words per hour overall, with one session short actual writing time of about 4 minutes because of a phone call interruption. So it could have been better but probably not by much.

I did a lot of backspacing. My typing is atrocious, but this was mostly me having trouble coming up with a next sentence issue.

I’m going to try to do better with the next one. Think for two seconds before I type or something, I don’t know.

I’m still planning for two to three more sets, but I’m going to have to have a break, which I will need to keep reasonably short. So good luck me with that.

Update #2

Finished the second set and ended up at 980 for the day. I threw in an extra five minutes on the timer so my numbers would round better. :) 2.75 hours, 980 words, 356 wph. Not gonna lie, I’m disappointed with the wph number. This was new material and shouldn’t have been so hard to get up to speed with.

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.

Getting stuff out the door before Christmas and a new year’s goal

Lynn

Finished my story. Now on to publishing, writing an episode for the serial I’m doing on Kindle Vella, and finally getting back to editing those novel chapters. Trying to do it all today. Time will be short because of a family obligation but I’m going to try.

I wrote over 2,400 words yesterday. I will have to look at my spreadsheet and see when the last time is that I made it over 2,000.

I haven’t mentioned it yet, but I’m trying to get my 7 day total up to 16,800 before the new year and keep it there. That’s a 2,400 words a day average, although I’m not talking in averages anymore since they really don’t fit my writing/work style.

Working on a short story today

Lynn

I’m trying to finish a short story today, set in the world of one of my longer series. It’s taking a little more effort than usual because I had to ditch two different plot threads I started to go with because I had a faulty memory of the dynamic between two characters. :D

I’ve had to read bits from three different books and I keep going back to them for little tidbits so the story doesn’t try to rewrite history. I paused my attempts to write 1,200 words an hour, because I just don’t think this is the right project.

And also because I don’t think I want to track my time spent writing for a while. So there’s that, too.

But I’m having fun with it, so I’m going to get back to it now. I’m really hoping today will be the last day on it. It’s a holiday story and I want to get it out asap.

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.

As needed, when needed

Lynn

The writing is going well. The blogging, on the other hand, is as dead as one of those mice my stray cat keeps leaving in front of my door in exchange for “real” food. :D

I’ve started innumerable posts that I end up leaving in draft stage. So I guess that’s that. If I needed the blog, I’d be using it more. I’m not even making journal entries in OneNote, or diary entries in any of my many notebooks scattered around my desk.

I’ll take what I can get right now, and that’s the fiction writing. If I figure out what I want to write here, I’ll come back and start regular posting again. Otherwise, it’ll be as needed, when needed, and that’s that.

Forward momentum

Lynn

As usual, the goals I’ve made are probably out of my reach for the time frame I set. But I’m still trying!

I did finish a story and publish it, and I published a bit more in a test run on Kindle Vella. Not because I’m particularly interested in the platform, but because I’ve always got stories in progress and I’m testing to see if I can make money on them as ongoing stories, then publish them as books and make more money on them as novels. :D

The book I wanted to finish by November 1 is still not finished but I’m pushing hard to finish it before December 1 and I think I can make it. That will leave too many WIPs to be written in December to be realistic for me, but hell, I’m going to try anyway.

Failure isn’t something I’m scared of, and if it means I’ll get that much closer to clearing out my WIPs before the new year, then that will be more than I started with.

I can’t even explain how nice it feels to finally be writing again.

I’m going through a major life change and it has had repercussions I didn’t expect, but that’s fine. Things have gotten better, as things tend to do, or I’ve reached some kind of equilibrium, and I’m feeling a lot better these days. Looking back and trying to rewrite history so that it feels like a failure on my part—my character, my work ethic, or my self-discipline—would be the worst kind of insult to myself. I’m not going to do it.

I’m putting it behind me and moving on.

Forward momentum is what it’s all about. Backward momentum doesn’t even make sense. Time travel is a thing of fiction. :D

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.

Progress continues, hope to finish today

Lynn

Yesterday, I made it most of the way through my story. I’ve made enough changes that I’m going to start today at the halfway point and keep going from there, in case I messed up something. I added a few lines, deleted a few more, and need to double and triple check for typos. :)

I think I’ll finish this today.

I’m also planning to make time for some actual writing today. I didn’t mean to skip that yesterday, but it happened, so today I am going to make extra effort so it doesn’t happen today. :)

I feel really good today. I’m thinking there is something to the fact that I’ve been pushing myself to go to sleep earlier. Even though I don’t have anything keeping me from sleeping as late as I want to sleep, the truth is I feel like I sleep better in the earlier part of the night than in the morning hours. I like to stay up late, but once I wake up in daylight, I’m already losing the fight to get more sleep. I will almost always get more sleep if I go to sleep earlier and get up earlier. So, maybe I have an explanation for why I’ve been feeling better this last week and am still feeling better. I’ve only had one night where I stayed up until about 3 am. That was the night before, and yesterday I did notice a fall off, in both how I felt and in how long I was able to stay focused on my writing work.

My ideal sleep time would be 11 – 7, but I’ll settle for a regular 12 – 8. I top out at about 7.5 hours of sleep anyway. After that, my body is just done with sleep. But daylight comes here at about 6:30 right now so that’s why my ideal is for a 11 pm sleep time. I’m allowed to dream! ;-)

Time to get started, I think. Talk to you later!

A little slow but pleased with my progress

Lynn

The proofread I’ve been working on has taken a lot longer than I thought it would take. Most don’t take long at all, relatively speaking. My usual reading speed for a proofread is about one chapter per 15 minutes, where I make a few highlights per chapter of things to fix.

I’ve done a lot of marking up for this one. This feels more like an edit than a proofread at this point. I’ve got more clarity issues than usual, and some pacing issues I don’t usually have. A lot of that is probably because of how long this story took to write and how disinterested I was in finishing it for a good portion of the writing. I like the opening really well, the middle third just fine, but the last third is really testing my ability to let go.

The only real rule I have for myself when it comes to finishing a work is that it makes me happy when I dot the “i”s and cross those last “t”s. There are parts of this story that don’t feel right to me. Ask me to tell you what it needs to make it right, and I can’t answer that.

So I’m going to fix what is obvious and let it go anyway. It’s time to stop being hung up on it.

I’m proud of my progress and how much time I’ve spent working on it these last three days. It’s been too long since I’ve been this focused on writing.

If this keeps up, I might actually start to think I’ve made it out of the slump. :)

Promising start; and who needs titles?

Lynn

I didn’t change yesterday’s title because there’s nothing of substance in the post anyway, no one will be looking for it later, including me :), and it just doesn’t feel important enough to bother with.

Yesterday, I spent more time at the computer on my work than I’ve spent on it in ages. “Ages” meaning longer than I can remember at the moment. :) It felt great and I stopped before I felt tired. Just a slight backache from the sitting! I’m here this morning to do it again.

I didn’t quite make it through my proofreading and on to writing, but I think I’ll finish it up quickly this morning. Then I’m going to spend a while writing. I’m actually fired up and excited to get restarted. Maybe it was just a slump, maybe I was burned out, maybe I just really needed some time to work through some stuff in my head. Whatever it was, I’m going to put it in the past where it belongs and move forward. :)

At the moment, I think I want to finish my works in progress so I can join some writing buddies for NANO this year with a fresh start on a project.

I put this in my spreadsheet a week or so ago when I was first starting to feel like I was coming back:

Write as many books as I can and enjoy life
Write every day, even if it’s just a little bit

That’s where I’m at, I think. That’s what I feel like I need to do.

Now, time to start proofreading so I have time to write later. :)

Talk to you later!

I’ll think of a title later

Lynn

I’ve been in a slump. Probably the worst slump of my life when it comes to writing. I’ve never gone quite as long as I’ve gone this time without wanting to spend time writing anything at all.

I think I’m finally recovering. “Think” being the real state of things, though. I can’t say for sure. I need to maintain a writing streak for a while before I’ll be convinced. I’ve had several small bursts of writing since it started but none of them lasted. Seeing it last is the real test.

My goal today is to finish a proofread of a story I started writing almost two years ago and finished almost a year ago. I proofread half of it six or so months ago, but then I just quit. Don’t know why. Now I have to start over. Which is only fair. :)

Before I quit for the day, I also want to do some actual writing. So off I go to get started. First up, timing myself as I proofread the chapters. Knowing the timer is going keeps me focused and lets me make it through the chapters one by one much faster than I ever did before I started timing my proofreading.

A fresh start for August

Lynn

The writing has been a little slow to start this month, but I decided late last month that August would be the perfect time for a fresh start. I’ve had family obligations keeping me busy, and although I wanted to get a lot of writing done in July, it turned out to be unrealistic. One kid moved states and it was both a physically demanding month and an emotionally demanding one.

I vastly underestimated how distracting that move would be when I made plans last month for writing.

But that is behind me for the most part now (the emotional adjustment is ongoing) and I have a lot more time to myself to get some writing done. And so I’ve made plans for August.

I plan to begin writing every day. I plan to work on several stories that I already have started, and I’ll probably do it concurrently. I enjoy writing on multiple stories at a time and I usually get more writing done that way. Seems like a good way to get going again on some projects that have lain fallow for too long. :-)

It’s time for a schedule (so I can write lots of books this year)

Lynn

I don’t think I’ve ever had it so hard when trying to restart my writing after a break. I’m so out of the habit of daily writing that I literally keep forgetting to get started. Last night, I decided it was time to go back to a schedule.

I don’t want to think of this as temporary, not this time.

I need to be putting in some effort each day to get to the computer and having a set number of hours to work at it is probably the only way I’m going to get moving on my books again, because I have no inner enthusiasm for them right now.

I feel like I could have, if I push myself to read through them and start actively trying to write the next part, so that’s where I’m at in my thinking.

Otherwise—if I don’t start pushing myself harder—I’m just going to abandon it all and go back to filling my creative time with the consumption of other people’s creativity instead of creating something of my own.

That’s absolutely not what I want to do. I have a lot of books I want to write this year (and half the year is already gone!).

Some of my series have been waiting years for a new story and I want to revisit them and put out something new so readers know those series aren’t dead. Because they’re not. All my series are open-ended so I can add books to them whenever I want. I like it that way, to be honest. The worlds don’t disappear just because I tie up the loose ends of one book’s story. :)

So here I am, ready to start a three hour block of time devoted to writing.

I’ll be doing this daily and I owe it to myself not to flake out and miss a bunch of days. Here’s my promise to myself to do my best. I can’t say how much I’ll get done, but I expect to have at least something to report at the end.

I’ll be back in three hours or so. See you then.

Working log: editing & publishing a short novella today

Lynn

I’ve decided to resume my working log entries. I always get a little jolt of energy from logging my work as I go, and you never know, but something I write here might help someone else with their own work, even if it’s just the energy that comes from working while you know someone else is working. That works for me sometimes, so why not?

Today, I’m going to proofread/edit* a short novella and get it ready to publish sooner rather than later. ASAP, to be honest, just to get it off my back. I wrote it last year and I’ve avoided it since, for no good reason that I can name. I just didn’t feel like getting it done and out. Not great for business, but I am who I am. It’s surprisingly hard to change that aspect of my personality/character. I’ve tried. I am trying. I’ll keep trying, so I’ll leave it at that. :D

I’m doing it now, so I can get off my own back about it.

As I used to do, I’ll update this post as I progress through the day in getting this done. Later, peeps. :D

11:30 am — Starting the proofread/edit.

5:03 pm — Worked on formatting the book. Split/added chapters breaks.

*As always, this just means typo hunting and error corrections. I do minor changes for clarity (clarity is essential) but try to leave everything else alone. Editing line by line for word choice etc is a fool’s errand. When I let perfectionism win, I lose. Writing becomes too much like work I want to avoid and I just won’t do it.

Getting past feelings and into action

Lynn

I’m enjoying the freedom of having a working laptop battery again. I should have replaced it sooner. I hadn’t realized just how much of a roadblock I’d let the AC cord become to me getting to the computer to write. I like writing away from my desk even more than I thought I did, obviously. I’ve been making progress finally, and I’m glad to see it.

It’s not only that I haven’t felt like writing (not in some vague, eh, don’t want to do it way, but in a deeply averse to writing anything way), it’s also that I haven’t felt like doing anything writing related.

I don’t really know what to do about that. I’ve given up trying to find a way to change how I feel. Now it’s time, I think, to just find a way to plow through it and hope I come out on the other side of it with a renewed interest in finishing the books I want to finish and writing the new books and new series I want to write.

I’m going to start writing every day again.

I just don’t think there’s any other way for me. I blink and ten days have gone by and no words have been written. I need a daily writing plan.

I’ve thought about daily word count goals and time goals, but in the end, I’ve settled on not worrying about that stuff for the moment. I will know if I’ve written something or not, and I will mark it down when I do, and make myself do some writing before I call it a day if I haven’t.