Year: 2020

Daily post – Jan. 5, 2020

Lynn

The plan today was to try to sit down three times and write 1,200 words each time.

In actuality, this is what happened:

I did four 20 minute timed sessions between noonish and 4:40 pm. I wrote 1,376 words during this time (a really good pace for me, definitely some of my fastest writing). That was 1.333 hours of writing for 4.667 hours of available time.

Do not ask me what happened to the rest of the time, because I can’t say. I have no idea. I did stuff. Who knows?

At 6:32 pm, I returned to the writing. At 6:43 pm, I actually turned on my timer and started writing. Maybe I shouldn’t have pulled up my browser. :D

Note to self: do not open browser during writing breaks, because then a two minute break becomes a two hour break. Or better yet, TURN OFF WIFI on the computer each time I sit down, make a goal for a number of sessions, and DON’T TURN IT BACK ON until I reach that goal. :D

Yeah, that’s probably the better option.

Over the next six hours or so, I logged about five more 20 minute sessions and ended the night at 1:04 am with 2,952 words, logging an official 2.97 hours of timed writing for the day. During that time, I took a break on my main novel twice and worked on a different novel.

All told, I worked on three novels today. One is sitting at 48,227 words at the moment, one is at 16,006, and the other is just getting started at 2,805. :D I have seven active stories going right now: a short, a short novel (maybe), and six full novels (I can’t imagine any of them coming in under 50k). I rotate them out whenever I feel the need.

1. I’m happy about the words.

2. I’m not happy about the time.

3. I’m not happy I stayed up so late.

4. I’m happy anyway, because good writing days always make me happy. :D

As usual, I’m either in love or hate with my story, and right now, I love love love all of them. :D

Feeds are back—even though I didn’t know they were gone

Lynn

A long time ago, I added a cleanup function to my theme functions file and deactivated the RSS feed links that usually appear in the header of a WordPress site. I didn’t really think much about this but it has been brought to my attention that maybe I shouldn’t have done that.

I checked in Feedly, and sure enough, without those links in the <head> of the site, Feedly doesn’t even think there’s a feed here. I doubt any feed reader is finding the feed.

Oops.

I commented out the line of code that removed the feed links from the <head> of the site and lo and behold, Feedly now recognizes a feed for the site.  :-)

As for why I’m posting this now when I had planned to be writing, I think I’ll skip the admission that I delayed writing so I could read in the sun instead. :D What an awesome way to start the day.

Ah well. I’m ready now to dig in. That’s good enough. ;-)

I also used my time in the sun to read back through my last five-ish pages (I send my book to myself as an EPUB every time I run my backups (which I’ve mentioned I do obsessively)) and highlighted a couple of typos and a paragraph to switch order, so I kinda started the writing already.

Man, this story has really taken off. I’m looking forward to seeing where the heck it’s going! I ended last night on a sudden (shortish) time jump that I wasn’t expecting but that makes total sense. I’m excited for the characters and that’s always a good thing.

Daily post – Jan. 4, 2020

Lynn

So, two things. I didn’t stop at 9 p.m. last night. The writing was going well and I didn’t want to stop. I also waited to post this until today, which is the next day. I did warn that I wouldn’t always be posting the day of, but I had hoped to last a little longer than this. ;D However, posting is posting and that’s all I’m going to worry about, so it’s a win. :D I’m posting.

Yesterday’s word count was a lot more on par with my January and 2020 goals, but still fell short.

I wrote 1,670 words. Since it’s my first 1,000+ word day since December 17th, I’m also calling that a win!

I made the call a few days ago that I’m just going to have to live with the fact that I need the timers to focus. Otherwise, I don’t stick with the writing. Too many other things are always grasping for my attention and that’s just a fact of life for me. This is the year I make peace with that. :-)

Even with the timers, I spent hours at the computer yesterday and logged 2.55 hours of active timed writing.

Today I’m aiming for a solid 5 hours.

I’ve said before, it takes me far longer than an hour to get an hour of timed writing, for reasons I can’t truly explain. So this is a challenge for me for sure! ;D

Tracking time to see where the time went between sessions did nothing but show me that I hate tracking time and that I switch between things too fast to make it make sense to even try. So I gave up any kind of actual time tracking a long time ago.

But everyone is different and what might be a challenge for me might be easy for someone else. Just like I find it easy to keep my stories all in my head. I don’t write down much of anything. I just remember. When I need a refresh, I skim the story and it all comes back to me in a flash.

I don’t need extensive notes about my series, and I still manage to do oodles of call backs and threading of big arcs and I don’t really know how I do it.

I also find it really strange when other writes claim they can’t remember writing something—I believe them, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t really understand it. That is definitely not how it works for me. I can tell you the plots of every book I’ve written and give you details about those people as if they were beloved relatives, and that has held true even as my catalog of finished books has grown. :D

Well, time to get to work! I have a book to finish this coming week if I can and I’m hoping to make good progress on that today. It’s sunny and beautiful outside and I want to do some writing at my sunny desk before it gets dreary again. :D

Daily post – Jan. 3, 2020

Lynn

I wrote 600 words today on one novel. Just when I thought I was going to get to dig in and do more, the daughter called and I spent an hour and forty minutes on the phone. :D So that was a bust.

I’ve decided I need to set a boundary for myself for finishing my writing for the day this year. I’ll start with it as an experiment for January, and see how that goes. But 9 PM is the stop time I came up with.

I plan to consider it a hard stop. Doesn’t matter if I’m tired or not, or want to write more or not. As a general rule for the entire month of January, I must stop at 9 PM if I haven’t already called it a night on the writing.

I just really need to break the habit of going to bed early one night and late the next, and then doing it all again. And one of the primary things that causes that is procrastinating my writing and then trying to rush and do more right when I should be getting ready for sleep.

I also would like to start getting to the writing earlier, and that means getting up.

So, it’s back to the effort to improve my sleep habits as a way to improve my writing. :D

Now goodnight, because I’m done. I was two hours short of sleep last night and although I’m not tired yet, I have definitely lost my ability to concentrate. I’m going to try to get a fresh start tomorrow, and start earlier than today and maybe make up a few words in the process. If not, well, tomorrow is a new day and I have a daily goal I’d like to meet at least once this week! :D

Daily post – Jan. 2, 2020

Lynn

I decided on December 31st that I was going to post a daily post on the site this year. I even drafted one up (which I’ve since used for the WordPress bug test post).

Then I decided maybe not.

But now I’ve rescinded that decision. I think this daily posting thing will go well with my daily writing this year.

I have a streak going and I intend to keep it going all through 2020. I’m up to 150 consecutive days of fiction writing. That’s my longest run to date. I’d like to see how long I can make it before my impulsive side gets the best of me and decides there’s no point to it. ;D

I’m not swearing I’ll get the post up every day on time or anything, but I will post one for the day within a day or two, which’ll naturally include my daily word count. Mostly because I’ll be using these posts as a sort of accountability for my goals.

I will say this: I don’t think it’s going to be smart of me to start off the day by writing the post for the day before. I tend to get sucked into the blog posts and waste of lot of prime writing time doing a brain dump, getting stiff from sitting too long, and letting my coffee go cold, then end up having to do a total reset to get started with the fiction writing.

Today, this moment, is a case in point. (Grimaces at the mouthful of cold coffee and swallows anyway.)

Toodles. :D I have fresh coffee to brew and a book to write.

Oh, and I wrote 252 words on January 2nd, and 303 on January 1st.

Definitely not on target for the plans I’ve made for this new year. :-o

I hate playing catch up, but I guess that’s what I’ll be trying to do today.

WordPress 5 bug that’s messing up my publish dates for newly published draft posts

Lynn

There’s an annoying bug in WordPress 5 that’s popped up a few times for me lately and I finally sat down this morning and decided to see if I could figure out what the heck is going on. I found mention of it at the WordPress site, but it’s an eight year old bug that appears to have been fixed at some point. Only it’s not fixed, because this is exactly what’s happening here.

I had a post that I never finished in draft, edited in bulk quick mode to close a bunch of posts to comments and pingbacks, and when I used the unfinished post for my Year in Review—2019 post, it set the date to December 28 when I published it on January 1. I had to update it to the correct post date last night when I realized what had happened. (I posted the December progress post, backdated, and it still showed up before the year in review post that I had posted on January 1st, and I knew that wasn’t right, so a quick check of the post showed me the date was off by 4 days.)

So, in case you’ve found this post while looking for info about a WordPress publish date bug, there you go. Maybe this will help you remember not to quick edit drafts. Better safe than sorry and easier to remember than to remember to check the publish date every time.

Happy New Year. :D

(My test post that confirmed this bug is actually the bug I’m dealing with.)

A test post that turned into a post about writing and trusting the process

Lynn

This is a test post that I’m posting before I make a fool of myself complaining about a WordPress bug. I’d like to see if it’s reproducible before I publish that draft! This post was already a draft that I made on January 1st, but never posted, so it fits the bill for what I need to test.

At the moment, the Publish date is set to “immediately” which means there’s no publish date set on it.

Now I’m going to quick edit the draft, by changing something minor like adding a new tag. Then I’m going to edit regularly and check the date.

:D

Be back soon with the answer.

Well, it definitely messed up my dates. The date is set to the time of the quick edit: 11:01 a.m. Now, if I publish this post, I’ll have to remember to change the date and time. Or not, since I’m just using this post as a test.

I’m going to publish this, just because it supports my post about the bug. :D

It’s not a bad example of how I use writing to help me think things through. I pretty much write down everything, else my thoughts just spin too fast to really make sense of and I get distracted. Writing helps me focus. :D

In a related tangent, and to make this about writing, that’s why I like being a discovery writer.

If I try to consciously think about what’s coming up or what to write next in the story, I can’t bring it all together. I try to follow too many branches of the story. Writing it down keeps me centered in the story and actually creating it. I do not do well trying to make up stories if I’m not writing it down. On the other hand, I do fight that same problem while writing, which probably accounts for 50% of the reason I’m just not a fast writer.

For example, two days ago, I was cycling back through my current scene in progress because something felt off, and I added a line. That line led to another line and another, and then before I knew it, I’d branched off the current path I was on and started on a new one.

The problem is that the paths are somewhat incompatible, and yet, the second path wants to be there.

Why, you ask? Why not just delete it all after that point where I diverged and keep going as I am? I don’t know. I do that sometimes. And sometimes I don’t. I can’t always say why my muse wants me to make something work even when it seems like it won’t. At the moment I’m thinking it just wants me to keep writing until I find a way to circle back to that bit and it fits.

In my last book, this same thing happened in a scene and the end result was that I ignored the frustrated part of myself that kept saying just give up and delete the damn thing and keep going—that I’d come up with something just as good if I did (I often do), but I didn’t listen. I’m glad I didn’t listen. When I read those parts of the book back, what’s there was really good for that book. It turned out to be a pivotal moment for one of my characters and set off some really fun action and great character moments for others too.

Anyway, on to the real work of the day. :D I have to complain a bit about WordPress and then work on finishing my current book. :D

(Yep. It published at 11:20 a.m. as 11:01 a.m. Definitely a reproducible bug in WordPress.)

Year in review—2019

Lynn

I wrote 239,236 words in 2019.

January — 577
February — 1,573
March — 15,742
April — 50,137
May — 52,460
June — 10,272
July — 966
August — 24,113
September — 24,609
October — 19,168
November — 22,797
December — 17,322

My slow months are the same as in the past.

Over the entire time I’ve been tracking, January, December, and June are my worst for word count, and even though 2019 numbers are just a little different, the pattern held. Early and late year months are off, and the middle of the year dip extended into July.

Otherwise, I’m not too disappointed with 2019. It ended up my third best year for word count.

2012 — 146,821
2013 — 268,191
2014 — 217,641
2015 — 250,011
2016 — 220,071
2017 — 126,581
2018 — 92,198
2019 — 239,736
All years — 1,561,250

 

December 2019 progress

Lynn

Gotta backdate this one so it doesn’t overtake my Year in Review. :-)

I wrote 17,322 words in December, which is a far cry from the 60k goal I set out with at the beginning of the month. I realized quickly enough that 60k in December was going to be tough, and then just as quickly, I started realizing it wasn’t going to happen. I was getting behind in the beginning of the month, and all the holiday time was staring me down from the last week of the calendar.

Still, I’m actually not that disappointed with my December total.

As far as Decembers go, it was my third best out of eight. That’s not a bad result at all. :)

Now, on to the new year. I have big, big, big plans. :D