Category: Learning curve

Posts in which I discuss things I’ve learned or need to learn about any of many topics.

Day 21 of the daily accountability challenge

Lynn

Accountability for 9/29/23

Yesterday, I had a limited amount of writing time. It took far too long to write my words. Overall, I wrote 415 words total, on 2 stories.

As for my September on-track challenge, I haven’t made much progress on it, and as today is the last day for it. I don’t see a win in my future on this one. I would need many thousands of words to have reversed the accumulating deficit in my word count.

All I can do now is look forward and try to keep that deficit from growing larger!

I’ve continued with my multiple stories challenge and I’m pretty happy with how it’s helped me increase my word counts this month over last. :)

Day 15 of the daily accountability challenge

Lynn

Accountability for 9/23/23

I was reminded of something this morning when I sat down to write this post: I have a guilt problem.

Guilt made me stick to one story yesterday, and I paid for that with a low word count and less enthusiasm as I was writing.

Yesterday, I wrote 498 words, on 1 story.

When I know a story really needs to be finished, or I have a deadline approaching—even if it’s self-imposed!—I start to feel like I’m failing if I write on anything except that story. I don’t think I can succeed with the multiple stories challenge in the coming months if I can’t ignore this feeling and continue to work on multiple stories each day.

NOTE TO SELF: Do not fall into the mindset that I will finish the novel I most need to finish faster if I just focus one-hundred percent of my effort on it. Ain’t gonna happen, in almost all cases.

Writing a lot of words when I’m only working on one story is the exception, not the rule.

And truly, the motivational boost I get from working on more than one story at a time is huge, so there’s really no downside to it. :)

Time to get comfortable

Lynn

Last night, I sat down and played with some numbers. I really wanted to see what it would take to get myself to a point where I am earning a really comfortable living from writing my fiction, using somewhat conservative numbers but not so conservative that it is depressing.

The outcome wasn’t unexpected.

But as usual, even though the numbers are hopeful and seem realistically possible, they are the same numbers I keep coming back to—and that I have yet to be able to reach and sustain for more than a few days in a row.

To make a living, I need to write about 1,300 words a day if sales stay about the same for the number of words written based on historical earnings for 2022–2023. To live very comfortably, I need to write about 3,600 words a day. Both these numbers are rounded up to the nearest 100 words.

I’ve tried in the past to reach and sustain a 3,600 words a day streak and failed at it even though it only requires about 600 words an hour for 6 hours a day. I can write 600 words an hour, and it’s not a terrible stretch for me. But the 6 hours a day, or even the routine of maintaining daily writing, is where I hit a wall.

All that said, I am here today, writing this, because I want to give it another go. I really want to live more comfortably than I do now and anything averaged out long term between 1,300 and 3,600 words a day has the potential to get me there.

Today’s overarching goal: write 3,600 words.

Today’s specific goals:

  • Finish a short story
  • Finish a chapter in a serialized WIP
  • Finish about half of another short story

False starts and reconfigurations

Lynn

I’m recovering from a few false starts this year, the first of which began in November of last year. I’m trying to settle into writing again, regularly, after a long stretch of not writing much at all.

I still don’t know with absolute certainty what caused that, although I have several theories. I worry that it’ll happen again, but since I can’t be sure of the cause, there’s not a lot of point to that worry. It happened, and now it’s time to move on. That’s the way of life more often than not anyway.

Despite the false starts, I’ve continued to improve. But we all know the saying, two steps forward and one step back, so I’m not surprised by the path I’m on.

I’ve made a few changes. I decided to ditch writing every day in favor of writing every weekday.

I don’t like schedules, but I realized I really need some regular downtime.

If I was facing burnout, and that’s just as possible as my other theories, I need to guard against future burnout. Since most people I know and interact with have weekends off, I chose to have weekends off, too. I need to visit family more often, spend more time with friends, and that’s a good time to do it.

So far, I have loved it. To a degree far greater than I expected. So I’ll be keeping that going forward.

But yes, I have had a little more trouble getting back into routine writing, but I’m working on it.

This is my accountability post to say that although I’m working on it, I’m still a ways off from true success and I need to keep working on it.

My intention is to be a prolific writer. Prolific writers keep writing. :)

Sprinting in Discord

Lynn

If you’re in many writing themed servers on Discord, you’ll probably know all about sprinting and sprint channels. What it is is something like a chat with features specifically for people sprinting to get words.

Most use a bot that you set as a timer with something like _sprint for 20 in 3 which translates to start a twenty minute sprint in three minutes, for me and whoever joins me. Then you join the sprint with a beginning word count, and when it’s over, you update your word count and it tracks the numbers for you, doing all that pesky math if you want it to.

I don’t need it for that, because I use my own spreadsheet. But I like the community of it when I’m having a hard time focusing.

Today, I realized that although I like the community of it, I never seem to get in flow doing them in the same way I can when I run my own timer, and I rarely end up with any appreciable word counts after even long sessions of them.

Basically, time spent in the sprinting channel does not translate into a commensurate number of new words.

This is probably a case of me liking them the way I like chocolates and candies. They’re delicious, but they aren’t doing me any favors.

So, this is my post to myself to say I’m not going to do them anymore.

I can hang out in Discord when I want to chat about writing with other writers, but using it for sprints is not a fit for my personal work style. It’s time I admit that and take the necessary steps to make sure I’m writing to my fullest potential when I’m focused enough to do it.

Sometimes, it’s hard for me to remember the things I’ve set my mind to do and not to do, but writing things down sometimes helps. I won’t say always, as the dining room chair I am now doing my writing in again reminds me. My post about that is coming sooneventually. ;D

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.

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.

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]

It’s been 282 days since I quit caffeine; what I’ve learned

Lynn

It’s been 282 days since I quit caffeine. Technically, I do still ingest minute amounts. I drink decaffeinated coffee a couple times a day, and I have the occasional cup of hot chocolate. I do not, however, drink regular coffee or tea any longer, and I avoid all other caffeine where I can.

I’ve learned a few things since I quit.

One, I don’t sleep better off without caffeine. I’m hitting a stage in my life, apparently, where a full night of sleep is just harder for me. I had been blaming my coffee habit for my poor sleep, and it just didn’t turn out to be the case.

Two, I’ve had a lot less trouble with anxiety of any kind in the last 282 days than I had in the preceding year, despite having a lot more reason to be feeling anxious. So that’s been a good thing to realize. The evidence is pretty strong that caffeine was triggering anxiety for me when I was feeling stressed. I’m still pretty stressed these days, but I’m having a much easier time controlling the anxiety it produces.

Three, the world does feel a bit flatter for me without caffeine. I’ve gotten used to it, and I actually think I like it. I’m also noticing that now that it’s been a while, I’m starting to feel more like my old self even without caffeine. I don’t know how long it takes a person to truly adapt to life without caffeine and for the brain to compensate, but I think it is a lot longer than I ever suspected!

Four, I had a lot of ups and downs with my energy levels when I was on caffeine, and I still have those.

All in all, I’m really glad I quit caffeine when I did. I also don’t have plans currently to start drinking it again. I’m not saying never but I am saying not now. Life will have to become fairly stress-free for me to think it’s worth it.

About the lack of daily posts for the 180 day plan

Lynn

I’m still tracking the number of days passed and remaining of my 180 day plan. I don’t know that I’ve had a worse start to a plan. I don’t know that I haven’t, so I’m not going to give too much of my thinking time to figuring it out.

The daily posts have fallen by the wayside, mostly because I decided that keeping the number in my head daily was hurting more than helping my motivation to get started every day.

I’ll post an update at every 30 day mark instead of daily and let it go at that. The next one will be at day 60.

As for now, I’ve decided I need something a little more immediate to get me to the keyboard since my love of the story isn’t doing it. I couldn’t care less about writing much of anything right now, for whatever reason, but not caring doesn’t build a habit, and it sure doesn’t keep me moving toward my goal.

I’ve come up with a plan, and I’m excited about it, because I think it has real potential.

Post about that coming up. :-)

Authors and hissy fits redux

Lynn

Wow. That blew up quick. Yesterday, one of the first days in a long while that I didn’t check my email until late in the day because my daughter is home from college on spring break, I got a response to a comment I left on another blog. Admittedly, it was a pointed comment that I probably should have kept to myself, but didn’t, but I did not expect to be followed back to my blog and find a nasty little comment waiting for me. If anything, I expected to be blocked on the blog where I commented or responded to in as equally a nasty fashion as everyone else on the post had been responded to, but nope.

The thing is, I also got an email, which was apparently sent hours earlier than the comment and was considerably more reasonable. But I guess since I didn’t respond quickly enough, I got the more ridiculous, over the top comment on my blog as my reward.

The thing is, I originally approved the comment because I thought that was going to be it. I still hadn’t checked my email so I figured a simple response was my best bet because I was busy and I thought the overreaction (the hissy fit if you will) spoke for itself.

Then I checked my email.

Let me just say that seeing the difference in tone in the earlier email from the comment really pissed me off.

Still, I responded as reasonably as I could. And got another two emails for my trouble.

By last night, my anger had built to the point where I just finally wrote a much more pointed email and then let it go.

And then got another fucking email.

I’m letting that one go. The guy is clueless. He sees what he wants to see, and he thinks the fact that he doesn’t intend to be perceived in a certain way absolves him of his behavior. Good for him. I don’t have room in my life for dealing with that shit.

In light of that, I did decide to unpublish the original comment he made on the blog. I have no interest in making my blog home to someone else’s hissy fit.

I have enough of my own to post here. ;D

Authors and hissy fits

Lynn

There are times in your life when you have to make choices. Today I made a choice to scratch a few sites off my reading list. When authors start having hissy fits in public and trying to knock down other authors because of differing viewpoints on how to write, that’s my cue to move on.

Some authors claim to understand that other people have different processes, but when you read between the lines of their posts, you can see the bias in every word they write. They’re not just offering an alternative way to approach storytelling, they’re calling people who don’t want to do things that way “silly” and “scared” and it’s just… ugly, for lack of a better word, and I don’t like it. So I won’t be reading any more of it.

(The surprising thing is that this alternative way to approach storytelling is supposedly against the establishment, but since I’ve been writing this way for thirty-odd years, I find that hard to believe. I mean, no one ever told me I wasn’t supposed to be a discovery writer. I thought that was how most fiction writers worked—but maybe it was just the particular craft books I chose to learn from. I read all of Lawrence Block’s craft books (Spider, Spin Me a Web is still my favorite of all time), and Stephen King’s On Writing, and Bird by Bird and so so many others, and the bald-faced truth is that of the large number of craft books on my shelves only a few actually make a big deal about outlining. Being a discovery writer is a tried and true method of storytelling and I don’t know where this myth started that everyone pushes outlining so hard. Maybe inexperienced writers, and those that outlining works for? I don’t know. That’s just not been my experience. No one ever told me I needed an outline to write a story, not even the high school English teacher that made me write stories when I would have rather been reading!)

I won’t pick on the sites in question and post links, because I don’t think that’ll help anyone. If you’re the kind of person who doesn’t like to see these kinds of conflicts, you’ll probably choose to avoid these sites on your own.

The good news is that this might mean I have fewer distractions in the mornings that lead me to flit around the internet. :D That’s always good!

 

Unexpected side-effects of caffeine withdrawal and lack of motivation

Lynn

I’ve quit coffee (and caffeine) so many times over the years that I feel like I should know everything there is to know about caffeine withdrawal. And yet, I’ve been surprised this time, and some of that may be because I’m paying more attention to the longer-term effects of it than I usually do.

Today I noticed for the first time that even though I don’t appear to be sleeping better than I was before I quit, I feel kind of like I’m getting a little boost in my energy levels. And despite the frequent awakening at night, as long as I stay in bed and push myself to get enough sleep, I haven’t been suffering from any daytime drowsiness. Which is surprising, because I am definitely not feeling like I’m sleeping well at night.

I’ve had a distinct lack of motivation to work since I quit caffeine too. I’m not sure that’s related though. It’s been 15 days since I decided to quit, and 11 since I’ve had more than a minor amount of caffeine (a couple of cups of cocoa, and half a glass of sweet tea from a restaurant ordered out of habit before I remember I wasn’t supposed to order tea!). But I started a downward spiral of not really wanting to work on this book 18 days ago.

I guess, in a sense, I was hoping that better sleep would equal more energy and motivation to write, but that has not been the case.

I’d say I’m just going to strong-arm myself back to writing, but when has that ever worked? I’d love it if it did, but that’s the curse of me. I’m not capable of strong-arming myself to do something I’m not in the mood to do and I’m pretty self-destructive about it too. Such as, I really need to finish this book, for the money, for my future, for the stability of writing as a career, but I keep putting it off and doing so many other things that don’t matter at all, because I just don’t want to write (fiction) at the moment.

If I can’t make myself do it for those very important reasons, what possible reason could motivate me?

(I don’t even want to write blog posts. I’ve started and stopped a whole handful since my last substantive post and littered my blog with unfinished drafts that I have now deleted. I’m writing this post because I think it matters, for me. I need to work out some thoughts I’ve been having and writing is how I do that.)

I need to finish this book, and I just don’t care. The book is good, so it’s not a book problem. I realized that the day before yesterday, when I went back to the parts that were giving me trouble right before I quit the daily writing, thinking I would have to delete and just force myself on a different path, but I picked up right where I’d left off with no trouble at all. I realized then that it’s not the book. It’s me.

I’ve kind of known this all along, but I was almost hoping it was the book because the book would be easier to fix. (Pick a starting off point, delete the rest, and start fresh. That’s a very effective fix for most problems.)

So what do I do? I do need to finish this book, if not for me, then for the people who have said they want to read it. Maybe that’s the trick. Maybe for a while, even if it’s just a little while, I need to focus on doing this for someone else. As a general rule, I really don’t like thinking about other people when I write, and I don’t think this would mean I have to do that. It would mean only thinking about other people to get me to sit down and write, which feels like a different kind of thing.

Maybe it is time to change how I think of a few things.

Since my intrinsic motivation to write seems to have disappeared on me (temporarily, I hope), I have to find something else to focus on to get me to the book every day.

Caffeine withdrawal might not be to blame at all. There are patterns to my desire to write that I have to fight now that writing is my career. If I were making enough money and stable enough financially to take long breaks, I’d just build them into my process. But I really don’t so that’s not a reasonable option right now.

I have an inkling of an idea for something I’ll try for a while, and I’m hoping it will help. Maybe I’ll write up a post about it later. Right now, I’m done with this one and feel a need to let some of these thoughts gel.

Later. :)

 

 

 

Mental barriers to forward progress and a caffeine withdrawal check in

Lynn

The coffee/caffeine weaning is going well. I woke up with a heavy head and a slight headache this morning but overall I feel good. I’ve got my 4 oz of coffee sitting beside me (made with only 1 tsp. of coffee) and I’ll have another in a few hours if this one doesn’t knock the headache back all the way. If it does, then I’ll skip the next one. :D

I always like to hurry these things along, but the one thing I don’t want to end up with is a raging headache so I’m going to be careful not to go too fast on this.

As for the writing, the daily writing streak is still going. I didn’t check on the number of days, because I don’t really care right now. It’s not my priority. I’m focused on a different experiment I’ll talk about later this month, after I see where it leads me in February.

I believe I know now why I was feeling so constricted by the extra challenges I had added to my daily writing streak. It was exactly the same thing I went through with the “no sweets before 1000” streak right before I had to end it. Because I’ve had two negative word days since I failed to meet it and finally made progress yesterday after getting rid of some cruft that was holding me back.

In other words, the perfectionism had cropped up and I kept putting off deleting stuff I needed to delete to make sure I got the words for the streak logged in my daily word count spreadsheet.

List of recent word counts

I’ve explained before that I don’t track written words separate from deleted words. It all comes together into my daily count. But my inner perfectionist sees a negative count as a failure even if I know I wrote enough words to count.

I deleted a couple of thousand words between 1/30 and 2/2. The only reason my word counts aren’t reflecting that is because I also wrote a couple of thousand words between 1/30 and 2/2.

You sure can’t see that in the numbers.

It’s a minor flaw in my system that I built in on purpose. I only track publishable numbers. My cumulative word count equals the manuscript word counts of all my written stories and all my stories that are in progress, and the moment a story gets tossed, that day’s word count is going to take a hit.

I seem to forget that when I decide to do challenges that don’t allow for the negative days. Maybe next time I’ll remember now that I’ve written it out. ;-)

I do delete and I’m generally not afraid to do that because words are just words. And that means my word counts are what they are and don’t always reflect my true effort for any particular day.

Sometimes you just have to cut your losses on a scene or chapter or three, and start over, maybe going in a different direction, maybe just coming at it again in a slightly different way, with a different perspective. (That’s what worked for me yesterday.) It’s important not to have mental barriers in place that stop you from doing what needs to be done. :)

I feel better, and the book has started moving forward again. I have a feeling I’ll make a lot of progress toward my ending today.

I’ll take a pass on those second thoughts, thank you

Lynn

I went to bed last night wondering if I had made the right decision in ending the daily postings because my inner perfectionist was telling me that I should have stuck it out even though it wasn’t helping simply because I had said I was going to try to do that this year.

The second thoughts didn’t last long, but there was still a niggle in the back of my brain, the inner voice of my personal critic, calling me a quitter, because of course there was. I manage to ignore that voice more often than not, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t get to me after a while.

Negative self-talk is pretty much useless at self-motivation, but that voice never dies because it thinks it knows best and will browbeat the hell out of you trying to get you to listen.

Ignore the fucker. That’s all the advice I have about that.

But then a little miracle happened. :D

This morning I woke up early after a terrible night of sleep and started doing a little online reading. I came across Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s newest post, Nobody Cares.

If you’re doing work you don’t care about, then find a way to move on. Because you don’t care and nobody else does either, so why are you doing this again? Because you made up some perfect ideal, and now you’re trying to achieve it, and it’s only causing you emotional distress.

I always find it interesting that I seem to come across articles like this when I most need them. I realize that a lot of time this is simply confirmation bias at work, but it still often feels like a sign that I’ve chosen the right path.

So, yeah, I’ll take a pass on those second thoughts, thank you very much.