Not writing enough – Perpetualized

A lot of rambling about writing and a second challenge

Decided to give the “no timers” challenge a shot again after looking at my current run of daily word counts and comparing them to the run I had in April and May in which I didn’t use timers. The numbers so far are promising even after what I thought was a bad start but really didn’t end up being that at all.

The challenge runs for a week. I’ll update at the end of that time. (Updated below!)

As for now, today, I’m just trying to pep up my mood. Writing at my desk is getting me down. The weather went from HOT to COLD and didn’t stop for a break between them, so I’m kind of bummed, and my weird back pain isn’t helped by anything it seems. Standing sucks, sitting sucks, lying on the bed sucks.

After months of this, I’m starting to get annoyed. So I moved back to the desk, because the couch writing was hurting my leg.

I’m really short, and couch writing means sitting with my legs crossed under my laptop to support it. Lately, I’ve been dealing with what feels like a nerve pain in my thigh and knee, brought on by a switch in couches about a year ago. Biggest mistake I’ve made in a while. The current couch is a nightmare for my writing. I really miss my old one, but remember the mention of basement mold several months ago? Yeah. I would have switched it out by now, but the mold got the old one. :-(

All this to say that finding a comfortable writing spot lately has been really hard. I don’t do well writing when I’m not comfortable.

I had to go back to my dining room chair, too. It does hurt my back a lot less, but I’ll be honest, I have no idea why, because there’s no support at all. I have to sit completely weird on the hard chair to keep my legs from going numb (short, remember? and my feet can’t rest flat on the floor when I’m sitting back in the seat).

When I say hard, this chair is just a hard wood chair with spindles for a back and bars under the seat to support the chair legs. I use them to support my legs. :D I also prop my legs up on the window sill under the back of my desk.

My desk is in front of my windows and they’re nice, tall windows that let in a lot of light and have a relatively low window sill that seems to be at the perfect ottoman height when I’m in my chair at the desk. :D It’s not super comfortable, because it’s wood with an edge, but it gives me something to rest my feet against and gives me one more position I can switch to when the last one starts to bug me.

Anyway, I’m totally rambling this morning. I think I made my coffee too strong. ;-)

One thing I’ve kept up is the daily writing. The “no more zero word days” challenge is going well. I’ve had a few days where I’m not exactly proud of how much I wrote to keep the streak alive, but it counts, and that’s okay. I’ll get better if I keep going.

It started on 8/6 and yesterday was day 74.

How am I staying on task without the timers that I’ve said again and again give me a way to focus and stay on task? Numbers.

Remember the numbers I mentioned in this post (Today’s goal: 3,200 words (day 6)) and this one (Today’s goal: 3,200 words (day 4))? I haven’t forgotten those numbers. They’re still the numbers I’m chasing. Except sort of not.

Look, I’ve had to take a hard look at how I decide what to write next, and it always comes down to the need to write what I’m most interested in writing next. So I took my 3,200 words goal and said to myself: Hey self, if I write 3,200 words a day every day, then what needs to get written will eventually get written. That’s just the way it is.

So I took that to heart. But then I realized that sometimes I don’t know that I’m in the mood to write something until I start writing it, so I changed it up. Just a little.

I decided that if I want to write 3,200 words a day, the easiest way to do that for me is to write a little each on every story I’m interested in writing, and when something catches my interest hard, I can just keep going.

It’s working.

I finally got back to the stalled novel yesterday. Wrote nearly 1,900 words on it. And it all started because I wanted to write 525 words per story yesterday, on 8 stories.

Every story I’m working on is one that needs finished, the sooner the better, so no words are wasted following this method.

And it frees me in a way that my creative muse seems to really like.

So here’s the math.

3,200 words ÷ 8 stories = 400 words per story.

If I want a 1,000 words a day streak, which I’m really trying to get off the ground, I need 125 words per story on the 8 stories.

It’s an effortless number, really, so the 1,000 words a day streak is something I’m really pushing for at the moment. Yesterday was day three of that. I’m going to give it a week before I start calling it a streak, but I definitely have my sights set on sticking that out.

Anyway, more rambling, and it’s really time for me to turn my focus to writing. :D I’m feeling strangely talkative today and have no one around, so I might start another post in which I detail out my effort to get that first 125 words on each story, and then go for the 400.

Then move on to trying to fix some big issues I think I have in my stalled (but not stalled anymore) novel. It needs some work. More than usual, and I’m not sure what to make of that.

Maybe I really should scrap the biggest portion of what I have and start over. I don’t know. I hope I figure that out soon.

Later. :D

Update for the “no timers” challenge. It ran a week. I decided to extend it, indefinitely.

I was wrong about the numbers, but even after running them again and seeing that I definitely wrote more words on the days I used timers over the long-term (all time), I gave it some additional thought and decided that the thing is skewed in favor of timers because whenever I felt focused enough to write, I was using them. I need a lot more time of no timers to decide if there really is a long-term difference.

Feeling a little less alone today on this journey to improvement

I was going to respond to a blog post I ran across today but found the commenting system was using Disqus which I don’t use and realized I had too much to say for a comment anyway.

Here’s a link: Writing under the influence: productivity and motivation tips to help authors write faster. It’s an interesting post, but the thing that really stood out to me is that I’ve finally (finally!) come across someone with some of the exact same issues in writing and productivity that I have spent six years talking about on this blog.

A “successful” writing day for me right now – when I’m consistent – is 1500 words a day, with two big problems.:

#1. It takes me about 5 sprints to hit 1500 words, but I spread them out throughout the day. So even though technically they only take me about 2 hours, they actually take up my whole day (and I’m too mentally exhausted to do anything else).

I have done the numbers ten ways to Sunday and if I could consistently write for only 4 hours a day, I could put out a book a month.

I can’t do it.

I have tried and tried and tried and tried. I have been trying for approximately 6 years. 75 months. 2,264 days. What it always comes down to is that 4 hours a day of writing takes me all day and I can do that for a few days or even a week sometimes, but I cannot maintain that pace indefinitely. Even my best month of the entire last 6 years of writing (75 months of word counts!) had me averaging 3.83 hours a day. I reached 57,249 words that month, back in April 2016, and I am still trying to beat that number.

#2. I don’t stay consistent. Weeks or months go by without actively working on my books. But when I open, when I start, I can do 1500 words.

This is my bench lifting ability right now. But if I ONLY do this much, I won’t be building my muscles or increasing in stamina. I’ll be coasting, not improving. I WANT to be writing 5,000 words a day, though I’d be happy with 3000 words. That would give me a longish novel a month, plus editing – and I could finish shorter works of 50K in a month (or less!)

Yeah. I want to write about 2000 words a day. I have a 2000 words a day plan, in fact. I know I should be able to do it in a reasonable amount of time every day. And yet… see my comment above. 2000 words a day takes me about 4 hours (timed writing). 4 hours of timed writing takes me all day. I have occasionally done better, finished early, etc. That’s not something I have ever been able to keep up for longer than a few days.

I’ve tried schedules, and timers, and sprinting, and writing for the love of it. I’ve tried time boxing and time blocking and micro-managing my writing time. I’ve tried eliminating sugar and coffee and tea and I’ve tried more coffee and tea and enough sugar to make me sick. I’ve tried exercise and vitamins and candles and music and clear desks and Leechblock. I’ve tried so, so many things, and all I have to show for it is a string of successful days and failed days and no pattern at all to discern anything of note.

Right now I can do about 1200 words/day consistently. Sometimes 1600. The main problem is it takes me ALL DAY to do this; even though I space out the sprints, I procrastinate and avoid. Then I get behind on other work or projects, and get anxious.

This is a big problem: I can only hit my wordcount goals if I literally do NOTHING else.

And this is due to resistance. But why am I resisting the writing? Because I say stuff like “I’m slow, I’m no good at drafting, writing the first draft is HARD for me.” I don’t believe writing HAS to be a struggle, but it obviously is for me… so I’m avoiding it. How can I write and still have time and energy for everything else on my list?

See the similarities to my own issues mentioned above?

I hope the author of the post figures things out eventually. Maybe it’ll be something I can learn from and apply to my own issues.

And it was nice to feel less alone for a few minutes today.

In the meantime, I’m trying to brainstorm alternative paths to becoming the prolific writer I want to be. All the planning in the world hasn’t seemed to have helped me in the slightest.

Daily average for the first two months (July and August 2012) (no timers, no goals other than to finish a book ASAP): 904 words a day.

All time daily average as of today: 552 words a day.

Daily average this month (timed writing almost every day): 908 words a day.

Yeah. Not much else to say, is there? I sure hope I can figure out some way to put my strengths to work for me in writing and actually improve my yearly/monthly word counts. Because trying to fix my weaknesses hasn’t done much for me at all. I’m still sitting right where I started: inconsistent, slow, and full of resistance.

Today’s (writing) forecast

Today’s writing forecast: cloudy, stormy, but not without hope. ;-)

A rainy day always makes for a good writing day, as far as I’m concerned.

I need to write at least a couple thousand words today, or I need to just admit I’m not going to finish this book anytime in the next three months.

Low word counts are bogging me down again, and several days of interruptions that shouldn’t have been interruptions have distracted me. My focus is not where it needs to be, and my ability to concentrate has taken a sharp hit. But it’s nothing I can’t overcome. These distractions are to some extent self-inflicted and I have to ability to limit them.

Writing feels hard right now and that’s making it too easy to give up. So today’s primary challenge will be to ignore the hard stuff and just enjoy coming up with a fun story.

Challenge accepted.

No writing last night after all

I took the computer up, but instead of writing I just sat with it on my lap and stared at it until I almost dozed sitting up. At that point, I snapped the lid closed and went to sleep. Just too tired.

Being off my sleep schedule and not getting enough sleep have apparently taken their toll. I need to be writing as early in the day as I can right now while I have enough energy to do it so that’s what I’m about to do.

I’m going to finally get through chapters 15 and 16 this morning (it’s 9:32 am) and I’m going to do it within in the next hour.

By 10:30, I want to be ready to start in on the next chapter.

I’ll be back then to update for some accountability. ;) (Yes, you’re my writing accountability group, whether you want to be or not. You’re reading this, aren’t you? Comment if you want me to return the favor and I’ll cheer you on at your own blog.) :)

Overdue books, procrastination, and a writer’s income

Today has been an excellent day for writing.

Unfortunately, I haven’t written a thing. It’s now 9:48 pm and I don’t really have a choice: I have to find it in me to start writing.

I have an overdue book to finish writing (personal deadline—learned my lesson about setting public ones) and a dire need for money in my bank account. So, yeah, don’t bother trying to hack my accounts. You’ll be disappointed. I haven’t been writing anywhere near enough every day, since about the time my children started graduating from high school and heading to college, and it’s starting to show.

All that said, I need to get some income coming in or come November, I’m going to be looking for one of those seasonal jobs writers sometimes need to make ends meet while writing the next book. I would be really embarrassed to do that, if only because I know the only reason it would be necessary in this instance is because I can’t make myself sit and write for two to three hours a day.

Talk about the pain of facing up to your deficiencies. It’s something I’d rather not know about myself, and yet, know it I do. I have pushed it to the last possible moment and now I’m in desperate need of finishing this book.

And there’s the twist. I just went to check on the stray cat that’s been acting weird all day and the curl of dread in my stomach has been justified. He is a she and she’s delivering kittens. Dammit.

Holiday! Okay, not really

I’m not supposed to be taking days off for the July 4th holiday this year because (1) I don’t want to go to the parade, sit in the hot sun, and smell horse poo, and (2) I kind of need to finish this book I’m working on sooner rather than later.

But… I’ve been about as productive a writer today as I’ve been a circus performer. Since I never got to take gymnastics as a child, I’ll just say now that I’m not a circus performer. In case you were wondering.

I’ve written about 237 words today and I have 07:18 left on my 30 minute timer. This session has been waiting on me to finish it since midday. It’s far from midday now. I don’t want to finish it and it’s going to be a chore to make myself (which I am planning to do, but ugh). Doing more than that is probably a dream.

This is what happens when I don’t get enough sleep.

Let’s try not to make that mistake again, okay?