Category: Challenges

So yesterday? No writing. None. But…! Plumbing issue resolved!

And … I missed my 7–9 session this morning, but I kinda had a slow start and wasn’t feeling great, that’s for sure, but I’m feeling better now.

Tomorrow is February 28th and I’d like to finish this book by tomorrow night, so I’m doing a Finish the Book challenge. I know can do it if I quit worrying over perfection and just write.

Perfectionism is a loser’s game anyway. You never get out what you put in. :D And thank goodness for that, because that’d be a lot of angst!

I’m determined to find a way to get into my writing zone today.

1st goal: Banish the critic who’s taken up residence in my head and write at least 800 words in the next hour.

Ack! It’s 2:40 and I haven’t started writing yet! I listened to an entire podcast and spent as much of my time avoiding writing as possible. I have an extra 3 hours I can devote to writing tonight, so I’m not giving up on my challenge! But if I’m going to get this done, I’ve got to start writing, right now. Seriously. Right now.

And … yeah. I got 0 words today. So now I have to finish it all in one day tomorrow, the 28th. Woohoo. I needed more excitement in my life.

Final tally: 140 or 2% of my goal.**

This one is something like yesterday’s plan without being quite so ambitious. Since my story is coming along easier now, I probably have a better chance of success with this one. :)

From 10 am to 10 pm I’m going to try to write 500 words every hour, excluding a 2 hour block somewhere in the middle (when I get tired). That comes out to 5,000 words.

I spent the morning reading the 20,000 words I’ve already written on my 2014 Novella #1 and the 500 words I’ve written on what is sure to be my 2014 Novella #2.*

I’m trying to finish Novella #1 today. I lack only about 5,000 words and it’s supposed to be done. Now, if only I can stick to that word count goal and not go 25,000 words over like I did with my last book. :D

Anyway, I have about 10 minutes until I need to be ready to write so I’ll be back later to update.

10 am: 140
11 am
12 am
1 pm
2 pm
3 pm
4 pm
5 pm
6 pm
7 pm
8 pm
9 pm
10 pm

*I stole one of my characters from Novella 1 and started writing a story around that character’s backstory when I got stuck a few days ago. Supposed to be a villain but ended up a pawn and that’s okay with me. The character was so fun to write it’s pretty much a given I’ll finish the story. I’m thinking it’ll be next in the series, possibly a very short novella—this series already has one such very short novella, so maybe I’ll make it a thing. Novella (series main character) – Novelette (different character) – Novella (series main character) – Novelette (another different character) … hmm, I think I like that idea! :)

**I’m claiming the fifth on this. :D

As a motivational exercise today, I’m tracking my writing and breaks. It worked yesterday so I’m ready to go again…

Goal today? 3,600 words or 6 hours of writing

Day 49: In Progress

7:21 am: 219

Off to a grand start to today! No more negative numbers and the story is flowing a bit easier now, although I’m still redrafting chapter 4. Currently, I’m trying to bridge a gap between where I’m at and the scene that was the reason I didn’t want to just delete everything and start fresh. But I want to keep breaks short today, so toodles. Be back later with an update after my first session’s completed.

Alrighty. 6 hours and 27 minutes later I’m back to say that I’ve done no writing whatsoever since my morning 25. Never got started on my first session today because of a book I started reading at breakfast, a phone call that lasted almost 2 hours, and then the rest of the book. Book was good. :D I must be getting in a reading mood. Part of the reason I have no willpower today is likely because I stayed up last night / this morning until 2 am then got up at 6 am. That was a good book too. ;)

Amazon, this is all your fault! If buying books wasn’t so easy I’d have had to wait for that book I wanted instead of being able to buy it and read it immediately. For shame, giving us readers what we want just when we want it!

Now I want another book, just because I can. :D I must resist the lure! I have my own book to write.

Honestly, though, I’m going to be doing today’s writing later, because I really think I need a nap. I’m getting too old to get by on 4 hours of sleep.

As a motivational exercise today, I’m tracking my writing and breaks. My goal is to write for as much time as possible between now and say 7-ish this evening.

Day 48: 1,553 DONE

7:33 am: 88
11:09 am: 350
3:45 pm: 839
5:59 pm: 1,553
10:03 pm: 1,553

Yay! Not a negative number after my 25 minutes this morning. That’s got to be a good sign for today’s writing. I got up with the intent to write as much as possible today, time-wise, so seeing a positive number right off feels like a good omen. :D

Between 7:33 and 11:09 I got in a single 1.5 hour writing session. My pace is 182 words an hour. Ugh! I’ve gotta improve the ratio of writing time to break time. That means I’ve gotta keep this break short. I can tell now that the rain’s coming, because the sun is gone and the wind is shaking the trees outside my window. But the story is moving along. I’m still working in chapter 4, but I hope to finish it soon. I like some of the stuff I’ve done so far so I’m still hopeful this is going to be a good writing day! This isn’t rewriting by the way; it’s more like redrafting. I’m not fixing prose. I’m fixing story. :D

Between 11:09 and 3:45 I finished another 1.5 session of writing. My pace is about 246 words an hour, so at least that’s an improvement, albeit not by much. :D Guess I’ll take what I can get! At this point, I’m up to about 5.03 hours of breaks and 3.42 hours of writing. Wow. Don’t know how that happened, to be honest. I’ve actually stayed on task much better than usual for me the last few weeks. Still, though, that’s a glaring difference from the 5–30 minute long breaks I imagined between writing sessions. Having the kids home for the holiday probably isn’t helping, but really, it’s mostly been me today that’s the problem.

And yep, I’m still working on redrafting chapter 4. Considering I’m deleting as I go and replacing with new text, I’m probably writing 2 times as much material at it appears for there to be a net gain in word count. Next goal? Stick with my entire 1.5 hour session without needing a break. I’m hoping to improve my ability to focus for longer periods of time over the next few weeks. Off to work on session #3!

Between 3:45 and 5:59 I managed another 1.5 hour writing session. My pace is increasing. It’s now at 316 words an hour and that’s the entire days words and time. I’m going to do one more session after a quick supper and then I’ll call it a night. :D But I’m pleased so far with my progress.

Between 5:59 and 10:03 I intended to write more but my daughter wanted some attention and I couldn’t resist watching a bit of my favorite Pride and Prejudice miniseries with her. Ah well. :D I love spending time with my kids so more writing time will have to wait until tomorrow when I do all this all over again. :D See you then!

Why I need the extra motivation…

I started working on 2014 Novella #1 on Day 8. I had some good progress in the early part of the story, but as I made it into chapter 4, things started to slow down a lot. Chapter 4, 5 & 6 is where I’m at now. I switched out chapter 4 & 5 (not something I usually do, to be honest) and I’m massaging chapter 4 into something more fitting to the story. I really should’ve just deleted the whole thing but there’s a scene I really like and wanted to keep. It feels kind of stupid to be worried about that now, but we’ll see. I didn’t end up deleting the whole 5,000+ words of chapter 5 & 6 yesterday. Probably should’ve.

I just can’t seem to get into the flow of the story. The voices aren’t speaking to me so everything I write has to be thought out from actions to dialogue to the flow of the narrative… Nothing’s coming without a lot of effort. This isn’t how I remember the writing of the first book in this series. It was fun—and a lot of fun at that.

As you can see below, my progress on this book has been sporadic and my numbers are more than a little pathetic. :o I want to change that today, and get into a groove so the rest of the month flows more smoothly.

Day 8: 1,435
Day 9: 184
Day 10: 948
Day 11: 363
Day 12: 2,697
Day 13: 412
Day 14: 2,752
Day 15: 223
Day 16: 1,369
Day 17: 493
Day 18: 365
Day 19: 0
Day 20: 0
Day 21: 0
Day 22: 0
Day 23: 0
Day 24: 0
Day 25: 276
Day 26: 2,913
Day 27: 0
Day 28: 0
Day 29: 0
Day 30: 0
Day 31: 0
Day 32: 0
Day 33: 0
Day 34: 188
Day 35: 0
Day 36: 24
Day 37: 0
Day 38: 0
Day 39: 235
Day 40: 84
Day 41: 163
Day 42: 459
Day 43: -52
Day 44: -113
Day 45: 230
Day 46: 91
Day 47: -199

Day 35: 0

Day 36: In progress 24

Ha! I’ve decided (after a blinding moment of realization a couple of hours ago as I made tea) that I’m falling into a habit of writing about writing, but not actually writing. In other words, I’m getting good at telling you what I’m going to do instead of actually doing it. :D

So today, no plans. I’ll be back to update later today when I either have something or nothing to report.

That was easy. No real progress at all. Oops. :D

Today I’m going to try 45 minute writing sessions, at least 5 of them. I want to get my minimum daily count of 2,950 (what I need to reach one million words at year end—976,350 words / 331 days = 2,950) and then maybe get a few extra words in there. I’m not sure 5 sessions will be enough, but that’s what I’m starting with.

It’s 9:08 am and I’m off to get started.

Session #1: 34 minutes, 96 new words. Mostly I got stuck changing up the last page of the last scene I wrote, because something was off, but I don’t know what. I’m still not real happy with it. So, my wph is going to be way down today. I can already say that 5 sessions aren’t going to be nearly enough unless I have a fabulous breakthrough.

Session #2: 24 minutes, 93 new words. Mostly I’m still stuck on the same last page of the same scene, although after adding 189 words total to the page, it’s more like I’m stuck on the last page and a half. Seriously thinking about deleting the entire last two to three pages and starting over. Usually if things are going this slow, that’s about my only choice, because something definitely isn’t working—the hazards of making it up as I go, I guess. :D Ah, well. :D It’s still fun, in a twisted sort of way.

I had a longer than it should’ve been break and now I’m about to start another session.

My next session never really got going, although I did toy with some alternate ideas for the scene. In the end, I came out 1 word down. :D

So, yeah. Not a great writing day! Tomorrow will be better.

*Also I’m tracking my time today for everything and I’m going to keep tracking it for the whole week so I can start really focusing on how much time I’m spending doing things besides writing. I have a feeling it’s going to be an eye-opener and a bit of a slap in the face. :D Ah, well. Time tracking is ridiculous, I know. But sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do!

Here are the updates for today’s challenge. (I realize these challenge titles are dumb. I kinda don’t care if they get me writing and keep me writing. I take motivation wherever I can get it!)

But, uh, yeah, this hasn’t gone well so far today.

3:53 pm at 0 hours, 0 words

That’s not supposed to happen, right? I blame the cold weather; it’s stealing all my mojo. Or it’s because I’m out of milk and can’t make cocoa. Or something.

I’m not exactly done for, but here’s the truth. I have only seven hours until I have to go to sleep to get eight hours and get up in the morning all ready to get back to my schedule as I thought I would do. But with breaks and the other stuff I have to do tonight, I’m not going to be able to get six hours without—ah crap. :D I just realized quite suddenly how bad this is. Excuses, excuses, excuses. :o I do recognize them. Or I do now.

I’ve been fighting going back to staying up late and just making up the sleeping time with naps and living a fairly unstructured, unscheduled life, because my daily word count spreadsheet makes it very clear that my most productive month was when I was getting up at 7 am and writing first thing, with a goal of no WIFI until I’d hit 2500 words. I didn’t always get the 2500 words before lunchtime, but I did it enough to make February 2013 my highest word count month since I started publishing. I wrote over 50,000 words that month. But now that I’m thinking about it, I know I hit 50,000 the year I won NaNoWriMo. (2010. I have a bad memory for dates! I had to go look at old emails to figure this out.) Anyway, back then I had a part-time day job and wrote at least something almost every day. I just looked at the old spreadsheet and my high and low word counts are all over the place and in no way line up to any particular day. So that would have been no schedule and I was just as successful then as I was this past February.

What does this all mean?

I don’t know.  :D

Well, that’s not quite true, because I know I didn’t succeed at this challenge and that I’ll be writing late if I want to at least get in a few thousand words before I call it a night! And I do want that, because I don’t want to give up on the one million words. :)

 

 

Well, since getting ten hours was a bust yesterday, I thought I’d try again, but this time go with six hours and try to work my way up to—ah, you know what? This isn’t really necessary. If I write for six hours in one day and start doing that regularly, I’m really not going to care if I ever work my way up to ten hours in a day of writing. Really. I’m just not going to care. :D

However, six hours of writing is a good goal today because I’ve done it before and although it’s not easy for me, it’s also not too much of a stretch and it’s not too late in the morning to get a good start on that goal and actually reach it before five-ish. Because I have television to watch* tonight. :D

(Yes, it does appear I’ve thrown my schedule out the window. Not gonna lie. I hate it, so I keep finding myself trying to find ways to work around it. I’ll have to make some kind of decision on it soon, despite my commitment to stick to it, but I’m waiting to see if this is just me rebelling against myself… Also, tomorrow I am going to try to stick to it, regardless of my feelings on the matter, just to give it one more week of a real trial run. Mondays just aren’t good days for my schedule because I almost never get up in time to get to work by 7 am. Shoulda probably thought about that when I made it.)

I want to write three hours before 1:00 pm and then three more before 5 pm.

So, off I go.

*Not to derail this post completely, but Grimm came on Friday night and I haven’t watched it yet! I don’t like to miss Grimm, but when the kids are gone, they don’t like me to watch it without them. Of course, I could fake it (watch and then rewatch), but they’re getting good at reading me. So, probably better all around that I usually get busy enough that I don’t mind waiting until they’re home.

Also, I tried the Helix pilot (which is currently free at Amazon if you’re interested) and eh, I wasn’t impressed. It entertained, but I definitely feel resistance about making myself watch another episode. So, although Helix has a good premise, I doubt I’ll watch more unless someone tells me it’s gotten really good in later episodes.

Okay, I’m updating in a single post today, just because I want to and it’s easy. :D

10:44 am at 1.15 hours, 692 words
1:26 pm at 2.16 hours, 1408 words
3:51 pm at 3.21 hours, 2143 words
7:45 pm at 4.61 hours, 2911 words
Ended with 2913 words after deleting a few paragraphs so I didn’t quite make the 3000 I’d hoped before I quit for the night.

I completed my first hour! Yay! It took me a lot longer to get started this morning than I’d planned but I had a really good breakfast so lunch should be a ways off and I plan to write without any break longer than a few minutes between sessions until at least lunch time.

There was more delay between my first and second hour because of a family call. :D I couldn’t resist my Sunday call to my mother and it went longer than I meant for it to go. But now I’m doing lunch and will be getting back to it and sticking with it through the afternoon and evening. I hope to have hit at least five hours by 5 o’clock. I really wish I’d gotten up earlier this morning like I’d planned to do! I’ll have to be an efficient machine to get another five hours after that before midnight but I think I can do it! :D

Hour three is done, but boy am I behind! Well, my pace is quite good as far as words per hour go, but I’m only past the three hour mark and the day is well past the halfway point (for me). I have eight hours before midnight and almost seven hours of writing to go, so toodles! I gotta get back to work.

What happened to the time between 3:51 pm and 7:45 pm?! I got an hour and twenty-four minutes but that leaves about two and a half hours of lost time. Sigh. It’s always this way for me. Whatever time I want to use, I have to allow 2–3 times as much. I have no idea why. I’d track it, but, yeah, tried it and usually I forget to record something and I still end up unsure what happened to the time.

Anyway, I’m pretty happy with what I’ve accomplished and I’m not done for the night, although I probably am done with the trying for ten hours, since it’s not impossible to write for another five and a half hours before midnight. Theoretically I could manage maybe another four hours, but I’d rather end at a decent time so I can make good on getting a much earlier start tomorrow morning.

I’d like to write at least one to two hours before 9 am.

Also, the cold is really getting to me. I’m so stiff I could be a flagpole. :D

I’ll post a final update tonight when I close down since I fully intend to at least make it past 3000 words, but for now, my laptop battery needs a charge, and I need a break.

On hold: see update at the bottom. :)

It’s a new day and it’s time for a new challenge! I’ve done a course correction, because I had a realization about the 5,000 In a Day Challenge this morning. Now I’m ready to get started, and hopefully I don’t fall down that hole again.

The biggest challenge I’ve faced so far is not getting the time in that I need so that I hit a reasonable word count range for the day. I think it’s skewing how I see my progress and making me feel like I’m writing at a slower pace than I really am overall.

Here are the rules:

• Write 7.8 hours today. (I’d expect my word count to range from 2,340–4,680 if I actually put in all that time.)
• Any time I lose to breaks I have to make up.  Cause there’ll be breaks. My circulation (and bladder!) depends on them. :D This is where the challenge comes in.
• Finish the 7.8 hours before 6:36 pm. Cause I have life stuff to do this evening.

I’m working on my 2014 novella #1 today. I’ll update when I can. Good luck, me. ;)

10:31 am: 0
2:40 pm: 51 minutes, 493 words. Ouch.

I don’t even want to explain why I’m at where I am with the writing time right now. :D I’m freezing*, my fingers are numb, my nose is running, I have a headache, it’s spitting snow, and I want a nap. This might not be the right day for this challenge. In fact, I think I’m going to put this thing on hold, take a nap and some aspirin, and finish the day with a gentler attempt at writing and try this challenge again on Monday.

Sometimes I just have to recognize when something’s not working and make adjustments. I’m still going to try to get in enough time so I don’t fall further behind on my one million words goal.

Saturday and Sunday are short days, but maybe I’ll try to ramp up to the 7.8 hours on Monday by trying to get the full 5.2 on both those days in the meantime.

*Three hours and twenty minutes after washing my thick, long hair and it’s still not dry. I know, I know. Shoulda blow-dried.

Did I make it? Hahahahaha!

So, I’m starting a new challenge today. It’s a one day challenge and it’s simple. Get 5,000 words today before 10:30 pm.* (If I stay up late doing it, tomorrow will suffer and I don’t want that.)

Getting a bit of a late start, but I’ve actually already been writing this morning. That’s why I needed to find something to motivate me. I’m barely trucking along at 300 words an hour and I want to break out of this <300 words an hour streak I’ve got going on. :D This book might be a little more challenging to write, but I sure didn’t find the first one of the series to be quite this slow! So this one shouldn’t be either. I think it’s the dark side of the whole time is all that matters mindset. Because of course there’s a dark side—there’s always a dark side! :D

I’ll update as the day goes on.

10:35 am: 297
5:06 pm: 790
7:44 pm: 1,369

I Did Not Count on Distractions!

But they are everywhere! Along with exclamation points!

I’m sitting at my highest Amazon Author Rank ever at the moment, and as I noticed my rank climbing that little extra bit to put it there, I found myself starting to get really distracted. I’m updating this post and hoping that it will let me release this distraction into the ether so I can regain my focus. I’m about to have my last big block of free time tonight in about six minutes and I want to get my mind cleared out of these distractions before that happens.

And not to put too pointy a point on it, but the increased author rank really doesn’t mean a lot. The new book’s selling about the same as it’s been selling since I put it up. It’s just a nice little blip in my day. :D

Alrighty, time to get back to my story.

*And of course, if it were to happen (but we know it won’t) that I completed the 5,000 words before my daily writing time ended, I will continue to write until I meet my time goal.

So, in 2014, I’m planning to attempt to write one million words of fiction. I’m not sure why I’ve decided that quadrupling my word count’s a good idea: oh, the pressure! But I have decided to try and I’ll probably know after a month if I have any chance whatsoever of accomplishing such a thing.

I have a plan.

I’m going to write for 5 and a half hours on weekdays, and 4 hours on weekend days. Based on my average word count per hour, I can make it to one million words writing that many hours each week. If I push myself during my writing time or improve my ability to let go of my perfectionist tendencies, I’ll probably be able to scale back those hours. If I don’t, I might need the 5 and a half hours on weekend days too.

My biggest obstacle is going to be butt-in-chair time. I have a distinct aversion to it! :D

I’m working on honing my ability to focus and stay in flow, but it’s hard. It doesn’t take outside distractions to distract me; my mind can flit from one subject to another without any warning at all, and that’s not good for focus or for staying in flow!

I have rules that I hope will help me.

I’m turning off WIFI on my laptop at night before I shut down (and blocking it on my phone and Kindle and NOOK and anything else I might use to access forums, blogs, and email) and I’m making it a rule that it doesn’t come back on until I’ve reached 3 hours, then I’ll allow myself a WIFI break of no longer than 30 minutes (while I do some light exercise to keep my blood flowing to my brain!), and then off again until I finish my time.

That’s it.

I want to keep this simple so it’s easier to remember the rules and easier to follow. There’s not a lot of gray area here and I don’t want it to require a lot of thought to make it work. Discipline is hard enough without making it complicated.

I followed a similar rule set back in February of 2013 and I wrote 51,396 words that month. While my daily goals were in word counts back then, I remember quitting at about lunch time every day and rarely writing for more than 3 or 4 hours a day (which makes sense because I was tracking my time and my word counts daily during that period and that’s a big chunk of the data I have about my average words per hour).

I’m excited and nervous and terrified by this 2014 goal all at the same time! It’s going to be fabulous. :D

The holiday has thrown me, and I’ve completely lost track of what day this should be in my Finish the Book! Challenge. Considering that the challenge should’ve been done ages ago, I’m taking this as a hint to retire the challenge. This book is at 140% of my projected/hoped for word count and it ain’t done yet. That really wasn’t the plan when I started the challenge.

I’m going to finish the book, and I’m going to finish it in the next couple of days so yeah, moving on.

Also, I’m keeping this short so I don’t waste time that should be spent writing fiction. :D

Oh, and even though I fully intended to keep the writing streak going until at least the end of the year, even though I gave myself permission to miss Christmas day, I messed up last night and fell asleep with only 10 new words written. So time to start that one over!

Okay, I’m getting  a late start today but this is it. I’ve gotta finish this book today or—today. Yeah. Today. If I go any longer, I’m going to be in trouble with my no-so-tentative-anymore release date. I’ve committed.

There’s definitely a part of me that says I can’t finish today. Maybe not, but I better get really close. :D I can handle being 1,000 or 2,000 words shy of the end. Right now though, I don’t even know where that end is and I’m already 19,721 words past my target. And despite being sick from 12/1 to 12/10, I’ve still managed over 13,000 finished* words in December.

12:50 pm: 0 words to start

I’m going to do about 10 minutes of exercise first to get the blood flowing to my brain and then I’m digging in for an afternoon and evening of hard core writing of 1 hour blocks with short 5–10 minutes breaks between.

Update #1: I haven’t timed my sessions because I can’t seem to get going on this, and I’m starting to think there’s something wrong with the scene. I mean, nothing wrong, wrong, but something about it just isn’t right. Might be time to delete a chunk and start over? I’m at a net gain of 28 words so far and that’s just so wrong. I must hunker down and daydream harder.

Next to last Final update: I give up. It’s been a sad little day. Nope. I just realized I can’t give up because I haven’t written 100 words yet. I’m not breaking my streak; I don’t care how much of a sad little day it’s been.

Final update: 117 words. Whew. The streak lives.

*I cycle through my writing as I go. I try to do as little after-the-fact editing as possible because I hate it. I don’t usually move on until I’ve got the actions/feelings/thoughts across on the page the way I want them. Works for me! This is the method that started me finishing stories. :) All the other things I tried (especially fast drafting through the first draft) just overwhelmed me and left me with a lot of unfinished stories. It took me over 25 years to figure out this was how I needed to write, assuming I started writing when I was 12. I actually think I was younger but I’d have to dig out stuff in storage to prove it, so I’m going with 12. :D Right now I’m working on eliminating the perfectionism that makes me rewrite sentences twenty times apiece before I end up right back at the same sentence I started with. (Yes, I’ve started paying attention and that’s invariably what happens. Yikes, all that wasted time and effort just to end up back where I started!)

Still not done. Day 13. Why oh why won’t you end, you darn book?! It is official. Longest manuscript I’ve produced yet for one of my independently published works. And still not done.

(Quick aside. The weather is crazy out! The wind is up and gusting, the house is cracking and popping, and the lights keep flickering and I’d worry about my computer shutting down except I’m using my laptop and I have a UPS for my modem and router. So I’m good.)

So, today’s count so far: 383 words
Ended with: 521 words

Staying focused today has been a nightmare.

I started reading a good book today during supper, though. Maids of Misfortune. I picked it up as one of those Kindle loans you can do once a month as a Prime member. It’s only the second book I’ve ever borrowed but I decided I should start trying to take advantage of that perk of Prime. I do borrow R.E.A.D.S library books on my Kindle sometimes, but that’s because I like browsing the library site more than Amazon. (Sorry Amazon! I love ya, but R.E.A.D.S is more browse-able.) (Here’s a link to the book: Maids of Misfortune: A Victorian San Francisco Mystery. I’m not that fond of the cover, but so far the story’s good and I’m enjoying it, so who cares, right?)

Anyway, I’ve decided I have to make reading more often a priority. I’ve always read a lot of books and letting myself use writing as an excuse to skip one of my most enjoyable pastimes is crazy. I didn’t have to skip reading at the end of a long day when I worked the day job, so why should I have to give it up now? I refuse! :D

What’s that saying? Work hard, play hard.* Reading is my “play hard.”

*Oh the irony! I typo-ed that into “word hard, play hard” first time through. LOL. Maybe I should’ve left it alone. :D

There are two versions of today’s numbers.

The short story:

Day 11: 1,914
Day 12: 226 (Streak’s still alive. Since 11/17. Yay.)

The long story:

Yesterday, I got a few more words but I still missed the mark on my four hours. I came in around three to three and a half hours. I don’t really know because I quit counting after three.

Today … well, it’s probably best not to talk about today. I’m still not sure where the day went. I did some non-writing publishing things for a change, and I also finally updated the files at Amazon for 2 of my books that I’d slowly been fixing typos in whenever I ran across one as I reread the books during the research for my current book. I end up rereading a lot of material this way, but there’s just no way around it.

Apparently I really got twisted up with one particular word, where I knew the difference but still used the wrong word a lot. And then didn’t catch it during editing. Usually if I find an error, I fix it, save the file, and just wait until I’m about ready to upload another book. But today I wanted to update back matter—and there were enough usages of the wrong word that I thought getting the new editions uploaded now would be nice. I mean, I’m hoping to get the next book in that series up in early January, so having the lead-ins be as clean as possible can only help. :) But I still need to do that same back matter update for multiple other books and then make sure all the vendors have the latest versions. Ugh.

I really wish I had a better way of tracking updates, so that the editions are the same across all platforms, because I just don’t ever seem to be able to start and finish a full-on, across all platforms update in one sitting for any particular book.

A better tracking system something I need to think about, I guess. My current master publish list (a spreadsheet) doesn’t really have the right columns for it without making the sheet unwieldy. Sigh.

Publishing is not quite as fun as the writing most times, although on days like today, I’d say it had to be a bit more fun or I wouldn’t have used it to procrastinate on the writing—and there’s just no way I can deny that that’s what I was doing. There’s still time to write a bit more though.

However, there’s a blog post flitting around inside my head that I want to get out, and I think I’m going to do that first. :D