A flawed perception of time

After a glance at my calender where I’ve been keeping up with my activities the last few days, I’ve just realized I haven’t actually been reading slower at all, it just felt that way.

I’ve been noticing ever more often just how flawed my perception is of the passage of time.

According to my logged times (because why not, right?) I’ve only spent about 2 hours and 37 minutes reading my book. That’s not bad for 49% of about 50,000 words, while making highlights and notes along the way and catching typos too. I took a break at 1:00 and then a break at 3:00 and I haven’t gotten back to it yet.

I can tell from looking at the calendar that these times are right, and yet … it makes no sense to the rational part of my brain. The times don’t match up to my feelings of how long I spent reading.

Unfortunately, this isn’t a new thing. I should be used to it by now.

I should probably try to improve my perception of time but is that even possible?

Ah well. Getting back to it now! :)

A break in the middle

It’s 6:30 and I’m about halfway through reading my book. I’ve been reading it on my Kindle so I had to stop for a while because the battery started to die on me; it wasn’t fully charged when I started. According to my Kindle location bar I’m 49% through the book. Everything was going really good until the last two chapters. I’ve made a lot of highlights. The writing there’s either rougher than the rest or I just became more critical, knowing what I know about the ending. Honestly, I think I was becoming more critical because I expected problems so the low battery was probably good timing.

Regardless, the reading is taking longer than I expected, and I don’t know if it’s because I’m reading too slow and too picky or what. But it usually does. I never get the time estimates on this stuff right. When I read one of my books for fun, I can read it in the same amount of time I can read any book. But when I read it critically, it takes me three or four times as long. (Even though this time I was supposedly trying not to read critically, because I just wanted to figure out if the book worked! However, I should have expected otherwise, because I can’t bring myself not to mark up things I want to fix. :D

A lot of writers say that you can’t edit your own work but I don’t really believe that as a blanket statement. I think it’s true for some people, and I think some people can edit their own work just fine, kind of like the way some people have no idea how off key they’re singing, and some people (like me) have no problem noticing at all how badly they sound when they try to sing a tune. ;)

I do think a second set of eyes for continuity issues is usually helpful although I don’t actually use a second set of eyes. The truth is if I knew someone who liked my work and would read it in a fairly timely manner I’d probably be willing to send it for a second look, but usually I’m in a hurry to publish once I’m done so I’m okay with taking a chance that I’ll miss something.

While waiting for my charger to charge my Kindle I watch two episodes of Syfy’s Z Nation. It was corny and it was mostly a gore fest but I enjoyed it anyway. One of the characters—the sandy-haired boy—I remember him from an episode of Stargate SG-1 in which he played Jack’s clone. He was much younger at the time but I remember that face. :) I’ll have to go look it up on IMDB but I’m pretty sure I’m correct about that. Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis were a couple of of my all time favorite shows (still are really). :)

Anyway, I bought Dragon 13, but it sucked so bad I gave up within 2 days and deleted it off my computer. I’m using the voice recognition on my cell phone to speak into Evernote for this post, which I’m going to copy and paste here (which I did). Of course I’ll have to edit it (yep, I did) but frankly I think I should have just stuck with this if I wanted to do any dictating because it tends to do a better job than Dragon. I’m sure if I did more training or something, Dragon could have worked but it really didn’t like my computer and I didn’t like it on my computer so I got rid of it. I don’t do dictation well at all, but I do occasionally have a thought that could turn into a bit of a scene that might actually get me a few extra words here and there. :)

And now my phone’s about to die too so I think I’m going to swap it out for my Kindle and get back to reading my book while my phone charges. :D I’ve got 39 minutes left of the first episode of Hinterland. Maybe I’ll finish it first. ;)

As you can no doubt tell, dictating isn’t necessarily great for me because I ramble quite a bit. :)

For someone who doesn’t take days off I sure do take a lot of days off

It’s a paradox, I tell you. I don’t take days off, and yet, I take a lot of days off. :) I guess I should just admit that it’s not that I don’t take days off (because clearly I do), I just don’t have dedicated work days like I used to have when I had a day job, so every day is a possible work day, just not a probable one at the moment. I’ve been taking more days off than I’ve been working this month. Ack!

I don’t like the week/weekend lifestyle and I never have. With this career, I don’t have to force myself into it and I really love that. Now if only I could finish these books I’ve got going so that I don’t have to worry about having to trade this job in for another job at some point in the future. Sooner rather than later, truth be told—writing and publishing is a bit like construction work, either feast or famine. I had my feast a few months ago. Famine’s on the way. ;)

Which leads me to a confession: I haven’t even started reading my finished novel yet. What to do? And why do I keep putting off the reading of that book?! I assume (1) I’m scared of what I’ll find, (2) I think it’ll get better if I wait, (3) I won’t be so hard on myself if I give it time, and (4) I just don’t want to do it right now.

Ah well. It’s time I get over all 4 of those possible reasons and get started. It’s 10:50 am right now. I’m going to start reading that book no later than 11:30, no matter what else crops up before then, and I’m going to finish reading it by 5 pm. I can do that.