Tag: Writing fiction

I want to beat my current one-day word count record—and get a few other things done today too. So to help myself stay on task, I’ll be blogging my progress today. :D

Here goes. 10:30 am. I’m getting started with a 50 minute timed session.

Current stats at 12:55 pm:

93 Total minutes
840 Total words
542 Total WPH
1.55 Hours completed
6.860595238 Hours to finish

(I really miss the ability to paste in a table from Excel!)

And here it is 7:14 pm and I haven’t written another word yet. I had to stop for lunch, family was home, I needed a nap, had to Christmas shop, then more Christmas shopping, then thought I could get back to writing but it was meal time again, and finally here I am. Unfortunately, I have to stop at 10 pm at the latest because I have plans tomorrow. I also won’t be likely to get any writing done, and I am fighting a serious case of “I’m ready to give up and just try this again on Thursday instead of fighting today and tomorrow to get going again” but I’m not going to let that attitude win.

I’m going to get back to writing until 10 pm and I’m going to make a point of writing at least 1,000 words tomorrow no matter what I have to do to get them done.

Also, starting Thursday, I’m going to do my first Book in 7 Days Challenge. It’ll be a little bit of a cheat since I do already have about 10k words written on this book, but it’s going to be a great experiment. The reason I’m planning it is because I want to finish this book before Christmas. And if I can’t do it, I want to be able to say I worked like a maniac trying.

So, here I go. I’m going to set the timer for 60 minutes, which’ll put me breaking at 8:30 pm. Be back then.

I’ve managed a few more sessions, shorter than I’d have liked them to be and at 10:47, it’s still later than I wanted to end the night.

Here are my ending stats for the day:

178 Total minutes
1,256 Total words
423 Total WPH
2.966666667 Hours completed

Tomorrow is a day off, but I’m still planning to get in that 1,000 words. I’m at a place now where I should be able to pick up speed. No more writing through scenes I’d already written, replacing what was there with new stuff and deleting what I didn’t replace. It’s pretty much all new stuff from here on. At least until I hit another wall. ;)

Goodnight!

I’m committing to this now. Tomorrow I’m going to get up, ready to write, and aim for my one-day word count record, with the intention of setting a new one. That’d be 5,759 words. :) Or something like that.

Today, on the other hand, has been less than stellar, and somehow I never even got around to writing. Boo. This isn’t going to happen tomorrow.

Now I must scramble to put something on the page for my new book so I don’t break my barely alive writing-every-day streak and then get to bed so I don’t start writing late tomorrow! :o

I kind of want to scream. The wind is howling outside and I’m tired and I always love the breezy days and nights. Something about the way the gusts hit the house and make it shake just a little always makes me feel so … restful. Odd, I think, but that’s the truth.

Restful isn’t what I need right now though, because I’m only at 1,522 words for the day—far from my 4,558 word goal.

But I really want to stop and just … do something else. I’m not really bored with the new book, I’m just tired.

Although I haven’t been writing for the past 15 days (not counting the days when I worked on publishing stuff for the last book I wrote), I have been doing lots of other publishing stuff and working on book covers, formatting, etc, and I’ve had a lot of really long days. I think I’m just burning out a bit, and I need a break.

I haven’t made time to read any fiction or watch more than an episode of tv here and there. I think … I’m going to shut down for a while, do these other things, get some Christmas shopping done, and see how I feel at about 9 pm. If I feel like resuming the writing for an hour or two I might try, and if I don’t, I think I’ll just read something fun!

So I was worried about the new book, but it’s actually doing okay. :)

These are category lists, not the whole store. I’d be dying here if this was my book’s rank in the whole store. ;)

The book is $6.99 and has been from the moment I published it, so these numbers show that you don’t have to price super low to get into the top 100 genre lists. The #68 is only two categories deep.

On the other hand, my books never seem to get sticky, so I don’t expect it to last more than a few more days.

I think my last release in this series was doing a bit better than this one at this point, but it’s been 7 months between novels so I’ll just blame it on that. :) (My other last novel was the first book under a different pen name, so no Amazon algo love for that one.)

Update Friday Morning

This morning the book is doing a little better than it was last night, so I thought I’d screenshot it for an update.

Of note, I thought only one of those rankings was 2 categories deep, but it’s actually 2 of them.

I’ve been finishing things I’ve been putting off, and all because I’ve been sick. I think it’s because I’ve just been “tinkering” instead of working. Funny, that!

But tinkering is more fun than work. :D And no guilt for not writing, because hey, I’m sick. ;)

Not that puffy eyes will stop me, but I also have sneezing and snot and am very tired! Colds suck.

On the other hand, I’m pretty happy with how yesterday turned out. Sure, I didn’t write, but I did finish a cover that I’ll need in the next two months (I hope) and I finally submitted those paperback files I originally tried to get done before my October vacation this year. :o I never did get back to them when I got back and my reasoning was that I’d decided to update my book blurb to something better and I needed to wait until I’d done that. Didn’t work out and I just gave up. I submitted the book with the description as is. I can always change it later and resubmit the files then as a new edition or something.

(Why don’t most indie publishers publish new editions as new editions? I mean, if the book is linked up properly to the ebook on most stores, wouldn’t that keep all the reviews and stuff? Maybe it’s the rank. A new edition would have its very own rank on stores like Amazon (and we all know Amazon is the big dog for most indie publishers) and it would have to build up to the rank of the old edition.)

I might try it just to see what happens if I ever change my covers or decide to do a new size of paperback. A new book description alone probably doesn’t warrant a new edition. :)

Also, audio. I need to think about it again. I thought about it a few years ago, but not enough upside to the downside for me. ;) Too little reward for the effort and time required, I should say.

Anyway, going away for a while to work on the following, then I’ll start writing if my head starts to feel better.

1. Paperback formatting for a book I published in the last month
2. Paperback book cover for that same book
3. Book cover for the short piece I copy edited today
4. Corrections for the copy edited short piece
5. Formatting of the short piece so I can publish it
6. Publishing the short piece so I can sell it!
7. So much more stuff I’m not going to bother writing down

As a side note, I do believe I’m going to redo my paperbacks for my main pen name so I can sell them cheaper. The 8 x 5 size is nice to hold, but it makes the price higher because each page holds less text at a reasonable font size and that means my books are longer than they have to be. I’m not really willing to compromise on font size because I like easy to read books. I don’t have reading vision woes (yet) so that’s not it! I like the looks of generous leading and a nice sized font. A slightly larger font (12pt Adobe Caslon or Garamond) looks really nice in a book, IMO. :) Since I don’t sell many anyway, I’ve always just done them for me. That’s what I like. :D

But I did compromise on this latest paperback I formatted and I like that I’m going to be able to sell it at $14.99 and still make the same profit I make on my other pen name books. And I have a feeling this book turned out really well. It looks beautiful on screen. I’m excited to get my proof copy of it and see how it looks in my hands.

It’s an 8.5 x 5.5 book. Just a half inch extra top and side but it made a big difference. I didn’t have to compromise my font size at all. 12pt Adobe Caslon Pro. I also used the native widows/orphan control features of Word* instead of taking the time to match each page in a spread, etc. I looked at the output expecting to hate it but willing to compromise because that had just cut down the time it took me to format a paperback from days to hours. I didn’t mind it at all! And as a reader, I know I wouldn’t care. It still looks good.

*Yes, I format paperbacks in Word. I know people all over the web say you shouldn’t do that, but I like Word and it turns out very nice books for me. InDesign’s learning curve is just more than I want to deal with right now (I did try Scribus, but the text looked IDENTICAL in the test pages I created to compare it to Word’s output. I expected something a lot different, and yet…. the pages were identical! But the set up was a pain in the ass. I later tried InDesign again, and I decided I just didn’t want to put the time in to learn how to do everything I’d need to know to do it “right.” Screw right. Perfection is my enemy and I’ve had to come to terms with that.

I’ve been working on book covers today. I have two books I’d like to finish in the next two months. (Three, actually, now that I think about it.) And another I’d like to publish that’s already finished. (That short story I mentioned I wanted to copy edit today.)

Although I haven’t written anything today, I did do the copy edit (I still need to input the corrections), and I’ve been working on book covers. I’ve almost completed a paperback cover, and a cover for one of those books I’ll hopefully be writing as soon as I feel better.

It’s nice to know I’ve gotten several things I needed to do out of the way. It will make publishing those books a lot less stressful when the time comes! Cover design frustrates the crap outta me.

Something else that frustrates me: feeling like I’ve accomplished nothing when I have, in fact, accomplished quite a few things.

Here’s what I need to finish ASAP (practicing follow-through). :)

1. Book cover I’m working on for an unwritten book DONE
2. Paperback book cover for a book I published more than 6 months ago (ouch) DONE
3. Paperback formatting for a book I published in the last month STARTED
4. Paperback book cover for that same book
5. Book cover for the short piece I copy edited today
6. Corrections for the copy edited short piece
7. So much more stuff I’m not going to bother writing down

I don’t like putting off writing to do these things, but if I’m going to be putting off writing anyway, well… might as well get something done.

That’s a record! My previous best was 51,396 words in February 2013.

I’d like to reach 95,333 words in December. Even if I don’t, I’m still hoping I’ll beat this new record.

Now, I just have to get started writing again. Right now, that’s looking like a problem.

I feel like I’m getting a head cold, and I blame the lack of sleep.

I stayed up too late too many days last week and the weekend and now I’m sick. I can’t actually say with certainty that’s why, but I’ve managed to avoid getting sick with lots of the colds and other more unmentionable illnesses everyone around me has suffered through, until now.

Today I’m taking another day off. I say “another” because I wrote only 324 words yesterday (in one 50 minute session) because I stayed up too late into the morning the night before and didn’t feel so well yesterday either. I’ll tinker today and get enough to keep my streak alive, but I think I’m going to nap.

No more staying up late, because I’m never able to make up the sleep the next morning. Lesson learned. Again.

I know! It was supposed to be Friday, then Saturday. Instead, it’s today.

Every publishing task I did took longer than usual this time. Then, yesterday, it was time to get my accounts in order for the coming months…

I brought my sales spreadsheet up to date, balanced some accounts, and planned my spending for the next few months.

I’m a huge fan of YNAB, a handy little piece of budgeting software that I’ve been using for years (still on version 3 because it does what I need). It works really well with the writing lifestyle and lets me plan my spending months in advance to match incoming royalties. If you depend on your publishing income the way I do, you need to be able to plan months in advance for cash flow if you don’t want finances to stress you out. YNAB is particularly suited to the task and I love it. I don’t go overboard, and I use only 3 master categories: Payments and Bills (Mortgage, Insurance, Electricity, Internet & Phone, etc.), Savings Categories (Maintenance, Doctor, Gifts, Long-term Savings, a.k.a. stuff that’s needed to address the “not if, when” vagaries of life), and Flexible Spending (Food, Clothes, Entertainment, blah blah).

Now I’m all planned up through February and I can turn my attention back to other things. :)

Time to try to break my one day word count record again!

And format a paperback or two, finish some paperback covers, redo some images, make a few typo fixes in a couple of my previously published stories I recently read as research for my next book, and copy edit a story I finished back in October, make a cover for it, and publish the danged thing!

Whew. I have a lot to do.

I kind of wish it wasn’t already 1:42 in the afternoon. I have a feeling my goals today have gotten a little out of hand. :o

Still working on those publishing tasks for that book. The cover took too long, and the copy edit is dragging. I’m going to be lucky to get back to writing on Friday. It was supposed to be Monday. Didn’t happen. So seven days off writing instead of three.

Pulling out my hair here. But … onward. I’ll get it done.