Fiction writer. Expert procrastinator. This is my life.
I finished all 5 x 50 minute sessions before lunch today. I went over by an hour and a half but that’s not too bad. I’ll just work to get better.
I made it to 2,276 in 4.17 hours, for an average of 546 words an hour. Not the 600 per session I wanted, but better than the 400 minimum I needed to reach 2,000 words. Now, what to do with the rest of my day?
I make no promises to write more today, but that 3,000 is beckoning, so you never know. :)
Only one session to go. I completed writing sessions number 3 and 4, and I’m sitting at 1,634 words at 3.33 hours. That’s an average speed of 490 words per hour. If I maintain that, I’ll at least hit my 2,000 minimum word count goal for the day.
Now back to work. I’m starting to get hungry but I’m finishing this last session before I stop for lunch! When this 50 minutes is over, my writing block will have stretched from 8:30 to 2:10, or about 40 minutes longer than it should have. Meaning I took 1 hour and 40 minutes of breaks. I wish it felt like I’d had that much break time!
So far, not so great. I ended my first 50 minute session with 363 words.
Then I ended my second 50 minute session with 490 words. Cumulative.
It’s like I write, and then I spend the next however long tweaking and tuning and there’s no way out of that because what I wrote the first time wasn’t complete and didn’t have everything the way it needed to be. I’m not talking about word choice or flow or anything like that, although I admit I do tweak a bit of that as I go. What I’m talking about is the actual scene—what happens, when, and in what order.
If that isn’t right, I can’t move on.
Ugh. Well, my break is over and I have to get on my next session before I fall behind. BBL.
But… yay! 2 x 50 minutes sessions down and 3 to go before lunch and I think I might actually make it today, which will mean my first success with this experiment!
I’m going to call it a night, optimistic that tomorrow will be a great day for writing. I’m thinking I have to be close to finishing this novella turned novel, and so I’m going into the next couple of days with the attitude that any one of them could see me write the end of this book. :)
As far as today went, I made it to 1,454 words and I’m happy enough with that to call it a day so I can get some extra sleep and stave off all the sickness going around. I seriously do not want to get sick this winter.
Also, I’m going to have to go check out a noise or I won’t sleep. I don’t know why I have to be so paranoid sometimes. I really wish I could let these things go, but I live in a house with hardwood floors and a basement and I hear all the same pops and cracks every night and sometimes they set off my imagination and sometimes they don’t.
My grandmother had a similar issue and I probably picked it up from her. But hey, we all know a writer is well served by an active imagination, and when my writing is going well, I often have disturbing dreams of the kind that wake you up and keep you awake.
So maybe the one is related to the other and I just haven’t recognized that fact.
Let’s just call it a personality quirk and leave it at that. ;)
And seriously, why does it always have to be spiders in my dreams?
1st 50 minute session = 471 words
Okay, this isn’t working. I’m just fighting myself all the way on it and I’m switching things up, going back to something that I know works for me, at least some of the time. I have almost 3 hours left on my timer and I should’ve been down to about 1.
… about an hour an a half later …
And I got completely derailed by one of my kids coming home. We talked about taxes, lol, because I have a very curious kid who enjoys history and government. ;)
Right before I sat down again to finish this post, though, I realized that although I am switching things up, I’m actually just going back to how I intended to do this to start with, with one tiny tweak.
When I originally decided to do this experiment, I was going to write in 45 minute sessions. Then I decided those sessions might create artificial breaks in my concentration that would defeat the purpose of the big block of writing time, where the intent was to be able to become completely absorbed in my stories.
Of course, that’s not what’s happened. In fact, I can’t seem to concentrate in mostly unbounded blocks of time, and my performance suffers.
What I came up with was writing in 50 minute blocks, so I could have 10 minutes as a break and then go right back to writing. I chose 50 because I didn’t want enough time to get distracted.
Basically, 50 minutes feels like a better length when I’m thinking in one hour blocks, versus when I was thinking in 1.5 hour blocks (where 45 minute sessions made sense because I was actually only using the 45 minute timer to remind me to get up and pep up my circulation). Remember, I started out with the intent to write for 4.5 hours, which was 3 x 1.5 hour blocks, which, when I started this experiment, I had squished together into a single 5 hour block.
My 1.5 hour blocks were actually working okay before I started this experiment. I had 6 really good days, writing 9,419 words using them, but I only succeeded with them for about a week before it stopped working and I had to figure out how to get back on track. Also, tbh, 9,419 was still short of the 14,000 I wanted to hit each week, so I came up with the new experiment.
Anyway, this post is just to say that I’ve switched things out.
Going forward, I’m going to try to write 5 x 50 minute sessions, average 600 words per session (720 wph, which is a real stretch but not impossible), and reach 3,000 words. But ultimately, if I write slower than that, these numbers should still get me to the 2,000 word a day average I want to reach. :) I figure this is my best shot.
I’m still going to try to lump these sessions together and complete them in about 5 hours between breakfast and lunch (or lunch and supper). It might not always work out, but that’s the goal.
Now, I’m ready for lunch and then it’s back to writing. I’ve calculated that I need to do 4 of the 50 minute sessions (I’m rounding up) to finish the 2:46:38.9 that was left on my timer. Plus, 4 sessions might make it more likely I’ll reach 3,000 words today, which I’d really like to do.
It’s later than I’d like. Shortly after 8 am. I did get up early at 6:30 am, but somehow after breakfast and … whatever, it’s now over an hour and a half later. I’m taking the last few bites of my apple and then I’m going to start my 5 hour block and my 4 hour timer. Hopefully my breaks won’t use up the entire extra hour and I’ll finish closer to noon than 1 pm.
Won’t know til I try. :)
My goal’s a stretch but I’d rather have a stretch goal than settle. I have a tendency to pull up short no matter what my goals/expectations are. At least if the goal’s bigger and I pull up short, I still get closer to where I want to be. ;)
Goal: 4 hours, 3000 words, 750 wph
Actual: 1.23 hours, 810 words, 657 wph*
*At which point I switched how I was going forward with this, which I wrote a post about. :D
It’s 7:31 and I still have 1:59:37.9 left on my timer. After lunch I sat down with my computer and returned to my document (admittedly it was a longish lunch break since I finished 3 episodes of Castle, finally bringing me up to date with the series). I then promptly opened my web browser because… yeah, I’m still not sure about that. I just know that to reach and maintain a 2,000 word a day average, I actually have to write 2,000 words a day more or less, but I don’t want to finish my time tonight!
So, tomorrow’s game plan. Get started early, when I have plenty of energy, and do whatever it takes to finish my words in the 5 hour block.
Because I can already tell you now, I’m not going to finish this time tonight. I’m too close to just calling it a night and going to sleep. I don’t usually get so tired so early in the evening, even though I’m much more a morning person than a night owl these days, but tonight I’m just … exhausted. A lot of people I know are sick with a nasty cold that’s going around and I’ve been in contact with every last one of them in the last week. I’m seriously hoping I’m not fighting off the same thing. I’ve had sinus issues for weeks it feels like, but I’ve managed so far to avoid the overt symptoms of a cold and I’m hoping to keep it that way.
Anyway, extra sleep helps… Or at least it has since I started making myself get some every time I thought I might be coming down with something. ;) I started this back when I was completing that book I got done in August. The final weekend, I thought I was getting sick and I forced myself to stop early each night and go to bed instead of pushing through like I would have usually done (typically I’m one of those people who binge works when a deadline is looming).
Strangely enough, it’s been a bit of a miracle cure. Extra sleep and I feel better and people around me continue to get sick and I manage to avoid anything worse than just feeling a bit under the weather. There’s a trick to this though and that’s to not depend on sleeping in to catch the extra sleep. I wake up with the sun, generally speaking, and after that, I sleep in fits and starts until I can’t stay in bed any longer. To get extra restful sleep, I have to go to bed early. That’s the trick. It works. :D
Fingers crossed. And if I didn’t need the sleep, I might be up super early tomorrow and be done writing 3,000 words by noon! Wouldn’t that be awesome?
Oh, and by the way, that January novella that I finally got back to? just passed 40,000 words. Yep, it’s a novel now.
Conundrum. Give up on the experiment or keep trying?
My experiment hasn’t had one successful moment yet. I see the beauty of the possible results, but so far, those results are as elusive as the perfect lipstick color.
Some days I cannot believe some of the stuff I write. This is one of those days. I keep reading this sentence in my current work in progress and laughing and I can’t decide if I’m laughing because it’s funny or because it’s so outrageous that I have no choice but to laugh or I’ll freak out about how stupid it is.
In light of my results so far, I’ve tweaked my experiment.
I set my timer for a full 4 hours. (Revised down from the 4.5 hours I would have been writing if you added up the six 45 minute sessions.) I also stuck with setting aside the same 5 hours as before.
If I don’t finish my timed session in the 5 hour block, I’ll schedule an extra block of time to finish later, but still as one single block (to keep the number of breaks down, since that’s kind of the whole point).
At the moment, I’m sitting at 1:59:37.9 left on the timer for today, with 1,155 words completed. Meaning my pace is approximately 578 wph.
I’m not going to finish my 4 hours of writing in my 5 hour block today. It was supposed to go from 9 am to 2 pm (and here I am writing this at 1:08 but I absolutely could not maintain my concentration for another moment) and as I said above, I have almost 2 hours left on my timer. I’ll be getting back to it in just a minute or two but this says I used up my 1 hour of built in time for breaks and then somehow also managed to use another hour. I have no idea how; I haven’t done anything time consuming except drink too much tea.
I admit I’ve had to pee a ridiculous number of times this morning, but that’s not that unusual. I have a bit of a bladder condition that makes this a regular thing. What makes this tough for me is how easily I’m distracted once I’m away from the computer.
I should resolve to drink less tea in the morning, but since I have a rule not to drink tea after 2 pm (or at least not my green tea because it does have a minor amount of caffeine in it), I hate to skip it. I like my green tea. Still, I think I’m going to have to cut back. I gave up coffee completely about a month ago and made the 2 pm tea rule. My sleep’s been better so I’m not going back on that rule because it’s clearly working.
I just wish I found it as easy to employ my willpower with my writing as I do with these other things.
I quit snacking between meals in late May 2014. I haven’t eaten anything outside of meal time since.
You’d think willpower like that would be easily adapted to work for other things, but nope. I can give up coffee. I can give up snacking. I can give up tea after 2. I can’t make myself write when I don’t want to or stick to a writing schedule to save my life.
Sigh.
Sun, 12/21/14
Wrote 161 words
Mon, 12/22/14
Wrote 0 words
Tue, 12/23/14
Wrote 0 words
Wed, 12/24/14
Wrote 0 words
Thu, 12/25/14
Wrote 0 words
Fri, 12/26/14
Wrote 0 words
Sat, 12/27/14
Wrote 230 words
In 2.83 hours
Averaged 81 words per hour*
*Should I qualify this with an explanation? I only record a count for total new words on my spreadsheet, so if I write a lot of words but delete almost just as many, even if from parts I wrote days past, this is what happens.
Yeah. This week sucked. But it was a holiday so I’m going to let it pass without further comment.
Still, this needs to improve. I’m not going to make it to the next level of my career if I don’t stop the self-sabotage.
Today I begin my schedule. Breakfast is over and I’ve sat down to write. I’ll be aiming for six 45 minute sessions, and I hope to reach about 500 words for each one. So yeah, I would like to start this with a 3,000 word day. I’ll be happy to fail to 2,000 though if that’s all I manage. :D
Last night, I read some interesting articles about ideal room temperature for productivity (yeah, I don’t know why, but hey, anything that helps, right?) and have decided to raise my room temperature by 2 degrees F. I tried it last night and to be honest, I couldn’t tell the room was any warmer so I don’t know if it’s going to be worth the extra energy usage, but I’m willing to give it a few days trial run same as I’m willing to try out the schedule. One thing I know is that as soon as my fingers get cold, my ability to focus takes a major hit.
Now, on to my writing before time gets away from me and it goes from 9:34 to 10 and I have nothing to show for it. :)
This spot reserved for actual results… See ya in 5 hours or so! ;)
And later—
| Minutes | Goal | Actual | |
| 45 | 500 | 86 | (414) |
| 45 | 500 | 105 | (809) |
| 45 | 500 | 127 | (1,182) |
As you can see, that table isn’t complete. I had to stop about 3.5 hours into the block (which was about an hour more than it should have been for only 3 of my sessions to be complete). I started an hour late (messing around on the internet when I was absolutely not supposed to—tonight I’ll be shutting off the WIFI on my computer before I turn it off and won’t be turning it back on until time’s up).
Because I started an hour late and because my breaks ran long, I started getting really hungry and so I decided to finish the second half of my sessions after I have lunch. Tomorrow, I hope this won’t happen.
Also, I spent all of the 3 sessions I’ve already done reworking the last scene I wrote. I didn’t like it, and it didn’t feel true to the characters (or maybe I just wanted it to go somewhere else and I had to find what would send the characters that way while being true to themselves). ;) Either way… I’m just about done with that and maybe, hopefully, please God, I’ll be moving along quite a bit faster when I get back to it after lunch.
I really think this would have worked today if I’d gotten started when I was supposed to. But hunger drove away my will to continue! :D Meaning I better make sure I get started when I’m supposed to tomorrow if I don’t want a repeat of today.
And later still…
There’s a reason I wanted to start lumping my time together. That reason was in play here. :D Tomorrow is a new day. And I did end up working another 15 minutes, but I had a negative word count because I deleted some stuff. Still, I left off with the story waiting on me to write all new words tomorrow.
So, it definitely could have been a worse day.
I know I said I was done with schedules. I was wrong. I feel a burning desire to give this another try as I start into the new year so instead of fighting the urge, I gave in.
I have a reason for this. I’ve decided that since I have so much trouble with not getting distracted once I start taking breaks that I should try lumping my writing into one big block of time. For that to work, I pretty much have to have a schedule. Without one, I don’t see any way to create that big block of time.
So starting tomorrow, I’m going to give this a test run.
As soon as I finish breakfast, I’m going to sit down and start writing in 45 minute blocks and write straight through for 5 hours (the breaks at 45 minutes are simply to make sure I get up and stretch my legs, nothing more). That should give me six 45 minute blocks and about 30 minutes for breaks. If I take short breaks the way I plan, I’ll be finished writing by lunch and if I don’t… I’ll probably put off lunch until I get that last session done.
My goal for each of these 45 minute sessions is 500 words. That’s a bit faster than my average pace, but just enough to stretch me a bit. And despite the math that says I could reach 3,000 words a day with this schedule, my goal is still to average 2,000 a day, which means I’m building in some extra words so slow days won’t be as likely to throw me off my average or demoralize me.
Demoralizing is bad. Extra words are good. :)
I had planned (hoped, really) to be able to just write right through the holidays, but … no, that’s not exactly working out. I can’t seem to concentrate, even though I have the time to write, and therefore I’m not getting much (anything, really) written.
The schedule crashed and burned almost immediately, and when I think of the writing I want to do, I just get really unhappy with myself and the holiday and I don’t want that. :) It’s a time of joy! of happiness! of Christmas wreaths and candy canes! There’s no room there for annoyance, unhappiness, and irritation.
So, I’m just going to let it go. I do wish I was the kind of person who could compartmentalize these things and still do the mind work necessary to write fiction no matter what else is going on in my life, but that’s just not me.
I’ve planned to get back to it on the 25th since the kids won’t be home this year, and I don’t really have any other plans and writing seems like a lot more fun than visiting people. :D
Maybe I’ll write enough on Christmas day to make up for the days before, but if not, I’ll be happy to restart my 2,000 a day goal before the new year.
My plan there is pretty simple: get a 2,000 a day average going on the 25th and keep it going.
I’ll just hope I slip in a bit of extra writing between now and then too. That’d be a nice holiday gift to myself.
How’s your holiday writing going?
Sunday, December 14, 2014
Wrote 0 words
Monday, December 15, 2014
Wrote 1,207 words
In 4.50 hours
Averaged 268 words per hour
Tuesday, December 16, 2014
Wrote 2,745 words
In 5.07 hours
Averaged 542 words per hour
Wednesday, December 17, 2014
Wrote 1,232 words
In 3.25 hours
Averaged 379 words per hour
Thursday, December 18, 2014
Wrote 0 words
Friday, December 19, 2014
Wrote 0 words
Saturday, December 20, 2014
Wrote 151 words
In 0.75 hours
Averaged 201 words per hour
Well, I didn’t succeed in improving my weekly word count from last week. That’s a bummer. Also, I’m aiming for a 2,000 word a day average by the time the new year rolls around. I don’t have a lot of time left to get on top of that. :)
It’s official. School is out for the winter break and my routine (the one I’d just started to really get into) is now in tatters. I’m going to make an effort to get back on track tomorrow, but today is already a total wash, as has been the last several days.
Although I feel resistant, I’m going to try to just push through the next few days using a schedule, because if I don’t, I don’t believe I’ll get anything done—and as usual the holiday will rush up on me and I won’t even be able to enjoy that.
That said, I’m off to make this (very) (temporary) schedule (that I am doing only in a desperate attempt to be able to enjoy my holidays and still get some writing done, because I need to) and then try to recover some of this day. :)
I’m currently writing in 1.5 hour blocks. The plan is 3 a day, starting at 7, 9, and 11. In actuality, that’s not what’s happening. I started today’s at 9, and I’ll be starting the next two at 11 and 2.
I’m more concerned with word counts than time, but I’m using this to help me gauge where I should be as the morning (or day) progresses. So far, my word counts per hour are worse than ever, but I’m not going to jump to conclusions since I’m working on that novella and my speed could very well be because of the project I’m working on.
At least the novella is moving along. It’s more like a short novel at this point, at a hair under 35,000 words and no end in sight. I’d say it’ll reach novel status before it’s over. Ah well. Can’t win them all. :)
But it’s time to get back to work now, so see ya!
I kind of like the stats posts, but I think I might make them weekly. I’ll just keep a running draft until the end of the week and then post all 7 days at once. That’ll keep the blog from becoming overrun with them. :)
Friday, December 12, 2014
Wrote 1,096 words
In 3.00 hours
Averaged 365 words per hour
Saturday, December 13, 2014
Wrote 1,122 words
In 3.00 hours
Averaged 374 words per hour
Wrote 2,017 words
In 4.50 hours
Averaged 448 words per hour
I’m not that sure most days. I do think I’m done with the blogging about my word counts and progress and the like, because I sometimes enjoy it but mostly I’m positive it’s boring to read. I can journal my writing day in private and be a lot more forthcoming about things that I’m struggling with or that I need to work out.
It’s just … I don’t see a lot of point to this blog. It doesn’t really help me write more fiction and it doesn’t always make me feel good or optimistic about my goals.
But if I stop writing about my word counts and the like, I doubt I’ll write about much of anything on this blog, and it will have no purpose at all.
So I guess that’s my answer. There is no purpose for this blog.
Update (7 days later, after coming to the realization that sometimes things don’t have to have a purpose other people understand)—
This is a purpose for this blog … whatever purpose I want it to have.