Year: 2014

Finish the Book—Day After the Deadline

Lynn

I do not like drama of the personal kind. But of course, drama is impossible to get away from completely, and this afternoon I completely failed to escape a diabolical attempt to interrupt my ridiculously tight schedule.

Because of that, I lost a few hours of writing time, and, yeah, this is where I admit I didn’t finish the book yesterday even though yesterday was my seriously serious deadline. Now I’m going to be up tonight later than planned trying to finish, and will probably get a late start tomorrow as a result, and … this is why I hate drama!

But I also had a sick kid home from school today and that weighed on my mind, making it a bit hard to concentrate in my earlier sessions.

After giving it a few minutes thought, I actually think I’m going to get some extra rest tonight and give this a fresh go in the morning. I don’t want a lack of rest to make me more susceptible to catching the cold my kid has. I do not have time for a cold right now, so I’d appreciate it if it would stay away until at least September 19th. ;)

Also, I’m not sure where the ending it going. I’ve stalled out and I don’t really like what I have, so it could be that I need some additional thinking time on this. I’m going to use my beloved “send to Kindle” app to send this book to me for a quick perusal before I drift off to dreamland. I doubt it can hurt! :D

Finish the Book—Deadline

Lynn

Okay, so I didn’t finish last night. I wrote a lot, and ended the day with a net word count of 2,419. That put me 304 words over my goal for the book. There was plenty of working over of the last few scenes as I worked stuff out, but I ended up with some really good stuff. ;)

I still have to write the climax and ending. Ah, the beauty of deadlines. I’ve done much better on this book than my last few, which all went way over the goal word counts, by tens of thousands of words. My very last book, in fact, went 27,000+ words over.

I feel like a total success with this one even though I know I’m going to end just a bit high! :D

My goal today is to end the book in 3,000 words and to write all those 3,000 by 1 PM. It’s possible I’m being optimistic here about how few words I need for a good climax and validation, but we’ll see. I’ve already managed to get a bunch of my threads tied up in the last couple of chapters and set everything up to go boom in the very next scene. :D

UPDATE: Gunfight! :)

UPDATE 2: I wrote 1,265 before I broke for lunch. I came up quite short of my goal. Now I’ve swapped out my spindle-back dining room chair and settled into my new seat because it’s more comfortable and my plan is to write straight through for 4 hours with as few breaks as I can manage.  Can’t do that in the hard chair. I do 5 minute sessions in that chair and yeah, maybe that’s 60 sessions but that’s also 60 breaks! I don’t want to be taking breaks for the next few hours. I want to fall into my story and just write toward that ending I need to get done tonight. :) Wish me luck!

Good luck, me! :D

Finish the Book Challenge—Day 3

Lynn

Still working on finishing the book. Today I’m going to push hard to get to the end.

I’ll be over my word count goal in less than 2,000 more words, but I’m hoping I don’t go too long! ;) I need to be done today because tomorrow is the deadline and I’d like to finish early. :D

UPDATE: I’m over my word count goal for this book at this point, although not by much (216 words). I took a quick break to have supper and watch a favorite show, and now I’m getting back to work. I have a bit to delete as I go, so I doubt I’ll increase the count by too much at the moment, although later tonight, as I really get into the climax, I expect to grow the story by another few thousand words.  But I’m so happy the ending is finally coming together. I had a strange twist happen, but it fits so perfectly, it’s like I set it up intentionally, and I love it when that happens!

Finish the Book Challenge—Day 2

Lynn

I did not finish my book yesterday, so I’m trying again today. :) I have 3 days until my self-imposed deadline that is not as self-imposed as it sounds. If the book isn’t done on Thursday, my publishing schedule will be completely messed up and I will in all likelihood not publish by the date I promised the book, something to be avoided at all costs.

I’m excited because I think this book is winding up for a finale and that gives me hope that I’ll be done on time.

I’m planning to get started early today, so off for breakfast and I’ll be back to start writing very shortly. :D

Finish the Book Challenge

Lynn

I’m hoping to finish a book today! :D I supposedly need about 5,240 words to finish. Supposedly, because that’s how many words it will take to reach my goal word count for this novel. I actually have no idea if that’s going to be the end of the book, but I’m hoping to find out today!

I’ve set aside 7 one-hour blocks of time today to work on finding out and to reach 5,240 words.

I need a decent climax for the book and it hasn’t come to me yet. In fact, I’ll be completely honest here, I don’t have a clue if this book is even going to hold together. I’m trying to wrap up a plot that I don’t have figured out and I’m also trying to find something in what I’ve written that I can bring together into a satisfying ending for this story.

It feels kind of like a collection of events with no true—and ah ha! I might have just had a realization. The plot is secondary to the relationships in this one and I think I need to have one of my characters have some kind of realization about this relationship, then I can wing it with the plot and end that and the book might be done.

I’m really hoping I don’t do another book like this one for a while. The plot just never has come together for it. I’m not even sure what promise the beginning makes—seems like it has to do with the relationship much more so than anything else now that I’ve had that thought, so we’ll see!

Oh, and there is one other element that absolutely must be addressed and now that I think about that—that could definitely be part of the promise and should be part of the climax as well … which will create an issue for the relationship and will hopefully all fit together nicely.

Time to get to work!

I Must Stop Visiting Most Writers’ Forums and Blogs

Lynn

It’s time I started to avoid the self-sabotaging habits of visiting certain writers’ forums and blogs.

There are a few blogs I read that I find helpful and inspirational, even motivational, but there are also a number of blogs I’ve had to quit reading altogether. One makes me mad every time I read it, one disappoints me, a few more just leave me feeling disheartened when I read them—I face reality every day and I completely agree that writing is hard work and you have to be willing to put in so much more than you’re going to get back to start with, but the constant refrain of “if you don’t do this, you have no chance of success” annoys me when I clearly don’t do “this” and yet am not a failure.

I guess what I’m saying is that I didn’t realize so many writers were assholes. :D I’m not sure I like having found that out, and I definitely don’t feel like reminding myself of that every time I open a web browser.

Several forums make me feel the same.

Maybe a better way to explain it is that reading these forums and blogs on a regular basis sucks the creative energy right out of me. I lose my enthusiasm for my stories, for writing, for creating. These places make me feel all tangled up inside. I want to spend time with other writers, but I really don’t want to spend time with people I don’t like. That makes it sound like I don’t like most of the people I’ve met on forums and through blogs, but that’s not true. Not true at all. But I find being around people I don’t like so destructive that it completely overwhelms the joy I get from being around people I do like.

I don’t know why. I’m sure there are lots of writers who enjoy these places and receive more energy from these places than they lose, but that’s not me. Interacting even with people I like takes a lot of energy from me. Putting myself in the position of interacting with people I don’t like? It’s starting to feel a bit self-destructive, tbh.

I’ve become a conflict junkie. I don’t create it or participate, but I find myself drawn to those threads and those blog posts, reading about how horrible all writers are for not caring about this or that—or readers. Good Lord, am I tired of that one! I am a reader. I care about readers. I just chose to care mostly about the things that I as a reader would care about and that’s not the things that some of these other people care about—obviously—but my reader concerns (and therefore writer concerns) are apparently wrong.

Anyway, didn’t mean to go there, but maybe you’re getting the point here. I need to get away from that stuff.

I need contact with other writers, and I’m not sure how I’m going to get it, but I’ll have to figure something else out.

I need to spend more time reading good fiction (without discovering how much I just don’t like some of the authors of some of that good stuff because it completely ruins the reading experience for me). I need to spend more time reading and re-reading good craft and writing life books. I need to spend more time learning new things because this inspires my creativity like almost nothing else.

Now, this has made me almost an hour late getting started on my writing today so I’ve got to wrap it up.

Finally, here are some blogs that I still love.

  • J.A. Konrath’s blog (lots of conflict but his stuff is different because he’s so inspiring)
  • Hugh Howey’s blog (such a positive person that his posts are easy to read and enjoy)
  • Dean Wesley Smith’s blog (sometimes abrasive but inspiring and very helpful and friendly when you have real questions)
  • I’m sure there are more but I can’t think of them—the pressure! I’m in a hurry to get writing before this post starts eating into my second hour of writing time! :D

 

Are the five minute sessions changing the way I write?

Lynn

Well, I have to say this book started out with a lot more promise. :D At the moment, I’m feeling iffy about the through-plot—not sure I have one—and I’m also very worried about what the five minute sessions are going to do to my writing as a whole.

I’ve done several experiments lately where I’ve tried setting the timer for longer periods of time (forty minutes and fifty minutes specifically, because they match the amount of time I usually end up with when I do the five minute sessions for an hour) but I can’t reach the same speeds, not even close. The best I’ve done was 477 words in fifty minutes. That’s about half the speed I often reach when I’m writing in the five minute sessions.

I think it comes down to focus and how I’m able to stay better focused with a five minute timer versus a longer timer. I just can’t seem to hold my attention to one specific task for much longer than the five minutes. And if that isn’t the reason, then I’m stumped. I have no idea what else could make such a difference.

This all matters because I haven’t had a chance to just sit down and read what I’ve written lately and I have no idea how the pacing of this book is going. My scenes have shortened. I didn’t mean for that to happen, and it might not be a difference in my writing but a difference in this specific story, so I’m not going to judge that just yet. Still worrying about it though.

I need a title for this book; I need to figure out where I’m going; and I need to figure out if there’s a decent story here.

Yikes!

One thing I’ve absolutely learned with all this is that even five minutes is more than enough time to sit down and write something.

Whether or not that something is any good is yet to be determined. :D

Tomorrow’s Reading: Zen in the Art of Writing

Lynn
Zen in the Art of Writing - Ray Bradbury

Just today, I told myself I needed to make more of an effort to read more fiction every week, but there’ll probably be no fiction reading tonight or tomorrow. I received the book I ordered, Zen in the Art of Writing: Essays on Creativity by Ray Bradbury.

I ordered this once and Amazon told me there’d been a problem with delivery, could I wait another 8 weeks for it? I said no, so I cancelled the order. Then a few days ago I noticed the book was available again and eligible for 2 day shipping so I reordered it. Got it today!

I’m very much looking forward to reading it. Can’t do it today because I have a lot of writing to do! :D

Going to Back off on the Planning Posts

Lynn

Well, blogging the writing stuff is helpful sometimes, and other times, it’s just boring. :D

I think I’m going to back off on the planning posts and no more zero word days posts for a while. I will definitely still update my yearly word count on my progress page and I might even do weekly word count updates or something—not sure yet about that.

It’s not that the planning posts take that long, maybe 15 to 30 minutes tops to put together and another 10 or so for the updates each time (that’s accounting for opening the browser, loading the page, checking for errors and fixing typos I notice too, but it does take some time to do those things.

And it’s not that the no more zero word days posts are a bother either. I just don’t see the point, tbh. We all know I’m the only one reading these posts, and writing them has gotten kind of boring lately. :D

Not Enough Napping

Lynn

It’s time I started making more of an effort to nap. My naps were really working to refresh my creativity and generate story ideas when I was taking them regularly.

Starting tomorrow I’m going to try not to miss my nap, same as I try not to miss exercising. :)

Hey, it’s the beauty of this career. I should appreciate it more. ;)

Making It up as I Go along Today (Success!)

Lynn

So I made some detailed plans this morning to try again for that 6,000 word day I’ve never had.

Then I kind of gave up early. So here I am editing this post to fit my revised plan to reach 3,000 today and save the try for 6,000 words for another day this week, because today just isn’t that day.

The Plan

8:20–9:20 (finished at 9:38, did 10 sessions, reached 751 words) (must have started late without realizing it)
9:30–10:30 (finished at 11:05, did 10 sessions, reached 733 words) (getting behind on time and word counts, not sure why tbh)
11:30–12:30 (finished at 12:53, did 6 sessions, reached 303 words) (crashed and burned this session! Had to read ch 1,2, & 3 to see if something made sense and poof, my time was gone and I’d done only 6 sessions and it was way past time to stop for exercise and lunch)
7:30–8:30 (479 words)
8:40–9:40 (775 words)

Success! I wrote 3,041 words today. :D

For each hour I have a goal of reaching 750 words. To start with I’m going to do ten 5 minute sessions per hour, with a goal of maintaining an average of 75 words for those 5 minute sessions.

I think I’m going to try harder to visualize what I want to write before each 5 minute sprint and see if that helps me reach higher numbers. (So far this hasn’t helped at all. I’m not having any luck today visualizing the scene before I start typing. I don’t know, it’s kind of like I freeze up when I sit down and can only get into the scene as the words start coming together.)

The one thing I’ve definitely noticed is how much more doable a 3,000 word goal feels after having done 4,000 and 5,000 words more than usual these last few weeks. :D

 

Read Another Book—12 of 60

Lynn

I read another book, and it’s another short story: Beginnings and Ends by Suzanne Brockmann (a story with related characters from When Tony Met Adam, which I read a while back).

Beginnings and Ends - Suzanne Brockmann

I just haven’t been able to get into a novel for the last week or two, although I did pick up Timecaster again yesterday. Maybe I’ll finish it this time. I remember liking what I’d read so far, not sure why I dropped it, but most of the time I don’t know why I put a book down. I mean, if I have a reason, I don’t forget that. I just don’t usually have a reason. I simply get distracted. Anyway, I love time travel stories, and this reminds me that I never finished The Cutting Room, and I really do want to read that. Maybe I’ll see if it interests me this time. I wanted to read it when I bought it, but then I didn’t start it right away and tbh, I keep forgetting about it. I hate when that happens. :D

Anyway, on to the next!

NOTE: I decided to make an effort to read more books this year. And since I have so many unread books, I set a goal to read at least 60 of the books in my backlog by the end of the year. I’m even keeping a log. :)

Today’s Plan

Lynn

I had a plan. I deleted it. I also deleted 2,891 words this morning. So even if I had reached a respectable 3,000 words today, I would’ve only been a little over 100 words ahead of yesterday. That kind of disillusioned me this morning and I had a terrible time getting started today as a result.

I was able to write enough to get back on track, but not enough to actually make any progress with my word count. So I’m ending the day with -2,721 words.

The bad news is that puts me way behind in the great word count I wanted for this week. The good news is that at least I wrote 170 words there at the end. Better than nothing and I do believe I’ll be able to more forward tomorrow—no more deleting for the moment!

Today’s Plan

Lynn

Today’s plan is to reach a record smashing 6,000 words.

I’ve set aside 8 hours for my 5 minute sessions, and I’m trying for 750 each hour in ten 5 minute sessions of approximately 75 words each.

9:20–10:20 (8 sessions, 574 words)
10:30–12:00 (10 sessions, 741 words) (interrupted in the middle of the hour)
12:10–1:10 (10 sessions, 840 words) (switching stories when I come back after a break)
3:10–4:10 (10 sessions, 614 words)
5:00–6:00 (7 sessions, 424 words)
6:20–7:20 (10 sessions, 752 words)
8:30–9:20 (5 sessions, 422 words) (cut the session short)
Hour 8 (cancelled)

But … I’m off to a terribly slow start in the first hour. I have 20 minutes left, and as I write, I’m barely cracking 50 words in 5 minutes. Sometimes I’m not even doing that. I stopped to write this because I feel like the book is screaming out to me that something’s not right and I’m totally ignoring it. And it’s slowed my writing to a crawl.

I should just put everyone in bed together and say to heck with it all. Surely that’ll perk things up! :D

For real, though, I’m having difficulty with something that’s going on. I’m just not sure how to explain it. I’ve set up this really great thing and the payoff is taking too long. But stuff is happening that is forcing that delay. Yet I know I need to do something about that and I have no idea what that something should or could be. Sigh. What a mess!

Ah, well, back to writing. My brain feels foggy and if I don’t get a move on, I’m not going to come in anywhere close to the word count I planned for today.

Also, although I hadn’t planned to bother with a list of the specific timing of my hours, I remembered that I’m planning to revisit all these posts in the future to see if I can identify any patterns of better/worse times to write. So, I’m appending the time as I add the counts. :)

I’m at the beginning of hour 7 and right now, I’m looking at my numbers and thinking it’s going to take a miracle (or one heck of a breakthrough in the writing) to make it in two hours. The sad part is that I’ll be close enough for one more hour to do it, all things staying about the same. The really sad news is that I don’t know if I have that extra hour to give tonight because I have somewhere to be tomorrow! My brother’s wife will be delivering a baby. :D

On that note, I’m going to get started even though I’m really close to cancelling my last sessions after I reach 4,000 and saving the run at 6,000 for another day. We’ll see.

Well, I did end up cutting the next to the last session short and cancelling the last. The numbers just aren’t there and I don’t want to drag this out too late since 6,000 is off the table. :D

Partial success! I reached 4,367 words today. That’s way over my minimum of 2,464 and an excellent day’s writing for me. :)

Amazon’s Six-month Cliff

Lynn

It exists. Very much so. However, it does appear it’s possible to climb out of that abyss. For no apparent reason, sales in the month since the nose dive off the cliff are on an easily identified upward trend (sales dashboard graph) so apparently all is not lost when one dives off that cliff. It’s been interesting to watch. On the other hand, it’s time to publish another book. Good thing I’ve been working on a couple. :D

This is actually the most cliff-like drop in sales I’ve ever noticed. Probably because I don’t do typical promotions so all my sales tend to be spread out instead of in clumps that might trigger an algo adjustment. It’s possible I don’t know what I’m talking about here, fyi. This is also the longest I’ve gone without publishing a new novel, so I haven’t had a chance to see a six-month cliff before.

I have read about others who experience 30 day and 90 day cliffs but I haven’t noticed those before. My reports show fairly steady increases, and then declines, between releases. Spikes are unusual.

This started me digging into my numbers a little more, and lo and behold I discovered an interesting thing. My not-as-popular novel series has barely earned more than my short story series in the last 90 days. Makes me think I should write more short stories instead of novels, unless they’re novels in my popular series, because … ouch. Those novels are 6x as long (and probably take more than 6x as long to write!) and that hurts my ego just thinking about it.

Day 47–51 of No More Zero Word Days

Lynn

Day 47: 3,055
Day 48: 2,610
Day 49: 2,692
Day 50: 95
Day 51: 766

I’m at 51 consecutive days of writing at least 50 words of fiction. As you can see, my numbers have finally definitely started trending upward, so I’m calling this experiment a complete success. 51 days. Boggles my mind. :) I can’t wait to see how long I can keep this going.

That said, I was more right about yesterday than I expected. I got almost nothing written. I barely crossed my minimum, coming in at 95 words for the day after I sat down at 11 PM and did my best to get something done. I had told myself I would start writing once I got home but that didn’t come to pass. Instead, I watched the entire season 2 of Hemlock Grove. I have no idea why. :o

Today’s been tough going, especially considering what I set as my goal. I’ve already spent 3 hours writing with nothing to show for it. I haven’t really got going yet so I hope I can pull out a miracle and end the night strong. I’ll update today’s number when I’m done. (It’s final now.)

I made a change to my workspace that I hope is going to help with tonight’s numbers, and it’s time to get to it.

New Chair Woes

Lynn

I love my new chair. You know, this one:

New Chair

But…

The new chair’s interfering with my ability to focus while I write, and I’m sure of it. A new chair means comfort. Apparently comfort means less writing.

This breaks my heart. I thought I was going to increase my productivity if I made my stints at my workspace more comfortable, but it’s had the opposite effect.

The problem could be anything from an incorrect height adjustment (I’ve tried many, many adjustments over the last week seeking the perfect height—if there is one, it eludes me), to a wholly psychological issue. Don’t know and don’t care at this point. I just need to feel right when I’m sitting at my desk so I can write. And I haven’t felt right since I moved that chair in here.

So, back to the spindle-back dining room chair, like the one you see here:

Desk

Ah well. I can still use the new chair when I’m not working, so all’s not lost.

Remember This: Don’t Rewrite!

Lynn

So I’m staring at a passage in one of my books that I need to get right so I can figure out where the hell to go next with this thing and I’ve just realized that I’ve spent about 3 hours on it.

It’s a passage of only about 1,600 words and I’ve cycled through it, rewriting, more times than I want to think about.

I keep reworking it, mainly I think to give myself a jumping off spot for what happens next, but I still don’t know what that might be.

I’m now trying to decide if anything I’ve done has made any difference whatsoever to the passage, but I can’t tell. There’s a part of me that’s very afraid I’ve screwed this up. But there’s a part of me that knew last night that I needed to soften one of my characters and the only other choice was to scrap what I had and just rewrite the scene from scratch.

Which is exactly what I should have done, and I don’t know why I keep forgetting that. Rewriting is time consuming and rarely does more than make me crazy. The story needs to be written fresh, not pieced together from scraps already on the page. And yet that’s exactly what I’ve just done. And I can tell you now, those 3 hours of writing would have gotten me at least the 1,600 words I have now, so chopping the 1,600 wouldn’t have been a big deal in the end. In fact, I would probably have more done now than I have if I’d just chopped the passage and started fresh.

I need to remember this. I NEED TO REMEMBER THIS.

Maybe that’ll help. ;)

Today’s Plan

Lynn

Planning seems to be a key to better word counts for me. You’d think this was just a revisit of the schedule I said I was never going to revisit or the daily writing time quota that I decided didn’t work. You’d be wrong.

This feels nothing like that. I sit down and create a plan, either the night before or the morning of and I base that plan on how I’ve been feeling, how I think I’ll feel, what other plans I have, and what goal I want to hit. I also allow for experiments.

9:30–10:30 (376 words)
10:40–11:40 (413 words) (I’m behind at this point and I’m starting to think mornings are not my best time for writing. I consistently seem to do worse in the early morning hours. The new school year has also brought about a lack of sleep that I need to get a handle on asap.)
3:40–4:40 (524 words)
4:50–5:50 (569 words) (can’t seem to pick up speed today!)
7:30–8:30 (609 words)
8:40–9:40 (stopped counting and just wrote)

Partial success! I made it to 2,692. Another day where I came up short of my goal but still reached the minimum I need to stay on track with my plan for a higher daily word count.

Today’s goal is 4,000 words in 6 hour long blocks, where the goal is to reach 725 words in each block by doing ten 5 minute sessions and maintaining a 73 word average per session.

The hefty 4,000 word goal is because tomorrow I’ll be having fun and I can say with certainty that I’ll be pushing myself just to hit my minimum.

I’ve had to adjust the start times for my later sessions.

What I Believe

Lynn

I try really hard not to push my beliefs at other people, but today I came really close to sharing something on Google+ that would have made some of my beliefs very obvious to the world. Since I have so many family members and friends who absolutely don’t share many of my beliefs, I didn’t. But it’s made me wonder just how much of myself I hide from others, even those who are closest to me. Why is it so difficult to be myself and not feel apologetic for who I am? Why can’t I just say, hey this is what I think and if you don’t agree, that’s okay, because I’ll still love you? And as I’m typing this, I think I just asked the wrong question. Why can’t I say, hey this is what I think and if you don’t agree, that’s okay, I know you’ll still love me? But the answer to that scares me. I think I’m afraid that while I’m the type of person to understand and love people who believe differently than me, I’m not convinced that most people are the same. And there’s two ways that can go. My loved ones will be hurt that I didn’t believe in them, or I’ll be proved true. I can’t win this one. So I don’t play.

It’s apparent after typing this that I don’t believe love is unconditional.

Now I’m sad. I think I just broke my own heart.

It’s also obvious that I need to meet more people in real life who think more like me.

In the world of my books, I’m free to write what I want, and I think that’s what I’ll go do now.