Making changes

Lynn

I changed my website’s WordPress theme. I like this new one for the most part.

My sidebar is missing, and I miss it, but the options for themes with a sidebar were limited by my requirements and what I wanted. So I’m learning to live with it.

All the links you could find in the sidebar are now at the bottom of the page.

And the good news is that my archive pages, category and tag pages, too, now show a summary or excerpt instead of the whole post. So you can skim a little easier to find what you want, if that’s something you want to do.

I also added a new link into the top menu called “I write” to make it just a little quicker to get to some of those pages that were linked in the sidebar.

Overall, I’m happy with the change, but we shall see if I like it long-term. Sometimes it can take me a few weeks to really decide how I feel after I make a change. :)

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.

Boy am I glad I’m not exclusive to Amazon (one more reason to be happy wide)

Lynn

Ah, I got fired up tonight and wrote a post for my personal site about Amazon and their shitty ways of mistreating people. If you’re bored, go read it. If you want to share in the hate, leave a comment. :-)

The incident left me deeply unsettled as an author who depends on KDP for a significant chunk of author earnings.

Although I’ve been wide with my books from the beginning and intended to stay that way, this made me even more so determined to stay away from exclusivity with anyone, but especially with Amazon. They just can’t be trusted. Whether it is incompetence, willful ignorance, or deliberate shady dealings by the employees in charge, there’s just no way to know. But I won’t risk it.

I finally started a Patreon and opened a Ko-fi account. I’ve been looking at some other alternative publishing paths, too. Specifically for a Kindle Vella story I started last year. I had put off branching out with it, even though they had to cave on their terms to allow authors to put their stories up with other paying markets, or risk no one being willing to give it a shot. I’m going to make sure I get that taken care of this month.

Amazon doesn’t deserve my exclusivity, anywhere, even for a little side project I only started to get me writing regularly again.

At the time the incident happened, I wasn’t in the mood to write about it. Then I was supposed to work on something tonight and my inner procrastinator came out. I started looking around for things to do, got reminded of how badly Amazon had pissed me off, and I wrote a post. :D And then a bit of another one here.

TL;DR, Amazon sucks can’t be trusted.

1,499 posts about nothing?

Lynn

Well, I’m passing a milestone with this post. This is post number 1,500. :)

Most of the posts of Perpetualized.com are just my ramblings about my writing days. Considering it’s been about 7,000 days since I started this site, and about 3,550 since I started writing to self-publish (as opposed to writing to send to a publisher or hobby writing), that’s not so bad.

Most of the posts don’t really have any meaning for anyone but me. There are a few gems scattered around the site, though I admit they’re hard to find.

:)

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.

A Windows 11 upgrade

Lynn

I resisted moving from Windows 7 until earlier this year. I finally had no choice because I bought a new laptop and it came with Windows 10.

I got used to it, as best as I could. I won’t say I liked it, but I didn’t hate it, so there was that.

But recently, my machine had been telling me it was ready for an update to Windows 11. I decided I would probably do it when I had time, because if I was going to have to live with 10, I might as well live with 11 instead.

A few days ago, I finally did. I’m glad I upgraded from Windows 10 to Windows 11. I like it better than 10, even though it’s not perfect.

There have been a few surprising little features that I like very much, like the ability to compare images when you select and open them together. Or how neat and tidy the “start” window is now. (I did have to re-pin everything there, but my pinned documents in the taskbar for some of my favorite programs stayed put.)

The recent updates to the Microsoft Office programs make more sense now. The look fits well with Windows 11.

The colors are dull (as they were in Windows 10 to some extent). There’s too much sand and tan and gray. The rounded edges are too soft and boring. Google’s redesign (and return) to rounded edges is much prettier, but WordPress’s dull colors and new editor look is no better. In other words, I’ve seen plenty of this style of design, so it hasn’t taken me long to get used to it.

Overall, upgrading Windows was a happy upgrade, for a change.

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.

Time to publish and move on

Lynn

Today I’m working on formatting a story to publish. Yes, it’s the one I was editing. As soon as it’s gone, I’m going to write.

I’m actually excited to get back to writing. I kind of wish I could justify dumping everything I already have going and just start fresh with it all, but I don’t think I’d be happy to do that in the end, so I’m going to just pick up where I left off on it all.

Plan is simple: over the next few weeks or as quickly as possible (because I want to join NANOWRIMO with a project I can make a fresh start on) I want to finish all my outstanding works in progress.

Here’s what I have to get through and the words I’ve already written:

WIP Novel #160,660
WIP Novel #216,344
WIP Novel #37,737
WIP Novel #42,801
WIP Novel #5 (Will start this fresh for NANO)3,459
WIP Novella #15,398
WIP Short Story #1 (Sequel to the story I’ve just edited, had no idea I’d already written so much for it)4,353

Now, there’s no way I can get through all those WIP novels before November. But I can possibly finish the first two. Then I’ll do the NANO thing, finish that one, then get the rest of these completed by the end of the year.

That’s the plan.

Needs a title

Lynn

I skipped writing work yesterday. I planned to proofread the last two chapters of my story, but I was tired and I just didn’t get started. I changed my routine and I suspect (ha!) that I sabotaged my own momentum.

Today, I went back to the exact routine that got me working on my story Sun–Wed. So I am here and I am ready to finish this story and, if at all possible today, publish it.

Yesterday, I did listen to some of Dean Wesley Smith’s “Writers’ Deadly Delusions” Pop-up on Teachable. His Pop-ups are similar to his lectures, and I received access to a few as a reward for a few Kickstarters I’ve supported. I’d claim to have learned something, but I’ve heard it all before. :D On the other hand, it’s nice to remind myself of the mindset I find most helpful and enjoyable for my writing and publishing. My perfectionism and other issues really get in my way and I need to work constantly to keep those things from screwing myself over.

On that note, it might be time to re-read some of my Lawrence Block books on writing. Spider Spin Me a Web is excellent, and it’s my favorite.

Now, I’m going to start on the last chapters of my proofread, make every effort possible to ignore my inner critic and fix only what needs fixed, and then get some actual publishing stuff done.

[I’m a bit pissed off with WordPress right now. For some reason, it deleted the paragraph I had here originally, and now I’m having to rewrite it. Not only did it disappear, WordPress didn’t save it in the revisions. >:( Ah, fuck it. It was something about NANOWRIMO, November, and some wips I want to finish so I can start fresh with a book for it. I really don’t want to waste any more of my morning on this. :D]

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. :)