Fiction writer. Expert procrastinator. This is my life.
Challenges are a way of pushing myself to do better. I find them especially useful for getting myself out of a rut.
Basically, this isn’t an update.
Well, technically, it is an update, but it’s an update to say I don’t have anything to update. Despite my plans for the day, it’s 8:06 pm and I’ve written about a nib’s worth of words. I guess it’s gonna be a long night, because I’m not going to bed until I’ve at least kept my >1,000 words streak alive.
I can say with certainty that today will not be a 6000 word day.
It’s 11:09 AM and I’m ready to start now, after a delay I should have expected but for some reason didn’t.
There are lots of options for completing this challenge, but considering the time, I’m going to have to hope for this one: 750 words x 8 hours.
Writing faster will be as important today as writing more, it turns out. I’d hoped differently, but I probably should have realized it was a Monday when I wrote my first post this morning. Monday mornings are difficult because my college bound kid spends it getting ready to head out for the week and I spend the morning distracted.
Now to recover, turn off WiFi, and get myself back into a writing groove before I let the day slip away.
If I count the words I deleted yesterday (which I don’t), my word count was in line with the previous four days of this challenge to reach 6000 words.
Meaning today is day six of the attempt.
I have to do some stuff differently today, because yesterday was my worst day for time logged since I started the challenge.
On the one hand, taxes filed. Done. Complete. Yay. On the other, almost three hours fixing a Windows error that was having no effect on my ability to work whatsoever.
I’m going to try focusing on the accumulation of time today instead of worrying about the words. We’ll see how that goes.
I’m afraid I’m going to lose some words today. The current material is going too far afield of the scenes I’ve already written. I had hoped they would join up but now it’s not looking good for that possibility.
I’m at 965 words for the morning and I’m still trying to reach 2000 before lunch. That’s with 2 hours and 5 minutes of writing. I’ve been careful of breaks but obviously I’m still losing time somewhere. I got started at 8:36 and it’s 11:15 now.
Back to the book. Too much to do to tinker.
I need to make this quick, so I’ve let myself have WiFi on my computer for this one post. Nothing else.
I’ve looked at my previous day’s efforts and concluded that for me to meet this challenge today I really need to pass 2,000 words before I stop for lunch, if not sooner, so that will be my morning’s priority.
I think I’ve given the writing too much focus and the challenge not enough and I’ll try to shift that around today. What I mean by that is that I’m too focused on the writing and making it “right” instead of trusting my gut with this story. (I have yet to decide if my gut is trustworthy, but for me to meet this challenge, I have to assume it is.) If I focus on the challenge and what I need to do to meet it, I can leave my subconscious unobstructed and free to work the story while my active brain fritters away the time worrying about words per hour and other numerical calculations.
So that’s the plan that aims to make today different than yesterday and it’s why I believe I have a chance of succeeding at this today. :)
Yesterday I had several instances where I forgot to start or restart my time tracker app, and that, too, I think make it easy to stop what I was doing (because it wasn’t recording anyway, right?) and interrupt myself with distractions that stole time from me and ruined my flow.
Seriously, I’m a huge fan of Gleeo, but I’ve always managed to make the whole thing much too granular and burdensome and every time I quit using it before I’ve really had a chance to collect enough data to be useful. This time, I set up one Domain for one Project with only one Task and it’s working great and giving me just the information I want.
(Writing→Fiction→Writing)
It’s repetitious, but it gets the job done and doesn’t distract me with minutia. ;) Today will be day five with it, and I don’t see a need to stop using it into the foreseeable future.
I’ve had cereal, have water beside me, and I’m ready to start. It’s 8:20 am.
I’ve faced a lot of procrastination today. My pace has been marginally better, but not significantly so. As it stands, I’ve written 1,841 words in 3 hours and 40 minutes. So truly, I’ve maintained my average pace today. What I haven’t done is spend enough hours writing to get anywhere near to meeting this challenge at that pace.
But I can certainly claim consistency over the last four days, with word counts of 1495, 1905, 1575, and 1841, respectively. My daily average is 1707.
Yes, tomorrow I will be trying one more time to meet this challenge.
As for tonight, I am winding down. My energry levels have reached a point of no return; I’m almost to the point of dozing at the computer.
Which is funny given the hours I’ve logged writing today. Despite that, I’ve spent most of the day at the computer and I’m feeling it.
Until tomorrow.
I didn’t even bother with a post this morning because I got right to writing after breakfast. Unfortunately, I’m online now and that’s a really bad sign for things to come. I’m getting off as soon as I post this post though, so maybe I’ll recover.
I’m at 947 words and it took me 1 hour and 43 minutes to get there, not counting the several times I forgot to restart Gleeo after a break.
This morning started off well, and but I stopped writing at 10:09, when I had a family interruption. With the kids older now, and busy, one at college and one on the way there, as long as school is in there fewer than ever reasons to accept excuses from myself about family distractions. However, that means when they are around, it’s harder to put them off in favor of writing.
I had lunch, made a few backups and copied some files to OneDrive and Dropbox (which never have my only copies of anything important, EVER). Then I checked out some library books, because I had some holds come through. I have a few weeks to read them, so I’m not going to start that now, but I didn’t want to forget about them. I’ve also moved some OneNote notebooks to my computer and back, because I can’t make up my mind about “everywhere” access.
It’s 2:35 pm and I have to get back to writing now or I’m just not going to have a chance. I let myself lose over 4 hours of writing time this morning and early afternoon, but perseverance matters and this day is far from over.
It’s obvious to me that one big problem for me when it comes to speed is the speed at which I second guess my choices.
Today’s attempt to cross that 6,000 word barrier has been hampered at every turn by my tendency to write something, then write something else, then delete something, then delete something else, then rewrite the first something I wrote, before deleting it and starting the whole process over again.
That’s not the way to gather speed and momentum.
It’s 7:53 pm and I’ve let myself turn on WiFi on my computer so I can write this update. I knew it would be much faster than trying to do it on my phone and even though I have only written 1,225 words today, I’m still hopeful of more.
However, 6,000 words is probably shooting for the moon when I have no rocket.
For today.
For tomorrow, well, tomorrow hasn’t started yet. We’ll have to see about that.
For now, I’m signing off. I have more words to write, even if meeting the 6,000 word challenge is beyond me tonight. I’ll start this thing again in the morning and see how it goes.
First priority? Stop second guessing everything I put on the page.
I’m just going to keep trying until I get there. Yesterday I fell far short of 6,000 words, so here I go again. (A phrase that totally just played through my head with music.)
I’ve had breakfast and I have my hot honey lemon water beside me and my WiFi off.
Estimated time to completion is again 10 hours. The last two days I’ve clocked in at just under 7 and enjoyed most of them so I can do this!
Also, it became very clear to me this morning why I’ve been writing so slowly but I’ll have to explain that later. Typing on my phone is much too slow.
I’m just shy of 2,000 words and it’s taken me just over five hours to get there.
I’m doing better than yesterday, but nowhere near good enough to reach 6,000 words by my bedtime today unless something changes significantly.
I do expect to finish today with a much better word count than yesterday though.
One thing I’m sure has hurt me is that I came up about 2 hours short on sleep last night. I’m already feeling run down. Then I started writing almost an hour later today than yesterday.
By 9:51 this morning I had spent 1 hour and 12 minutes writing and reached 424 words after starting with a 145 word deficit from a last minute deletion last night.
I’m not unhappy with that, really, but it wasn’t really what I was hoping for either so, since I was dragging a bit, I went ahead and took an early lunch.
I’m back now and ready to try again.
Ten hours is a lot and I really need to avoid any extra breaks today to reach it, but I’m definitely hoping ten hours might not be necessary to reach 6,000 words. :)
It’s 8:14 am, I have my hot honey lemon water next to me, and my computer set to power saver mode to maximize the battery.
I did get up early again today but I’ve been dragging a bit. NPR.org is definitely going to have to go onto my no read list for my web reading challenge. It’s turning into a crutch for me when I’m seeking out easy distractions.
Time to write. :)
Oh, and I added the WordPress app to my phone and it’s so much easier than using the phone browser, despite how good the mobile site is. I’m very happy with the change so far.
I’ll have to try again tomorrow to break through the 6,000 word ceiling I seem to have. Although admittedly, it felt more like a 1,000 word ceiling today!
I logged about 7 solid hours of writing (sans interruptions, breaks, etc) and still have only managed to reach 1,495 words for the day. I’ll continue writing up until I’m ready to go to sleep, but there’s no way I’m meeting the 6,000 words challenge by then. I want to get up early again tomorrow, and that means getting to bed soon enough. I might write another 30 minutes, all told, before I call it a night.
I have to say, the writing wasn’t difficult despite the challenge I had with speed. I’ve been trying to find my way. Sometimes that’s slow going. I’ve been having difficulties with this scene and the ones that follow (some are written, as I mentioned in another post, and I’m just hoping they’ll join up when the time comes) and because of that I’ve put off working my way through it when I should have just tried to keep going even if it meant slow days.
That’s a problem with chasing speed. On days when things just can’t go fast, it becomes easier to do nothing than to face what feels like failure.
I feel like today was a mix of success and failure. Failure to reach 6,000, obviously, but success in getting back in the groove of all day writing and actually enjoying it.
It was a fun day.
And I’ll see you again tomorrow as I try this thing one more time.
I’m remaining hopeful despite the bleak numbers because I have at least made it to almost 1000 words today. The fact that it has taken me over 4 hours to get there is irrelevant. (4 hours of writing, not just 4 hours ununfortunately.)
I will carry on until the end because sometimes writing is slow and sometimes it isn’t. A couple of good hours could really turn things around.
Here is my first challenge update.
I’m way behind already.
After 1 hour and 49 minutes, I’m only up by 149 words.
Getting through the last of the material I wrote a few weeks ago is taking too long. Perfectionism? Probably. I’m going to try to get through the rest of it faster.
As of right now I still have the computer WIFI off. I’m writing this on my phone. It’s easier to do all new posts on my phone than edit a really long one so I expect all updates to this challenge will be separate posts today.
Be back later. :)
Hopefully with better numbers!
So I’m typing this out on my Kindle Fire because I decided last night that I would turn off my computer WIFI and start the day without it. I plan to stick to that.
I’m up early. It’s 7:05, and I have a bowl of cereal next to me to finish, then it’s on to writing. Wish me luck. I’m going to need it. :)
I’m taking aim at a record tomorrow (Feb 1). My own record, but it’s still a record. I’m going to be trying to break through the 6000 word ceiling I seem to be stuck under. Since I’ve written lots of blog posts in a day before and still managed some fiction too, I’ve probably broken this record at some point with mixed writing and just don’t know it. But tomorrow, as usual for me, fiction’ll be the only thing that counts. :)
Here’s the plan I’ve come up with.
10 hours x 673 words each hour.
I’m really not planning to use a timer tomorrow so I’m not sure how to monitor my progress, except by sheer accumulation of words. Without a timer, I won’t know if I’m on track, and without a schedule, I won’t even be able to use time markers as an alternative gauge.
How about I just take tomorrow as it comes? I’ll get up, start writing first thing after breakfast and see where I am at my first break.
I’ll definitely be scribbling my times down on a tablet for good measure every time I stop for a break, so that might be enough.
The truth is, for this to happen for me, with my track record, I’m going to have to start writing early and stay writing way past my usual mental fatigue point. I’m usually desperate for a break or distraction after ten minutes, but if I can really get into it, an hour will pass super fast and I’ll realize I’ve been tweaking the same sentence for half that time. That’s not going to cut it tomorrow.
I also can’t avoid becoming distracted during breaks and stretching the breaks out much longer than I need to, so I’ll have to be very watchful for that tomorrow. Ten hours out of about sixteen doesn’t sound like a lot, but if one spends thirty minutes in breaks for every hour writing, that’s fifteen hours right there.
No way I can tie up fifteen hours for ten hours of writing and still have meals and a life. It just won’t happen and I know it, so I have to be very careful to get started early in the morning and stick with it.
Of course, I could also write a lot faster than usual and really cut that time down. You know I’m going to be trying! :) In all honestly, what I’m hoping is that as I get into flow, the writing will start to come easier and I will in fact write a lot faster. So no joke there.
See you bright and early in the morning.
I started this challenge on January 23rd, making today day four.
I haven’t cracked once since I started it, but it sure hasn’t been easy. I seek out distractions when my brain gets tired of focusing on one thing and it’s been interesting to notice just how often that really is.
That said, I think this is a powerful and important challenge for me and I have every intention of sticking it out until the end of February.
Mornings are when I expect to have my most difficulty with this web reading challenge I’m doing. I tend to spend a lot of time in the mornings settling into the day reading this stuff.
I didn’t have any trouble at all this morning. Haven’t even been tempted. Stopping myself from clicking certain things by habit wasn’t even a problem, because last night I deleted all my bookmarks and history from my devices for the particular infotainment sources I want to avoid.
Not clicking the trending tab in my Fire tablet was a little more difficult, but I gave it the side-eye and moved on. I’m pretty happy with myself at the moment.
I haven’t cut out all web reading, by the way. Just stuff that I associate with addictive patterns.
For example, the Dean Wesley Smith blog. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen DWS post more than once a day and the comments on his site are moderated and he seems to only let them through once a day too. No addictive behavior rewards there, so I’m not worried about taking a peek at the site while I eat my breakfast, which I did. In other words, once I’ve visited, there’s no point going back!
Am I worried about slipping into a habit of visiting twenty blogs that are only infrequently updated and basically recreating the thing I’m avoiding?
No, because I’m just not going to do that. I’m not trading one web reading addiction for another. Full stop, not going to happen.
I feel really good about this challenge. I think it’s going to do me a world of good. :)
I’ve made a rash decision I’ll probably hate tomorrow, but I’ve decided to give up infotainment for a while—indefinitely would be better. I’ll accept the rest of this month and February as a compromise.
To say I spend too much time clicking and refreshing is minimizing the amount of clicking and refreshing of web pages that I do. Most of that content falls squarely into the infotainment category of content, stuff that I can pretend is important but that’s really just something to read to pass the time.
I go to forums and refresh to see if new threads have started or new replies have appeared. By the time I finish reading through the new ones, I get to go back and start all over because there’s always somebody that’s replied to the previous replies or started another new thread.
I go to blogs and refresh to see if new posts have been posted or new comments have been made. Oh, those comments. So many comments.
I hit trending on my Fire to see the news items of the day because I’m addicted to the easy click. Then NPR.org. They got rid of comments. I used to read those too, even though I cringed every time I did it.
I have easily spent hours on this. I mean, seriously, hours. I use the Mind the Time add-on for Firefox, so I know. In the last seven days, I’ve spent 5 hours and 56 minutes at one particular forum and one particular blog (Kboards and The Passive Voice). That’s only part of the story, a small part, in fact, because I do the vast majority of my infotainment reading on one of several tablets and my phone and I have no records of that time spent/squandered. :o
In December, I spent over 24 hours on these two particular sites on the computer alone, and January isn’t over and it isn’t any better.
It’s disheartening to see it itemized like this.
For Kboards in particular, clicking refresh is addictive. I can’t claim to learn much there because I mostly do my own thing and it doesn’t fit with the advice most frequently put forth there.
For The Passive Voice, I mostly like it because there are interesting discussions. Sometimes. Sometimes things get a bit ridiculous, but hey, it’s the internet, and that’s probably why the comments are so entertaining.
Anyway, all good reasons why I need a break from the infotainment that has me hooked. I don’t like being addicted to things. (Caffeine, remember? Still quit this time, by the way.)
Finally, I don’t like the fact that I’m not living up to my potential. Even at my slowest pace (when I’m actually writing, and you know, not this read through stuff I’m doing now) I can write a thousand words a day in a mere four hours.
If I’d spent those 24 hours in December writing at that slowest pace, I would have written an extra 6,000 words. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but considering that my December word count was only 10,659 words and that it’s unlikely I’d be stuck at my slowest pace for all those hours, I could have doubled my word count.
I don’t even want to think about how many words it could have been if I were to count the time I’ve spent on all my daily sources of infotainment.
I shudder to think of it.
That’s the part I really don’t like facing. All this clicking and refreshing has been nothing more than a form of self-justified procrastination in the name of learning, keeping up with industry news, and distracting myself with news I don’t even care about, and I’ve let it go on too long.
What’ll I do with all the time I get back? Write more fiction, I hope. Read more fiction, if the writing more doesn’t work out. Either way, I’ll be doing something truly worthwhile.
And maybe clearing out some of the clutter in my brain will help in other ways too. We’ll see.