Fiction writer. Expert procrastinator. This is my life.
I write fiction—it’s how I earn my living—and I like to ramble. Just so you know. Nearly everything I do these days relates in some way to writing and publishing, so most of my posts are here.
Today’s challenge is to try to write for 4 to 5 hours to get 2,995 words.
So far, at 10:59 am, I’m not proving to myself that “no schedule” is a great idea. Then again, I wasn’t doing anything during my scheduled writing time lately either!
I will update as soon as I get ready to write my first session or when I finish it. :D
(Well, bummer. That was a failed exercise.)
I wrote “the year of the schedule is sputtering to an end” and immediately thought about my “no more zero word days” challenge and how it’s still pushing me to write something every day even when I really, really don’t want to.
Last night was absolutely painful getting the words down. I was tired after spending more than 5 hours rearranging my living room furniture. I still wasn’t happy at the end of the night. This morning I worked out the kinks and I’ve got something I can live with for a while, I think. I didn’t have anything to add to my current scene. In fact, I came close for the second (or third) time this week to deleting the last 2000 words. I do, in fact, think that’s what I’m going to do today. It’s time to admit the story is stalled because I went somewhere with it that I don’t like and that just isn’t working for me. It’s time to get rid of that and start over.
And yet, I continue to write something each day on one of my books in progress so I can keep my streak alive.
It’s definitely something to work with.
At what point do I just admit the schedule isn’t working and give it up? I don’t know if I’m there yet but I’m getting close.
Ah. Maybe it’s already time.
The schedule really isn’t working anymore.
In all honesty, I can’t say if it ever worked past those first few good weeks. Even then, my progress was scattered. It’s probable that the boost in productivity came about because of a random surge in creativity or with the excitement of trying something new. I like newness.
I have books to write and the schedule isn’t getting them written. Today, facing this, I am sad.
Today I had planned to get started precisely at 9 am. It’s now 10:29 and I’ve been reading fiction instead and wondering why I can’t seem to get started this morning. I have a plot problem I can’t figure out. I feel a bit too tired to wrap my head around it this morning.
Wrong attitude, I know.
But I’d really rather be reading and napping. Yes, already. I’m tired after a crazy night chasing down a bad battery in one of my home’s smoke detectors. In the middle of the night. Up the stairs and down the stairs, with the stepladder. More than once. More than four times, in fact. I did use the word crazy. ;D
I think I’ll take the morning off and tackle this plot issue after my lunch break at 1 pm sharp. Until then, I think I’m going to sit back with a good book.
Oh, and no more WiFi during writing time! It’s seriously not working for me to have it on.
Fact is, it’s going to be a while at my current pace before I have three 2k word days in a row.
Last three days?
946
1,392
1,302
I’m sitting at 232 this morning, after 60 minutes of timed writing and an early start. I’m getting back to it and hoping I can move faster now. I discovered a continuity error in my book that spanned almost four chapters and I had to decide which version to go with and then fix it all. At least I netted 232 words.
My plan today has been to write from 7:30 to 12, trying to reach 2995 words before noon. I’m . . . not so sure I’m going to make it, but I’m not giving up until there’s no hope at all (in other words, at noon).
I’ve been gone (vacation) and now I’m back, and although I didn’t get three 2k days in a row yet, I wanted to post a quick update to say I’m about to give it a shot, starting today. I’m hoping I’ll be back in 3 days and can post a better update. I have a ton of writing to do to catch up in October and I need to get started ASAP.
Also, my daily No More Zero Word Days streak is still alive. Yay! Vacation didn’t kill it, although I’m almost certain I had one day with just a bit less than 50 words, but since I was on vacation and wrote anyway, I’m counting it—even though I wouldn’t count it if I’d been home. I’m about to input all those words and update my daily word count spreadsheet and figure out just what I accomplished while I was gone.
Didn’t think I was going to show up again for a while, did you? Me neither! but I did it. Three consecutive days of >1,000 words.
3,189
2,740
1,116
1,075
I did those words not on one story but on five. I’ve got six novels and a short story I want to finish by the end of the year and I can do it if I start averaging closer to 3000 words a day as long as I stick to working only on those projects.
I’m nowhere near that right now, but all it’s going to take is training. Already 3000 words is starting to feel a whole lot more doable each day. It just doesn’t have that hugeness to it that it used to have.
The No More Zero Word Days restart has given me a lot of words I wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. Also, I’ve had two nights where I couldn’t stand to stop before I reached that 1000 word goal. Writing every day is good for me. Letting myself work on whatever has my interest at the moment also seems to be good for me.
Writing crazy long blog posts? Not so good for me.
So, I’m banning writing here until I’ve had 3 days in a row of >2,000 words. Fingers crossed I’ll be back in 3 days!
Alrighty there. Reading with lunch was a bad idea. Probably because I was already looking for something to keep me from writing. I read most of the rest of Garden of Lies and didn’t do any writing until nearly 2 pm, forgot to use the timer, stopped writing around 3:22, and then finished reading Garden of Lies.
Problem is that the writing I did was not on my most important book. And although I wrote 700 or so words during that time, at 457 I stopped, backed up the file, deleted those words plus a few more and restarted the next section completely. I’ve ended up with a word count of only 209 words more than what I had yesterday.
I restarted my “no more zero word days” challenge on Thursday and I thought I’d let you know how it’s going. In case you care. You probably don’t. But I do, so there. ;)
Thurs. 125
Fri. 60
Sat. 1,270
Sun. 631
Mon. 158
If it hadn’t been for the “no more zero word days” rule, I’m telling you now that Fri., Sun., and Mon. all would have been zero word days. This just goes to prove exactly how big the getting started barrier is for me. If I can get started, I can usually accomplish something. I mean, 631 words on Sun. and I honestly had thought I was going to be lucky to push out the 50 words I’ve decided is the bare minimum.
Today I want more. I’m still showing a lack of respect for my writing time and this post again proves it. It’s 10:30 and I should have started an hour and a half ago. I’m short of sleep. Too much reading last night.
This morning’s late start can also be blamed on reading. I’ve been reading more of Garden of Lies. Unfortunately, since I started reading that one, I’ve also read two novellas, two novella length fan fiction stories, a couple of short stories, and one novel length fan fiction story that I wrote but never quite finished. That one needs a few scenes between the late middle and ending that I did write to finish it off, but I’ve been working on it since 200x and I still don’t know if I’m ready to finish it. I’m really not sure when I started it, but it was in the early 2000s sometime and I don’t have backups that old anymore to give me a better range of dates. I made some major progress on it in 2011, and then again in 2013. In between is the time during which I quit writing all fiction for a year. The big D kept me too distracted and I had absolutely no urge to write fiction during that long year.
I’ve always thought it was fitting that I started writing again almost one year later exactly. May 2011 to May 2012. I picked the habit back up quickly, dusted off a fan fiction story I had finished the very same day I realized I was going to have to get a divorce, and I read through it and realized it was already done. Nothing to do but publish to a fan fiction archive. Then I wrote five more stories.
That was about the time I first heard about KDP so then I wrote a short story just to see if I would still enjoy writing original fiction. Then I wrote another, longer book, that became my first published book. Then I wrote and published another short story and started another novel.
Then I quit my job to write full time. That was four months later. :D
I often feel indecisive and incapable of following through, but when I’m being more objective, I can look at my life and see that there are plenty of examples that support a more nuanced view. I’m indecisive when I don’t know what I want, and I have trouble following through when I’m quietly conflicted about something, even if I haven’t realized what that conflict is yet.
My writing brings forward a lot of conflicted feelings for me. It often feels like work because writing is hard for me. Forcing myself to work when I don’t have to is also hard for me. But I love having written. I love reading my books when they’re done and I love re-reading my stories when the mood strikes, just as I did this morning with that unfinished piece of fan fiction. And I’ve written and published 12 novels and 9 shorter pieces of fiction in about 3 years. There’s follow through in that, no matter how often on this blog I make it sound like I can’t get anything done. ;)
The interesting thing is that the books are usually much better than I remember them being, so the act of re-reading them can sometimes boost my confidence and make it easier to tackle the day’s writing.
That’s how I feel today. Anyway, it’s time to end the long ramble and get started. I have books to write so I can have fun re-reading them later. :)
Started: 10:27 am
Finished: 11:50 am (Ouch! What happened to my decision to stop rereading and tweaking my—? Oh wait. I totally have an explanation for this. I started looking for the date I’d started that fan fiction story I mentioned above, ended up coming across a book in my archives I barely remembered, opened it, and read through the whole thing, all 15,000 words of it before finishing this post. It’s not funny how often that kind of thing happens to me and then I can’t even remember that I did it when I have to account for the time spent!)
Well, I ended up with 1,270 words and only made it to two stories. Not two additional stories after my break, but two total for the day. Not bad considering I was away for two hours that I didn’t expect to be away because of an unanticipated dinner invitation. :) I love dinner invites! So yeah. I was gone, gone, gone.
I’m not quite happy with my progress today. I’d have liked a lot more words. Still, I’ll take it over the 60 yesterday or the 125 the day before.
Also, this was day four of my “no more zero word days” revisit. So far, holding strong to the commitment!
Still on story #1, and I’m still working on the same scene, attacking it from different angles as I try to figure out what the hell is going on (in the story, not with me). I have netted 432 words so far today, and although I’d love to say they’re all slow, thoughtful, fantastic words, that ain’t the actual facts. The reason I’ve written so few words is because I’m trying out anything and everything I can to feel out the direction the story wants to go. I don’t think I have as good a grasp on my main character this time around. He’s kind of hard to figure out. I can’t decide if he’s sad or angry or both. Honestly, I think he’s angry because he’s sad. I think he has an agenda that I need to figure out sooner rather than later if I want to start finding it easier to write this book.
On that note, I took a short break to write this because I’d decided I was going to start cycling through my other stories anyway. I need a break but I don’t need to stop writing, so that’s what I’m going to do. :D Expect to see some numbers soon.
The fact is, I wrote 60 words yesterday. Total. I’m hoping to do a lot better today. However, I’ve been writing for about an hour now and I’ve managed 100 words. That’s not a misprint.
I’m stuck again on my most important story and that’s the story I started with this morning. I don’t feel ready to move on to another story right now, because I actually think I’m making progress. I’ve had to go back one more scene, and although I haven’t deleted what comes after just yet, I’m starting to think I’ll either have to delete it or cut most of it and keep the one interesting bit that sets up the next bit of the story.
The scene I’ve gone back to is going in a different direction than I’d written it the first time and I have a feeling this is what needed to happen all along. If I can get this going, I’ll be ready to get back on track with the 50 word challenge for the rest of the day.
For the moment, though, it’s break time. I need a breather. :)
Started: 12:59 pm
Finished: 1:02 pm
I’m about to start trying to make my way through my list of stories, doing 50 words on each (or more) and then moving to the next. I’ll be back when there’s something to crow about. :D
I can’t really explain why I didn’t end up writing much yesterday. I did get a few words in at the end of the day, enough to make me comfortable saying that I am restarting my “no more zero word days” challenge. From yesterday forward, no more zero word days. The more days I can string together, the greater my victory. Failure just means I have another opportunity to create an even longer string of days.
Funnily enough, after writing yesterday that it’s been five months since I started trying to follow my current schedule, I have decided that following the schedule alone is not going to be enough to keep me writing on a regular basis.
I’ve crunched some numbers and discovered that some of my best daily word count averages were stretched over times when I kept myself accountable for how much time I spent writing, not how much time I had set aside to write. It didn’t seem to matter how I held myself accountable, whether it was timed writing or simply timing my writing (counting down versus counting up), only that I was accountable for what time I did spend writing.
That probably explains why the schedule worked so well to start with but no longer seems to make a difference. In the beginning, I did treat those times much more like timed writing sessions, whereas now, I seem to treat the schedule more as time set aside during which I should be writing. I don’t even feel that guilty when I don’t write during that time! This post proves it. It’s 10:34, and I should be writing right this minute.
I’m not ready to give up the current schedule (because I really like it and I do feel that of all the schedules I’ve ever tried, it’s the one that suits me best), but there’s not a lot of room for doubt about how I should be thinking of my writing time and it’s not the way I’m currently thinking of it.
I’m going to continue to try to find ways to push myself to write during my scheduled times, using whatever tricks are necessary. I meant it when I said this was the year of the schedule. The year isn’t over yet and I’m sticking it out.
Here’s a short quote from what I wrote in that post. It’s why I’m not giving up on the schedule, even after five months of mostly failure. I did take a quick look and I was wrong about the three weeks of success. It was closer to six. Six weeks of success out of five months isn’t that bad.
So here’s the challenge. I’m going to make a schedule. Every day will be a challenge to stick to it. I’ll probably fail more often than I succeed. Maybe if I’m lucky some good habits will develop around the times I’m supposed to be writing that will make it work over the long-term even if I have a lot of short-term failures. If not, well, how’s it any worse than what I’ve already got going on?
No more searching for the best system, no more word count quotas or goal-setting, no more excuses. It’s time to move on from all that and settle in. The remainder of 2015 is going to be the year of the schedule.
As for today, I’m still thrilling over how fun writing was on Wednesday when I was working through my list of stories, trying to write 50 words on each one and then moving on, so even though I had trouble getting started yesterday, I don’t think I’m going to have trouble getting started today because it’s not the writing that’s the issue. It’s my lack of respect for my writing time. Which I’m about to fix right this minute.
First step in practicing writing faster is going to have me keeping up with how much time I spend writing these blogs posts.
Started: 10:07 am
Finished: 10:55 am
As long as this little challenge is exciting me, I’m doing it again. Yesterday, I ended with fewer words than I wanted, but the deleting set me back and I never recovered. That particular story is moving a bit now but still feels too tight. Hopefully this challenge will continue to loosen it up.
So that I work on a slightly different arrangement of stories (in case I repeat yesterday and only make it through a few), I’m going to shuffle my list. :)
Of course, my most important story is still going to get 4 slots out of the 10 per 50 word cycle, meaning I’m actually only working on 7 stories.
Update #1: Holy crap, it’s 11:35 and all I’ve done so far today is add back a bunch of tags to this site to group related posts in a way that makes things easier to find. I must recharge my laptop battery or go sit at my desk and get to writing! I am terribly disappointed with myself at the moment. :o I mean, my schedule still exists, even though I seem to be in the middle of a rebellion against it. It’s still on my calendar though and I have no intention of deleting it because I have to believe I’ll come around sooner or later. It’s a great schedule. Even if it only worked for me for about 3 weeks. I’ve been trying use it since mid-April and it’s mid-September now. Oh. That’s a let down, seeing it in writing like that. It’s been 5 months. I hadn’t realized. Bummer. It’s probably not ever going to work for me long-term, is it?
I rescheduled yesterday’s challenge for today. Early in the day yesterday my father arrived with scaffolding for a project I’m doing and the day spiraled out of control from there. So, challenge moved to today when I should have no such interruptions.
The plan is to start at 9 am sharp and I will update as I complete each cycle through my list of stories. I’m excited about getting started. I’ll see you back here later.
Update #1: Cycling through the stories for the first time and I’ve only made it through 4 of them so far, but I’m at 1,285 words. Interesting!
Update #2: I’m still working on the same 4 stories, and I’m at 1,734 words. It’s 4 pm so I’m going to try to hit my most important story one more time and then take a break and work on copy edits for something else.
Update #3: Yikes. I did get back to my most important story and ended up deleting. It has set me back a good bit and I don’t think I’m done deleting. I’m at 1,088 now. I’m going to try to make it up. I’d like to end the night at 2,995. It hardly seems possible considering everything else I need to do. :(
Today I’m going to write 50 words on each story I have in progress (writing more as the muse strikes) and cycle through them at least 6 times. No filler words allow! All writing has to be done with the intent that it’s “real” writing not just something meant to fill space.
I have a line up of 7 stories to work on, and I’ve slipped my most important story in there an extra 3 times for an even 10 cycles. If this works like I want it to, I’ll end up with at least 3000 words today, and I’ll break through the block on the one story that’s really been holding me back from getting that book finished.
Truly this is about loosening up after an extended period of story avoidance. I think it’ll work. I’m already excited about it!
I’ll update this post with results.
Okay, so in only a little over a week or so, I really have to begin work on a cover image for an upcoming book. I thought I would run an experiment. I’m going to try to create the same cover in both GIMP and Photoshop and see which one I work best in. Despite being almost certain Photoshop is going to win, I’m not ready to commit to the subscription service if I don’t actually find it easier to create a cover in Photoshop. The proof will be in the real world application and not in that place in my head where I think I know something is true without having put it into practice.
I’m only as good a cover designer as I’ve needed to be, so this should be fun! :)
My plan today was to write fast. Really fast. 1000 wph fast—or even faster than that. 1200 wph would be great. All I had to do was write, stay focused on writing, hit the zone, and just let the story happen.
Well, what has happened so far is that my zone apparently puts me into the perfection zone. Or the piddle zone. (Not that piddle, the other one.) When I zone, I am often zoning into the story in a specific location and I get stuck there. Time goes by so fast I can’t account for it when I raise my head, but I usually have almost nothing to show for it. Maybe my writing is better where I’ve fit it more firmly to my vision, but the story doesn’t generally move forward.
Anyway. That’s where I’ve spent a lot of my writing time this morning.
After my first session, I am frustrated beyond my ability to handle frustration today. I need a break. I guess I’m lucky it’s noon and lunch time. I get my break.
| words | time | wph |
| 281 | 55 | 307 |
When I come back from my break, I’m going to try to crack the zone again, and this time hit the right one.
Writing is no fun when I’m like this. I’d like it to be fun today.
I think I mentioned before that I had to toss the last production schedule I made. I archived it, but I don’t think I’ll be revisiting it. It included deadlines and word count calculations detailed by book that were just too much for my poor brain to handle. To be blunt, it stressed me out. I’ve mentioned before that the way I handle stress is to shut down and do nothing.
I’ve done a lot of nothing over the last few weeks. Changing that is a high priority this week.
First I calculated how many days I can realistically expect myself to work in a year. This is an ideal number, of course, but I have to start somewhere.
| Holidays | 4 |
| Unexpected | 12 |
| Vacation (wkdays) | 15 |
| Weekends | 104 |
| total days off | 135 |
| total working days | 230 |
Then I calculated the number of words I would like to write in the next 12 months based on the release schedule I’d like to maintain for each series—no deadlines attached.
| Year’s production | Number | avg wc | total wc |
| Series #3 | 6 | 65,000 | 390,000 |
| Pen names series #1 | 4 | 50,000 | 200,000 |
| Series #2 | 4 | 50,000 | 200,000 |
| Short stories | 12 | 8,000 | 96,000 |
| Series #1 | 4 | 35,000 | 140,000 |
| Stand-alone novels | 2 | 50,000 | 100,000 |
| New pen name novels | 1 | 50,000 | 50,000 |
| 1,176,000 | |||
Those gave me my numbers to work from and this was the result:
5,113 words
That’s the number of words I need to write each weekday if I want to reach that level. It seems overwhelming, but I broke it down further into my two daily sessions to fit into my schedule.
| 6 (hours) | |||
| 3 | 2,557 | 852.17 | wph |
| 3 | 2,557 | 852.17 | wph |
Then, for comparison, I calculated my necessary daily average.
3,222 words
That’s the daily average I need to reach and maintain if I want to write all the books on this production schedule within the next 12 months.
It’s my back up plan.
Then I asked myself if this is what I really want.
Yes. It is.
I have so many stories I want to tell before they fade away and become uninteresting to me. The ideas are there and I don’t want to miss my chance to write as many of them as possible before… whatever happens. I’m not dying or anything, not that I know of anyway, but every day that slips away from me makes me just a little bit more afraid that I’ll never get all these stories written before I die. It’s a scary thing to think about, tbh.
Can I do it? I don’t know. I know it won’t get done if I don’t try. Anyway, this is the ideal, again, and I can accept that it won’t be the reality, but it’s what I want, regardless of all that.
If I find it impossible to reach the 5,113 words after giving it my all this week, I can fall back to the “write every day” alternative.
I don’t like word count goals and I’m pretty sure this isn’t going to change that. But—
I know where I’m at and where I want to go, and even if I never look at this again, I will have that number sitting in the back of my brain, reminding me not to quit early, and not to expect less from myself, because this is what it will take to write everything I want to write, not even as quickly as I want to write it.
The first thing I need to do? Stop being a slow writer. 852 words an hour is much faster than I’m used to writing.