Fiction writer. Expert procrastinator. This is my life.
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. ;)
WIFI is hard to resist! Why else would I be online right now when I intended to try to write for another half hour?
Getting the WIFI turned off is the easy part—keeping it turned off is where I’m running into problems.
And once it’s on, there’s always just … one … more … little … thing … to … check. Just one more.
8:24 pm: 3,687. Goal: 6,000 words. Still tap-tapping along. :)
2:03 pm: 2,058. Goal: 6,000 words. At my current speed, I’ll reach today’s goal sometime tomorrow. :D
Challenging myself. 11:10 am: 1,032. Goal: 6,000 words.
—Working to increase my daily average word count
Uh, this was truly a crash and burn day. -25 words
—Working to increase my daily average word count
Writing day cut short, but I made it to 887.
Probably should’ve written more, but suffice to say I didn’t get back to writing tonight. I could now, I guess, but I’m exhausted. Sleepy-time I think. ;)
WI-FI off. Must write.
—Working to increase my daily average word count
Currently at 2,221.
I’d hoped to be further along today, but I guess it’s just been one of those days. :D
Maybe I’ll get one more chance to up my count.
Made it to 2,346.
—Working to increase my daily average word count
512 today, very much at the last minute.
What can I say? It’s the weekend. ;)
—Working to increase my daily average word count
This is not the way: 334.
—Working to increase my daily average word count
Crashed at 1,882.
Really wanted to get to 2k, but I just didn’t make it.
I’ve really got to get some publishing tasks done this weekend. I have books to get into print that should’ve been in print months ago, and I have a short story that’s been done since the 15th, which I said would be ready in a couple of weeks back on the 4th-ish of April. Those weeks are long gone and it’s time to get that formatting done and get that story published!
I should set aside a day and just format stuff all day! It might be sorta fun to just dig in like that. ;)
I finally had my first sales on Google Play! Considering my books are priced at >$8 apiece because of Google’s habit of discounting, I’m tickled someone thought the series worthy. Book 1 of one of my series was purchased on the 29th of April, then books 2 and 3 were purchased on the 30th.
Took long enough! But finally I feel like my effort putting my books up there wasn’t wasted. :D
As for setting up an account on Google Play, it was a pain, but the actual process of adding books and uploading? Really simple. Probably on par with Kobo Writing Life or Nook Press, except there’s no preview of any kind. You just upload your cover image and your EPUB (and/or a PDF if you want). I have a PDF for all but my last upload.
I probably won’t bother with PDFs in the future—ah, never mind. I do a PDF for OMNI Lit/ARe, so I will probably keep doing them for the novels that I also have there. I don’t put everything over there, because I just can’t be bothered with the short stuff—you know, thinking about it now, I probably should. I might sell a copy or two. But I’ve been saying that for a while and I haven’t done it yet.
Ah well. Someday, maybe. ;)
—Working to increase my daily average word count
Final count : 2,874
Still trying to write 800–1,000 words on 5 to 6 stories each day; still not succeeding most of the time.
I deleted a lot of words today so this is a great word count, IMO! :) If I take those deleted words into account, my new words for the day was more like 3,800 (I deleted around 1,000 or so).
—Working to increase my daily average word count
Made it to 1,679 words for the day
WIFI off.
—Working to increase my daily average word count.
Hmm. Made it to 327 words.
Don’t ask me why that was all I got done. I have no idea. At least I’m writing! :D
Scratch that. I think it’s lack of sleep. There were a lot of storms last night, the power was out for a few hours, and I just didn’t get much sleep. I’m tired, and that really explains everything. I’d lay around and nap, but I really need to get some writing done!
Also, something’s interfering with my ability to make reasoned, future-beneficial choices in the moment, and then stick to them.
Getting started. … And later … Never got started. Not a single word written. I have no idea why. Trust me, I asked myself that question a thousand times. I have no answer.
—This is not the wayWorking to increase my daily average word count.
Was going to call this “Break My Daily Word Count Record—Attempt #15” but I’ve decided to put that on hold until the weekdays. Or more specifically, for days where I feel I can give the effort my undivided attention. Not every day is a good day for going after a record. Today feels like one of those not-so-good days.
This is actually the third post I’ve written today. I scrapped the first two. They’re in Evernote, same as this one, so they’re not gone forever, but I’m just going to ignore them. ;)
That said, I still expect to have a productive writing day. Or I’m making the attempt, anyway.
…
Or not. Said about nine and a half hours and 45 words later.
6:06 PM: 45
10:15 PM: 506
I think I’ve also decided to post my little progress reports as “status updates” or “asides” instead of full-on posts. :D But yes, this just brings home the point that weekend days are unpredictable.
Fourteen is many more attempts than I thought would be necessary to reach my current one day word count goal, considering how successful I’ve found working on multiples stories each day to be for helping me reach higher word counts.
But fourteen isn’t really that bad, considering how long that record has stood.
5,475 has been my record for the most words I’ve written in one day since June 17, 2013.
And … ayk!! I had to look that up, and although my spreadsheet tells me the max() number in my daily word count sheet, it didn’t tell me that that particular entry had a note beside it! After reading that note, I don’t actually think that’s my high word count. :o I’ve been operating on the belief for nearly a month now that I managed to write 5,475 words in one day but my note indicates I might have “rescued” some words I deleted about two weeks prior to that date. Wow.
I took a closer look so I could find my true high word count and it would be the next highest number, 5,208 on August 16, 2013. I remember that day, and I know that was a genuine win.
Well, learn something new most days. Today is apparently one of those days.
I’d still rather beat 5,475. But this does, in fact, make a lot of sense, since I don’t have that same remembered feeling about the 5,475. I was surprised when my record was that high, and it appears now it was for good reason!
Still, back to the stories. I’m going to get started shortly and try to break at least one of those records today. Plus, it’s the first day of my new week and I’m trying to break another 7-day record, and I’m trying to break my monthly record.
Time to shut down my WIFI before I get lost in it!
And it’s 11:19 am and I haven’t written a word. I can still do this. So. Okay. Time to get started. Right now.
12:13 pm : 266
3:00 pm : 1,269
4:22 pm : 1,510
Slow going today! I just don’t see how I’m going to come close to breaking my record when all I want to do right now is nap. Or watch tv. Or do anything but sit here and write. It’s fun when I’m doing it but I just don’t want to focus.
Later…
It’s late, I’m tired, and I haven’t done any writing since 4:22 pm. I wanted to get to 2,000 today. I’m close enough that I should try—only I’m not going to. I’m so tired I just want to go on to sleep. I got up entirely too early today and I just don’t have any energy left.
Tomorrow I’ll try to get to 2,000 earlier in the day.
I promised to watch a movie tomorrow and I’m going to, but I’m also going to write more than I wrote today. The movie is less than 2 hours long, and lunch will be about 2 hours long, so I’ll be unable to work from 10 am to 2 pm. But 7-ish to 10 should give me between 1,000–1,200 words, then 2 to 4 should put me at 2,000–2,400, then 6 to 8 should put me near 3,000–4,200. I’m trying for 4,200.
From now on, though, I think I’m going to make Monday–Friday my primary writing days where I do more than my average. Saturday and Sunday will be reserved for just keeping my mean up and getting a head start on the week’s writing.
UPDATE: Yeah. This record-breaking thing isn’t working so well. I’m either going to have to try again in May or pull off a miracle.
Lucky 13, maybe? Yep, yep. I read a passage from Thinking, Fast and Slow last night about “regression to the mean” and I realized right away that I need to raise my daily word count mean so I can regress to a higher number! ;)
I didn’t read enough of the book to know if there’s anything else in there that I could use, but the fact is, my current mean is 725 words and that’s not even close to where I want to be. I want to be prolific and for me that means I should write at least 2,000 words a day on average. (Of fiction. Who cares what else I write?)
How committed do I feel to reaching this goal? Committed!
On that note, I’m tracking my progress today, because I’m making a concerted effort to break my daily word count record, and it’s my last chance this week to do it since my writing weeks end on Friday and begin again on Saturday. :D
9:21 am : 334**
10:45 am : 775***
6:20 pm : 1,174
*Yeah, you didn’t know there was an attempt #1–12, did you? I never put those posts online. Ah, well.
**Why so slow? Because I’m actually making progress on my stalled out novella! Yay!
***What happened?! I … don’t really know. I felt a compulsion to update a couple of websites I have, which ran terribly slow, and a quickie post or two turned into two and a half hours. Then life stuff had to happen, which happens every day, so no surprise there, and then when I finally got to writing again, it was 5:07 pm and apparently my speed was about 399 words an hour. Yikes!
I’ve promised to watch a movie at 7 pm so that’s going to be it for me, so back to work! The chance of breaking my record today has gone, so now I’m just trying to salvage what I can in my effort to reach and maintain a 2k a day average.
And, nope, didn’t happen. I didn’t get anything additional done on my books. I spent my last 40 minutes adding some of these posts I’ve been doing in Evernote to the real blog.
Writing is not a job.* Just wanted to get that out of the way. :D Now, I want to spend all day writing, and all evening reading, so time to get to it or the day’s going to fade away on me.
Time : word count
9:27 am : 132
10:26 am : 598
12:54 pm : 979
Final : 1,080
I cut one of my fingernails too short when I trimmed them day before yesterday. Ouch. It only started hurting last night, though, so yesterday I probably damaged the quick right below the tip of my nail somehow.
Also, I’m up to unposted b-log number twenty-five. Twenty-five. Boggles the mind.
I’m going to take some time today, later, and post at least a few of them. Otherwise, I’ll probably never post any of them. Don’t be surprised to see some backdated posts after today. :D
I’m dragging and I’m not sure what to do about it. Hmm. Caffeine? Sugar? Exercise? Nap? They all sound like a bad idea just about right now, just another way to avoid writing. Which is funny, in an unfun way, because I actually like where my stories are, but I keep yawning and I’m tired. What to do, what to do…
Here’s a quote from the ever-helpful Joanna Penn:
I can’t keep doing what I doing and expecting a different result. I have to change what I’m doing in order to reach my goals. [sic]
This is exactly why I keep changing my process, and why I always seem to be looking for the next best one, because I can’t stay in the same place and expect to end up somewhere else. :D
Psychologists have found that we are all too quick to use progress as an excuse for taking it easy … that making progress on a goal motivates people to engage in goal-sabotaging behavior.
I have direct experience with this and it’s a horrible, horrible feeling to know you’ve just done something wonderful (like beat your all-time 7-consecutive-day word count record) and then fall down the very next week. It’s hard to get back up after that, and I’m saying that as someone who is trying right now to get back up. Tomorrow is the end of my second week after the fact, and I’ve done so horribly bad on my word counts these last two weeks compared to where I want to be that I want to pretend they don’t even exist.
*I’ll link this to the relevant b-log if I remember. Ha! I remembered. :)