Year: 2016

Trying something different

Lynn

So, yesterday I set a goal to write for 8 hours. I set my countdown timer for 8 hours, and I started it whenever I wrote.

I made it to just under 4 hours to go and 3,073 words for the day before I gave up and went to bed. :)

It sounds like a fail, but it was very much a win. I needed 3,417 words yesterday and I got the closest to reaching my goal since I set it.

I’m trying to do the same again today, hoping to reach 6,000 words.

My pace is off, so even if I reach 8 hours of writing, I might not make it, but I’ll definitely end up with something worth crowing about. I’m already down to 6 hours and 26 minutes, and I have 744 words written. I believe I’ll at least make it to 3,000 again today, and I haven’t given up hope my pace will improve and I’ll reach the record-breaking 6,000 words I’d like to reach. I only need to speed up to 817 words an hour for the rest of the time to do it.

Thoughts—
1. My writing sessions are as long as I can make them before I have to stop for a break.
2. Timers are no longer interrupting me when the words are flowing, reminding me I need a break (I don’t need the reminder because my bladder makes it so that breaks happen too frequently already.)
3. I am more aware of total time invested in writing for the day and how much total time I have left to reach my goal.
4. I’ve tried it before and it didn’t work, but it’s been a few years, and it’s working now, so I’m going to keep it up until it doesn’t work. :)

Word count post for Nov. 16, 2016

Lynn

1,054 words.

Daily average since 9/19: 969 words.

Remember this scale?

1,000 = low word count day
2,000 = average word count day
3,000 = moderate word count day
4,000 = high word count day
5,000 = record breaking word count day (always, because 5k is huge!)

I’m still trying to get into a routine with writing where I’m reaching the average and moderate word count levels more often than I have low word count days.

Clearly, I’m not there yet.

Second day of new plan and I’m failing to keep up

Lynn

As I said in the post where I discussed my new plan:

At this point, here’s what I need to finish by 11/30/2016, which is the date I’d like to finish: 3,150 words a day (average).

Yesterday, I didn’t keep up, writing only 1,846 words, so my goal number of words each day has now gone up to 3,237 (unless I can make up the entire 1,304 words I’m behind today).

The schedule I’m attempting to follow is:

8–9:30
10–11:30
12:30–2
2:30–4

Which is four 1.5 hour sessions. The goal is 1,000 words per session, or a very reasonable pace of 667 words per hour.

Yesterday, I got behind early and never caught up. In fact, I kept getting further and further behind, until I finished the second session at almost 8:30 last night.

Today isn’t looking much better.

It’s 1:42 pm and I’ve finished one session, which I finished at 11:55 am. I wrote 353 words in that 1.5 hours, which is a TERRIBLE pace. I don’t even know how I managed to do that badly.

Then I took a short 30 minute break (yeah, I know it’s almost two hours later!) and here’s where I am.

I’m about to start session 2, and I’m hoping I can pull myself out of this spiral of doom I seem to have fallen into.

Distractions? None. Or if they exist, they’re all in my head. I honestly, 100%, do not know where my time went this morning. All I can assume is that I started late (and didn’t really notice*), then had to take lots of breaks. I did notice that. Lots of bladder pangs this morning for some reason. TMI, I know. Don’t care. If you do, bail now. This is not the blog for you.

Anyway, I’m putting on headphones, cranking up some music, and going to get down to business with this writing thing. I cannot let today become another failure.

*Possible because I took a nap on the couch less than 10 minutes after I got up this morning. I can’t remember if I even noticed how long I was out.

Further update

I am absolutely and completely off the schedule at this point and it’s 11:14 PM and I’m still trying to write.

Here’s a cut and paste from my tracking spreadsheet.

Session Time in Hours Session Words WPH
1.5 353 235
1.5 409 273
0.75 307 409

Ugly, huh?

And here are the stats:

          285 avg wph
       2,168 words to go
7.6036015 hours to go
         6.00 hours planned
         3.75 hours completed
          963 wph needed

At my current pace, it would take me another 7.6 hours to finish today’s word count. Uh huh.

I could get it done in 2 hours and 15 minutes if I could maintain a 963 wph pace.

But did I mention it was 11:20 PM? (It takes time to write these posts.) I’m tired, so none of that will be happening. On the other hand, I did accomplish something this afternoon and evening.

  1. I discovered that although the pace of this book felt ridiculously slow, it was just feeling that way because of how long it was taking me to write stuff into a scene I already had mostly written. (Those 1000-ish words I wrote today.) When I read back through to see if the story’s pace was as bad as I thought, I discovered that it moved along just fine. So—lesson learned. Pacing is not something I can feel as I write. Don’t delete a bunch of stuff because it’s giving me trouble. Read back through the last few chapters first. (That definitely stole some writing time.)
  2. I had to update my timeline for this series and that meant skim reading a lot of pages from the last book looking for clues about dates and the passage of time. Unfortunately for me, some of these danged books overlap, i.e. the stories happen concurrently*, and I had to create a spreadsheet several books back to keep it straight. I’m trying to write my way out of this situation with this book. Future books will not happen concurrently if I can help it!  (That also definitely stole a lot of writing time.)

*Never set up a series that contains stories that happen concurrently unless you’re a glutton for punishment. It’s a nightmare to keep straight!

Now, I’m off to see if I can get more writing done before I crash. The next update will be nothing more than my word count post for the day.

Consider this a cliffhanger. ;)

 

Word count post for Nov. 15, 2016

Lynn

1,846 words.

I have no excuse that makes sense for why I wasn’t able to get two of my four sessions done yesterday. Also, the two I did finish did not total 2,000 words.

The schedule was 8–9:30, 10–11:30, 12:30–2, 2:30–4, or four 1.5 hour sessions. I got behind early and never caught up. In fact, I kept getting further and further behind, until I finished the second session at almost 8:30 last night. (Today appears to be headed in an even worse direction. Here’s hoping I can pull myself out of this spiral.)

Daily average since 9/19: 967 words.

The next book: writing plans

Lynn

I’ve started my next book. At this point, I’m 12,606 words into it. I’ve also started another book (and have two others already started, too), but I’m not going to let myself work on it except when I’ve already finished my goals for the current book. See my previous post about writing one book at a time for reasons.

It’s important that I keep my interest level high on this book because it has a tight deadline. It had an even tighter deadline, but I had to nix that one. See another previous post for those reasons. :)

I’m aiming for about 63,000 words on this book.

The median word count for the series is 67,886 and the average word count is 67,655.

The books range in length from just over 50,000 words to just over 85,000. It’s a pretty big range, to be honest, but I can’t seem to control for length when I’m writing. I wanted them all to be 50,000 but we see how that worked out. :D

I started this book estimating 50,000 words, realized that just wasn’t probable, and raised it to 68,000 after seeing those numbers. Now I’ve backed off, because I actually want it to be closer to 60,000 and I don’t want to set myself up for writing a longer book just by default.

At this point, here’s what I need to finish by 11/30/2016, which is the date I’d like to finish: 3,150 words a day (average).

I’m going to keep this post updated with my progress, although it’ll probably be in batches instead of a daily update.

Why I’m (mostly) forcing myself to stick to writing one book at a time

Lynn

I’m writing this down because I’m sure I’m going to forget it, just when I need to remember it most.

Taking too long to finish a book is a sure way to bore me! I have to start finishing my books faster, if I want to save my love of writing.

Because honestly, it’s starting to bore me. I’ve written a lot of books. There aren’t many things in life that hold my attention after I’ve finished—hell, half the time I can’t even finish.

I’m not a finisher by nature. It’s a real chore to finish.

But books aren’t books if they don’t get finished, and I sure can’t sell unfinished books.

If I lose interest in a story, the story loses out, and the quality does not improve, trust me on that. Writing slow causes me to lose the threads of the story, and to lose motivation, while writing fast keeps my brain in the story, excited and creative. This even applies at the micro level, because my sentences flow better when I don’t constantly tinker with them. I know this is true. I still have to fight that desire regularly. :)

I come up with more ideas, faster, when I’m writing a lot. And I enjoy writing so much more when I’m writing often and fast than I do when it’s a slog and I’m agonizing over plot decisions or worrying about word choices.

If it’s not fun, I’m not going to do it. That’s just the truth.

Blame it on ADHD or laziness, or whatever, but it’s true. If it’s not fun for me, I will do everything in my power to avoid doing it, and when you’re your own boss, that gets to be a problem.

Ah…

Well, I feel better having gotten that out. Now, on to the next post and the day’s writing.

Word count post for Nov. 14, 2016

Lynn

224 words.

So disappointing, considering my goal yesterday.

Daily average since 9/19: 952 words.

I spent last night figuring out just what I would need to do to finish the book I’m working on in the time I have left, realized it was a fool’s dream considering my actual track record, and came up with a new plan, something that still pushes me to do better than I have before, but something that’s not so far outside the realm of possibility.

So I have a new plan for this book. One I feel pretty good about it. I’ll detail it in a post of it’s own, because this is a word count post, not a goal post. ;)

I want to write 6,000 words today

Lynn

I want to write 6,000 words today*, so I’ve made a plan. Actually, I made the plan yesterday. I’m just going to keep trying this until I do it, because I’m ready. I write fast enough: ~550–650 words an hour. I have enough hours in the day, and I have the desire.

What I possibly don’t have is the focus and concentration I need, but that comes and goes and I can’t let that stop me from trying. :)

I’m starting late, but I’m just going to try to write faster and stick to the version of the plan I spelled out yesterday, with 1 hour between sessions. All my record days of > 5,000 words happened in less than 8 hours of writing, one in only 6 hours.

The plan and results:

10:00–11:30 – Made it 12 minutes in, but constant interruptions made it a nonstarter. I reset the timer and started again for the next session (at 12:11). I had made a few edits, but only netted 5 words during those 12 minutes anyway. No joke. Also, I rethought my plan and made some adjustments.
1:00–2:30 – 103 words (1.25 hours) – I spend most of this time making some changes instead of writing.
3:30–5:00 – Skipped.

***Okay, I’m going to have to reevaluate this day’s goal. At this point, I just need to get started.***

5:30–7:00
7:30–9:00
9:30–11:00

*I should specify: on one book!

****Well, I just have no idea why I haven’t wanted to write today, but I’ve totally let myself get away with it, and I’m pretty unhappy with myself right now.****

I think, maybe, possibly, I’m going to have to commit to moving this deadline. It’s starting to mess with my head.

Word count post for Nov. 13, 2016

Lynn

3,113 words.

Daily average since 9/19: 965 words.

I’m 57,002 words down from 9/19 and a 2,000 word average. That sounds pretty bad, but doing the numbers made me realize I can recover from this in less than 90 days with just an additional 635 words a day. So although I’m not making the catch up for words a priority, it is nice to know it’s not some insurmountable goal. And it’s reachable with no change in plan at all, because my plan is to have more average and moderate word days than not and monitor my average to see how well I’m doing. As long as I don’t reset my start date (9/19, which I’m not planning to do), a 2,000 word average will mean I’ve recovered.

I’ve let myself get behind—by a lot

Lynn

I have a deadline coming up, very much a “can’t miss this date” deadline. It’s making me anxious.

I mean, technically, I could miss it. The date is still listed as tentative, but in my head, I know it’s not a deadline I need to miss. I don’t want to miss it. The fact is, though, that it’s really getting beyond my current capabilities to reach unless I have some kind of breakthrough in my writing.

So here I go trying to force that breakthrough.

I’ve found a schedule I don’t remember having tried before, and I’m going to try it today.

It pushes my pace a little bit, but nothing out of reach (~667 wph needed to stay on track). Where I’ll have the most trouble is just focusing on start and end times for my sessions and actually doing them when I’m supposed to do them. Five minutes late getting started is no big deal, but my history shows that I tend to get behind early, start every session late, until it’s snowballed and I’ve eliminated massive swaths of writing time just by letting five minutes here and there become twenty.

Here’s the plan.

1.5 hour writing sessions where the goal is 1,000 words each session. (Yes, I’ve tried this part before.)
.5 hour breaks between sessions (This is where it’s different. The writing sessions are all evenly spaced all day long.)

Here’s where I’ll update results.

12:00–1:30 – 1,296 words – Woo hoo! Things are off to a good start.
2:00–3:30 – 977 words – Only 1.23 hours, because I’ve fallen pretty far behind. I’ll have to skip the next session to get back on track. I’m hoping I can get ahead with some better word counts for the next couple of sessions. I had just enough time before 6 to finish it off before I started that one. :)
4:00–5:30 – Skipped to catch up
6:00–7:30 – 840 words – I’ve fallen behind again. It’s 8:17 and I have half an hour on this one to go. I’m going to keep going with it at this point.
8:00–9:30 – Skipped, because I was still working on the previous session.
10:00–11:30 – Skipped because I’m exhausted and I’m going to bed early so I can start off strong tomorrow.

If I get behind, I’ll cut a session or break short and move on to the next session.

If this goes well, I’m going to try it again tomorrow, starting earlier and taking a full hour between sessions (if I want—it certainly won’t be mandatory). The only reason I’m not doing that today is that I’m starting so much later than I planned when I came up with this idea last night.

Now, gotta go. I’m already 15 minutes behind. Yeah, I know. Not kidding. :o

**This might seem like it hasn’t gone well, but considering how badly I fail at this and how often, I’m actually really pleased with what I accomplished using this schedule. I’m definitely going to try the slightly modified version tomorrow, with the hour between sessions and see how that goes. I don’t yet know if the longer breaks will help or hinder my ability to stay on track.

One more attempt to have a 6,000 word day

Lynn

The plan: Write in one hour blocks until I reach 6,000 words!

It’s almost 11 am this morning, and I’m starting so late because I had a really late night. On the other hand, I happen to know that one of my rare 5,000+ word days happened on a day when I started writing after 11 am, so that doesn’t have to stop me from doing this. Also, family will be clearing out shortly and my quietest time today is going to be this afternoon and evening, so it seems like a great day to work on setting a record for myself.

Time to get started. :)

**Nope. Came up very short. 1,178 words. I just couldn’t get started until late, and then when I did, my pace was pathetic at < 300 words per hour.

Word count post for Nov. 10–11, 2016

Lynn

Nov. 10: 2,369
Nov. 11: 2,612

Daily average since 9/19: 922 words.

The average is going up again! Finally.

On these days, I had two false starts on my attempt to write 6,000 words in a day, but today I plan to try that again. Interruptions, distractions, and my own inability to get past those things severely affected the time I spent writing, while my inability to stop tinkering with my words kept my pace too slow and stopped me from gaining any momentum.

Can I write 6,000 words today?

Lynn

No? Yes? Maybe?

The plan: three blocks of writing time that last three hours each, during which I need to write 2,000 words so I end up with 6,000 words total for the day.

8:30 to 11:30 – 1,162 words

12:30 to 2 – Make up time.

2 to 5 – Was 1 to 4 until I added make up time.

7 to 10 –

Yesterday’s writing challenge a bust—much like the election

Lynn

As someone who voted Libertarian in this election, I’ll just say that the candidate representing me didn’t win. No surprise there.

The fact that I didn’t spend the day writing? Very much a surprise. I fully expected myself to be able to concentrate enough to write—but I just couldn’t get started.

Today I’d like to try again. The only problem is that it’s already 1:20 pm. I stayed up WAY too late into the early morning watching the election results. I had to make up that sleep time because I felt terrible when I tried to get up at 6:30 in the morning. I went back to sleep until about 8:30, but I still feel pretty bad, and I have a headache that comes from a rough, and late, night of sleep.

Anyway, I’m going to give it a try today despite the last start. Can’t win if you don’t play, as they say, and there’s always an available excuse for not playing.

All the points of the challenge remain the same, except for the timing of the three 3-hour blocks.

But three 3-hour blocks is still the plan.

See you back here at the end of block #1. I’ll update below!

Block #1
1.5 hours: 398 words

Need to get this next book moving

Lynn

I need to get this next book moving, and I need to do it in a hurry. I’m already so far behind I’m not sure I can catch up.

Time for a challenge.

I plan to aim for my best word count in a day ever tomorrow: 6,000 words.

I have 3 blocks of 3 hours each scheduled. (And I’ll go vote during the break between block 1 and block 2.)

I need to write 2,000 words in each 3 hour block.

I need to write 667 words for each hour in each 3 hour block.

As in, I really need to keep my pace up. A big part of this challenge will be keeping my breaks as short as possible. My historical average pace isn’t that great—and 667 wph is already pushing it. The less time I actually write during each hour, the faster I need that pace to be.

I really need to reach that 2,000 words during each block.

Side benefit of this challenge? Working this hard, it’ll be impossible to find time to worry over the election!

Now, off to bed to make sure I’m ready to get started when I need to start tomorrow. :)

Disheartened by a bad book

Lynn

I can’t make people like my books. I can’t really change what and how I write, or if I could, I wouldn’t want to, because then I just wouldn’t want to write. I don’t always enjoy the process of writing, and it’s the story, written the way I want it written, that carries me through when I’m feeling that way.

Writing is hard for me.

Sure, sure. There are people who’ll say that’s dumb, that writing isn’t hard, but those people? They don’t know how it feels to be me. I love making up stories, but writing them down, in some kind of coherent way, is really damn hard work. There are lots of days when I’d rather clean bathtubs all day than try to make sense of the stuff in my head and put it down in readable form.

I do the best I can with everything I write, and I do try to improve. And I recognize that not everyone is going to like what I write—especially because I write primarily for me.

All that doesn’t change the fact that it’s still disheartening when I realize I’m not writing things other people enjoy in the same way I do.

I’m pretty sure my last book didn’t hit the mark with a great many people. I had that realization after I accidentally saw a review I really didn’t need to see and went looking for evidence to support it one way or another—and it was an accident, because I never would have gone looking for it but one retailer in particular emails me reviews and I can’t stop them from doing it.

Probably not my best idea today.

What I found was that this latest book is my lowest rated book on Goodreads, by nearly a star. The thing I liked most about the book is the thing really not loved by most other readers. People do not seem to be liking this book. I’ve had a few 5 star ratings, but no reviews to go along with them, while the reviews I do have are all pretty negative.

Right now, I’m feeling like I’m just not that great a writer. My books have flaws, some of those flaws pretty major, but other than continuing on as I am, I’m not sure there’s anything I can do about it.

I’m doing the best I can. I just have to keep going, write what I write, and hope people continue to buy my books despite those flaws.