Category: Learning curve

Posts in which I discuss things I’ve learned or need to learn about any of many topics.

Change of plans

Lynn

I’ll keep this short. The summer isn’t turning out to be a great environment for my schedule. After some consideration, I’ve decided to scale back to a 9 am to 1 pm schedule. Out of the last 31 days, I’ve held to the schedule 4 days total. The other days have been scattershot and fairly unproductive. I had to face the fact that the schedule just hasn’t been working since the summer school break started (just about 30 days ago).

Also, strangely enough, the change in my lunch time pattern has contributed to me gaining a few pounds that I don’t want. I’m taking this opportunity to fall back into my former eating pattern of larger breakfast and larger, later lunch, and little or no supper (because I don’t usually get hungry before bedtime with this pattern). I loved the schedule I had, but that meal time disruption has kind of turned out to be a big deal and I do blame it for the weight gain, so instead of getting rid of the schedule and falling back into the wrong kind of habits, I’m just making a necessary adjustment.

Better than before? Absolutely

Lynn

The “no internet” before 4 pm worked. It was SO HARD, but I did it, and I wrote during my scheduled writing time and ended the day with 2,910 words. And I think I wrote the end of the book I’ve been stuck on. :D I need to write the wrap up chapter tomorrow, so I’ll probably read at least the last couple of chapters tonight or in the morning and see how I feel about them. If I’m right, and I wrote the ending today, I’ll be ecstatic. I’m ready to get this one published and move on.

I feel so relieved. I just hope I’m not jumping the gun on this and that I’m really done. The wrap up chapter will finish tying up loose ends and set the next book in motion.

I learned something today. I learned that all that anxiety and angst I was having about something being wrong with my book was bullshit. :D I just didn’t want to sit down and write. I couldn’t sit down and write, tbh, but that’s still an issue with my brain and my ability to concentrate, stay on task, and overcome procrastination issues brought on by my impulsive nature. I was placing blame where it didn’t need to be placed. The book was fine.

I hope I remember this next time I have this problem. Obviously wasting a lot of time worrying about my book didn’t help at all and won’t likely help in the future.

Better than before? Not yet, but maybe soon

Lynn

I finally finished reading Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives (by Gretchen Rubin). I liked the book overall, and I’m trying to decide what I can take away from it that might help me get back on track with my writing. I’m so far behind right now!

The end of this month will mark the halfway point in this year. I’m sitting right on the 100,000 word mark for the year; that’s about 400,000 words shy of where I’d like to be. No way I’m making that up. But that doesn’t mean I have to give up the second half of the year. I can still end the year strong if I can just get back on track.

I’d blame the summer break for this, but I suspect the blame belongs on a few bad habits I let slip back into my life. May was a great month for me with the latest book release, and instead of using the 7–9 block of time in the morning for reading fiction, I fell back into an old habit of checking sales reports first thing in the morning. That led me to spending time on the internet when I should have been reading fiction and getting myself into a creative frame of mind before I needed to sit down and write at 9 am.

While on the internet this morning, I watched Garrett Robinson’s latest Writer Wednesday video and I think he’s got the right idea about the internet. I have no illusions that I’ll EVER write 50,000 words in 3 days without a miracle happening, but I do know I’ve been letting the internet distract me.

In Better Than Before, Rubin talks about the “four tendencies” which she calls Upholder, Questioner, Obliger, and Rebel. Although I have a few traits from all of them, I’m without a doubt a questioner. I don’t have the book in front of me, but I believe it means I need to believe in the reason(s) I have for adopting a new habit before I’ll be able to make a new habit stick. That makes sense.

I have a lot of really good reasons why I should stay away from the internet during the day, especially when I should be writing. None of the reasons I have for not staying away from the internet trump any of those good reasons.

Starting tomorrow, I’m going to stay off the internet until after 4 pm every day. No internet during lunch. No quick email checking. No checking sales reports, or distracting myself with forums and blogs.

After 4 pm I can do what I want. Before 4 pm? I don’t use the internet.

If I need to research something to keep going in my story (something that’s very rare), I’ll just switch to another story and write that instead, then research after 4 pm. I think the fewer exceptions I allow, the better.

For the questioner in me: The internet is my go-to drug of choice when it comes time to find a distraction to keep me from having to push through tough spots in my stories. If I want to be prolific, I can’t make it easy for myself to find these distractions. At least with what’s left (doing dishes, washing laundry, watering my garden), I have a tangible benefit to allowing the distraction. With the internet, I usually have nothing to show for the distraction except frustration. :D

This is going to be one tough habit to create—at least as hard as my schedule habit has been to maintain these last few weeks, but I think I can do it. :D If I do, it’ll be so worth it. Less stress, less guilt, more writing!

And what internet time I do get, maybe I’ll enjoy it more in the long run and use it more wisely. :D

Trying to work around the schedule

Lynn

It’s my biggest wish to be able to keep to the writing schedule while I go through the motions of preparing to publish a book. I can’t say that I’m winning the first round in that fight.

I’ve just finished a cover that literally took me the longest it’s ever taken me to make a cover. I broke down at one point and drafted an email to the designers of a cover I had made for a book for a different pen name, because this experience was just so bad that I couldn’t imagine trying to do another one. I hate designing covers. Honestly, I just hate it. I think I know why. I really don’t like doing stuff I’m not good at, and I can’t seem to get good at making covers. They’re all just passable. Adequate. And tbh, I’m so tired of that.

Because of that cover taking three days instead of the 5 to 6 hours I expected, I’ve written much less than I wanted to write over the last three days. I stuck to my schedule half the day Friday. None on Saturday. Half again, today. I’ve racked up just under 2,000 words for those days total. If not for the schedule, I know in my heart I wouldn’t even have that.

So yay! Another win for the schedule.

Tomorrow (kids will be in school) I attempt to stick the schedule again, while making time before and after to edit the book I’m preparing to publish and maybe even get to the formatting. Boy am I going to be busy…

This might be my best schedule ever

Lynn

I enjoyed another day of writing on a schedule today. The easy success of the last few days has made me think, wondering what the difference is between this schedule and those that came before. I finally think I’ve come up with several reasons to explain why it might be the best one ever.

  • I start later. 9 am is quite late for me. I’m usually up at 6 on weekdays but I sometimes sleep later on weekends. 9 am means the schedule works no matter which day it is without adjustment. Usually, I set up schedules that start really early and I’m always making adjustments.
  • The break between 12 and 1 is only an hour. Meaning I have less time to prepare food and less time to get sucked into watching TV or reading a book once I sit down to eat. Because I’m eating less at mid-day, I don’t get so sleepy afterward. Usually, I set up schedules with big breaks so I’m more rested when I get back to it. Unfortunately, I’m usually too rested and don’t want to!
  • I don’t have a quota or run the timers so the only pressure I have is the pressure to stick to the schedule. Usually, I have competing pressures because I usually do set word count goals and I run the timer and keep track of how much I produce. That’s a lot of added pressure. It’s nice being able to just focus on sticking to the schedule.

Anyway, I thought I had another reason but I can’t remember it just yet. If I do, I’ll add it. :)

Reasons matter: a rambling essay

Lynn

I’ve decided many times over that a schedule is a bad idea for me. It occurred to me today that my reason for this isn’t exactly rational: A schedule puts me in a position of having to consciously face the fact that I’m choosing not to do something I’ve already decided I need to do, something I know I need to do.

I’m undisciplined when it comes to work (tbh, I’m undisciplined about most everything in my life). Deadlines don’t help. I still don’t usually become inspired to work until the very last moment and only the most serious of consequences is enough to get me going soon enough that I’m not absolutely scrambling at the last moment to get done on time.

This makes me ill suited to the career I’ve picked for myself, I know. It’s a struggle, but it’s worth it because I love earning my living by writing fiction.

I’ve tried to come up with some kind of system that doesn’t hang on goals but that’s just a mind-bending exercise in futility. You can’t have a system without goals of some kind. It’s impossible. I’ve tried to come up with a system that relies on me aiming at a targeted word count, but I keep coming back to the fact that I put it off until the end of the day and I just can’t get enough done in the time I end up with. I decided I would write until lunch every day; then I watched myself not start writing until lunch and wow, I sure produced a lot of words getting started ten minutes before I was supposed to quit (sarcasm alert!).

I’ve tried relying on my love of writing to keep me going without goals but my natural tendencies toward procrastination make that a terrible idea; I’ve failed miserably to get any appreciable amount of writing done at all without them.

But then when I set goals and I fail to meet them, I feel bad. I mean, really bad.

Setting goals based on things out of your control is never a good idea. And I can’t control my word counts. I can’t know how well the writing is going to go for any particular scene, book, day, hour, or month. Sometimes it goes well, and sometimes, I delete more than I write.

It’s hard to remember that word counts are out of my control. Sure, I remember right now, but will I remember tomorrow or next week when my deadline is closing in on me? Probably not.

A word count quota is the kind of goal that feels completely rational and within my control, until I have a bad day and manage 200 words in four hours because I had to delete a ton of work and couldn’t get moving on what was left. Then I feel like I’ve failed at something that should have been easy, and even though I know rationally that this is silly, the irrational parts of me (and there are a lot of those!) do not care. In the least.

There’s only one path left for me and the only reason I have for not taking it is because I see it as a failure.

If I loved writing, wouldn’t I want to do it all the time?

I feel dumb writing that out because I’ve known for a long time that working to your passions doesn’t mean you’ll never have to make yourself work again.

I love writing. I love having written. I love publishing my books. When I’m in the mood. Sadly, I’m not in the mood as often as I should be. In fact, I’m not in the mood a whole hell of a lot of the time because I tend toward moodiness as a general rule. And yet, if anyone cares to know, writing fiction is the one thing I’ve loved almost my entire life and it irks me that there’s someone out there that’s going to read this and say: “Well, she just doesn’t love it enough or she wouldn’t have to make herself do it.”

I need a schedule and I know it. Even if I can’t stick with the schedule most of the time and even if I choose on more days than not to skip writing, at least I’ll have some framework to keep me aimed in the right direction.

A system is made up of goals and habits, and habits can form around schedules more easily than they can form around random events that occur throughout the day.

So here’s the challenge. I’m going to make a schedule. Every day will be a challenge to stick to it. I’ll probably fail more often than I succeed. Maybe if I’m lucky some good habits will develop around the times I’m supposed to be writing that will make it work over the long-term even if I have a lot of short-term failures. If not, well, how’s it any worse than what I’ve already got going on?

No more searching for the best system, no more word count quotas or goal-setting, no more excuses. It’s time to move on from all that and settle in. The remainder of 2015 is going to be the year of the schedule.

The only requirement for myself is that if I choose not to write during the times I’m supposed to write, I have to admit that to myself. It’s a choice and I need to be responsible for it.

I won’t stop myself from writing outside the scheduled times, but if I don’t write when I’m scheduled to write and end up not writing as much as I should, I want to end the day knowing I had an obligation to myself and that I chose not to meet it.

I can’t keep avoiding the one system that is guaranteed to give me the opportunity to write more just because I’ll have to face how often I choose to fail.

Systems are made up of goals

Lynn

Systems are made up of goals. I’ve been thinking on this a lot the past week or so, after doing quite a bit of reading about goals and systems. I was having a difficult time working through certain ideas, the main one being that goals are somehow inherently different than systems (and they might be, but not in the way you think). Don’t set goals, some people say. Create systems instead. Work the system and all will be well.

Except… I couldn’t stop thinking that this doesn’t make any sense. How can you create a system that takes you where you want to go if you don’t have some vague idea of where that might be (a goal)? No matter how I thought about it, I couldn’t come up with a system that didn’t have goals built right into it.

Then it occurred to me that so many of these articles gloss right over the fact that goals come in all sizes and scopes. As soon as I realized that, I also realized that the authors of all these articles are trying to redefine what a goal is so that they can separate goals from systems—and by doing so, essentially claiming that most small goals (the daily kind) aren’t goals at all.

That’s not how I see it. A goal’s a goal, whether it’s the concrete goal of writing 100 words in the next 20 minutes, of writing every day, of sticking to a writing schedule, of writing 1,000,000 words over the next year, or the more abstract goal of just doing your best to write as often as possible.

I know now why this concept of systems versus goals didn’t want to sink in, why it didn’t make sense to me: every example I’ve found of a system is just a collection of ever smaller goals that for some unfathomable reason no one wants to call goals.

Finally, the systems versus goal debate makes sense (a focus on small goals versus one large goal).

Whew. I feel better. ;D

Now that the issue of semantics is past, I can focus on the real issue: setting up my goals as a system so that they make it easy to get where I want to go without setting myself up for failure.

What kind of system will inevitably lead to the future I want without me having to commit to a win/lose scenario such as “write 5 or 8 or 12 books this year?”

Smaller goals make it more likely I’ll have frequent wins, and lots of small wins are more motivating than one huge win (and honestly, how often do we get these huge wins even when we do the best we can?). Lots of small wins equals more motivation, and failing to reach a huge goal can definitely be demotivating if one doesn’t view it in the right light (and how often do we do that?).

How can I set myself up for lots of small wins when I already have experience that says if I aim for a daily quota I’m just going to disappoint myself? That, unfortunately, is going to require some more thought.

Changing my assumptions about my writer self

Lynn

I’ve been thinking about the fact that I need to become more productive with my writing. This is my full-time career and I need to be more cognizant of that fact sometimes. I’m not really sure how to move forward though because I’ve tried all the usual stuff over the last two and a half years: rigid schedules, flexible schedules, word quotas, book quotas, time quotas, all of that, and I still haven’t broken through my own resistance to regular, consistent, daily writing. I’m honestly at a bit of a loss as to what to do. None of those methods have helped me at all. There doesn’t seem to be anything left to try. Right now I’m just trying to focus on the enjoyment I get from writing, hoping that will make a difference. Do I just give up and accept that I write as fast as I write and that’s it?

I read something recently about challenging assumptions. Maybe that’s what I should focus on. I should challenge my assumptions about myself as a writer.

Assumption: I’m a slow writer.

Am I a slow writer? Let’s see: I had to refer to my archived time data (I stopped logging time on 3/18/2015), but a few formulas later, and I see something a bit surprising.

I wrote more than 500 words an hour 56% of the time, more than 800 words an hour 17% of the time, and more than 1,000 words an hour 5% of the time. Is that slow?

I see the 1,000 words an hour figure dropped regularly by other writers, and I have no way of knowing what kind of copy they turn out: finished or rough draft work. I don’t guess it really matters, because almost anyone I know considers a novel a month fast. 2,000–4,000 words a day is what it would take for that, writing the way I do (clean drafts, final copy). 56% of the time I can write 2,000 words in less than 4 hours. So 56% of the time I can produce at a highly prolific pace, working less than 4 hours a day.

This belief that I’m a slow writer doesn’t seem to have a lot of basis in reality.

Really, this just emphasizes that I need to worry a lot less about how fast I write and worry instead about how often I write.

I don’t write often enough and I don’t stick with it long enough. That’s the crux of the problem I’ll need to solve if I want to be prolific.

Word count has become my biggest obstacle

Lynn

My daily word count has become my biggest obstacle over the last few years. I’m not sure exactly when it started to overtake every other writing concern I have, but it has and I’m not feeling great about that. I know my daily word counts are important. They’re intricately tied to success as measured by revenue because you can’t sell what isn’t written.

However, I’m also feeling a bit like the excessive focus on word count has had some side effects that I’m not really happy with, the biggest and scariest of which is a diminishing enjoyment of writing.

I know I need something to keep me going in the right direction, but … some days this need to measure everything just gets old. I want to love writing so much that I can’t wait to get started and hate to have to stop. Some days I still feel like this. Less so lately though. It’s hard for me to love writing when I’m constantly disappointed in myself because of writing.

Still, although I’ve axed my timer and my time data (archived it, to be exact), I won’t be abandoning my daily log of my word count. I love having that list of numbers. What I don’t love is looking at it and feeling bad about myself when there’s a blip where the numbers drop or a zero shows up.

On the other hand, I do love a good writing streak. For the moment, I’m going to focus on writing every day (that getting started thing is really important) and worry less about the actual quota. I want to end up with a nice average, but “average” means I don’t have to be so hard on myself for any particular day’s word count if I have a reasonable mix of bad days and good days.

What I’m learning: Consistency is important, but it’s probably better if I’m not rigid about it. I want to write every day, but some days are going to be more fun than others and it’s going to be easier to stay at it longer. We’ll see where that gets me in April.

Why I don’t offer writing tips (most of the time)

Lynn

I’ve been writing for about twenty-five years. It’s really funny that fifteen years ago, I had a site devoted to giving out writing tips. Nowadays I don’t feel qualified to give out writing tips, despite the length of time I’ve been writing fiction. Or maybe it’s that I’ve learned in the meantime that writing tips are a bit worthless. I only discovered true happiness with writing when I finally tossed aside all the tips that had taken up residence inside my head and wrote what I wanted, how I wanted. Sadly, that’s only been in the last ten years or so.

I freely admit that maybe I needed those tips at the time so that I could become the writer I am today. Then again, maybe they delayed my development as a writer. I’ll likely never know.

I also freely admit that I am far from done learning how to write. The difference these days is that I learn from reading others and practicing my own craft, trying to find ways to get the words out so they translate best to the biggest portion of my reading audience. (You can never please everyone, and you’ll go mad if you try.) That’s not to say I don’t read select craft books, because I do. But I avoid the kind of tips that proliferate online in favor of in-depth discussions of topics meant to help writers write good stories.

How can I offer advice to others when I still have so much to learn?

Still, sometimes I want to say to some writers I see scouring the forums and blogs for the secret to better writing: Stop! Just write. Write and write and write, and complete things. Even the terrible things. Finish those stories you start, because that’s how I learned. I took a giant leap forward when I finally started finishing the stories I started.

In the end, though, I have no idea if what worked for me will work for them. Maybe they need those tips. Or maybe they’re just delaying their own development as writers. We’ll likely never know.

I don’t offer writing tips because I don’t feel qualified. I know only what works for me as a reader and a writer. And I use adverbs when I want and I write run on sentences and I quite often mix my metaphors. But it’s what I want and how I want and my writing hasn’t been the same since. It’s lovely to own your art as uniquely yours.

Trying not to fall back into old habits

Lynn

I cut my morning session short. I’m trying not to fall back into old habits here but I just couldn’t bring myself to finish the last hour and seven minutes of writing this morning. Afternoon really, since the writing started late and I broke for lunch and that was what got me. I watched the new episode of Castle as a treat during lunch and … that led to more tv because tv is always more appealing that trying to get through a tough spot in my book. :(

Anyway, I’m back at it for my evening session. I’m just starting fresh with the 2h 5m and trying to finish that—maybe I’ll be lucky enough to really get moving on this book. I can catch up without having to finish that extra hour tonight if I can write 765 wph tonight. I won’t be caught up with yesterday’s missing words but I’ll at least not be any further behind. To catch up totally, I’ll have to write 1,025 wph tonight. I’m going to try, I mean why not?, but it might take more inspiration than I’ve got at the moment!

Trying anyway. :D

Novel feels like it’s going to go long

Lynn

I aim for about 50,000 words when I write a novel. I can’t say I have a lot of luck keeping to that word count. The story usually ends up bigger because I don’t like to let my characters have wild changes of heart without a darn good reason. I believe change is hard and honestly, I believe most people never change and those who do fight for it tooth and nail.

Now, since I can’t really divorce myself completely from my characters, when I’m writing one that has to change in a big way before his story is done, I end up having to write more to make it happen. This seems to be what’s happening in this book. My main character has taken the first steps to change, but the fact is, he’s not there yet and I have a LOT of story left to squeeze into 20,000 words. :o

I’m going to try, because I always do, but I have a feeling this one’s going to get away from me.

Nope, challenge is a no-go

Lynn

I felt a ton of resistance to writing yesterday and today, and I blame it 100% on the challenge. I have a good thing going with the new routine of morning and evening writing and I’ve decided I’m not going to mess it up right now. I can get close enough to the date I’d like to finish this current book just by sticking with my minimum (doing both the morning and evening sessions) so that’s what I’m going to do. I just don’t want to risk ruining a good thing.

And honestly, I don’t mind failing if I’ve learned something, and I think I have. I’ve learned that I do my best writing when I don’t feel like it’s work I’m doing and that having my day free is one way to make myself feel like I’m not working. :D

So, this challenge/experiment is over, and here shortly I’m going to try to finish off the day with what I hope will be my first successful attempt at completing an evening session. :)

Still having trouble with that evening session

Lynn

I didn’t get back to my writing yesterday, despite knowing I really needed to. I’m not sure what’s going on. Well, scratch that, because I sat down last night with my computer at 7:45 (15 minutes later than planned) but my kids were in the room and they kept talking to me and I kept waiting to get started until they settled down for the evening, but they never did. One decided she needed to tell me all about her day after not telling me about her day from 4:30 to 7:45 when I actually asked, and the other decided he wanted supper after all and started cooking in the kitchen behind me (my downstairs floor plan is very open).

I told them their evening routine was going to have to change—no more cooking after 7:30 when bedtime is 9 to 10 because of school the next day (they’re actually back in school today!). My daughter wasn’t too keen on changing her routine to fit mine, until she realized the only thing I expected from her was for her not to interrupt me!

Then I went up to bed with my computer, intending to write there. But the bedtime routine sucked up all my time and by the time I settled in, I was sleepy and it was late and I needed to go to sleep if I wanted to be fresh today.

So, still working on a way to make the evening session happen. If I could just figure out how to actually get started at 7:30, that might be all I need.

Also, still not feeling the flu! I’m hopeful I skated past this one. :D

At loose ends

Lynn

My latest experiment isn’t working out. You know, the one where I set the timer to go up instead of down while I write? I’m not writing enough (might not be related to the experiment) and I keep forgetting to turn on the timer when I do write (definitely related to the timer experiment, for reasons I know but probably won’t be able to explain).

Still, I’ve let the being sick thing really keep me from writing what I need to write this month. Tomorrow I’m going to restart my attempt to settle into a routine of sorts. I need something different. Frankly, I need something that works.

I want—

  • consistency
  • >2,000 words a day

That’s it, that’s really all I want. I have no idea why I find that so difficult.

Formatting is not always fun

Lynn

Yesterday I took another trip around the world to get to my neighbor’s house.

Here’s what I mean.

The Kindle Previewer in night view was giving me trouble, but only for the Smashwords converted mobi file. The file I created with Jutoh and the one I created with Calibre were fine. Since those are the ones I upload and sell through other distributors, that’s good. But I couldn’t let the Smashwords issue go. I worked on trying to figure out what it was in my Word doc that was causing it. I even went so far as to generate a Smashwords odt file through Jutoh and tweaked it for Smashwords and the problem still didn’t go away. I was seriously on the verge of pulling out my hair when I decided to put that file on my actual Kindle (Fire) and see if it was a real problem or if the previewer had a bug.

Well, I don’t know that it’s a bug in the previewer because the previewer showed the font just fine in night view for my own mobi file. But when I side-loaded the Smashwords mobi directly onto my Kindle (I didn’t want the issue to get resolved by some conversion process if I used Send to Kindle to do it) and … no problems. None. Night view looked fine, although I can tell that there’s something going on with the file because in Sepia view the font is a bit darker than it should be compared to the mobi versions of the book I created in Jutoh and in Calibre (and compared to some other books on my Kindle too).

But I wasted hours trying to track down whatever might be causing the issue, because even after that, I didn’t give up. I tried setting after setting in Word, but nothing fixed it. I went so far as to delete my custom normal.dot file, copy all the text into a new document, and more.

Nothing fixed the issue. All I can figure is that it’s something to do with Smashwords’ own conversion process.

Regardless, I finally got over it my anxiety about this unexplained issue after I went back and pulled some of my older mobi files from Smashwords and checked them too. This problem’s been going on since 2012 at least, at least for my own Smashwords mobi files. I finally gave up trying to find a reason. I know I’ve checked the night view before, but since I’d always checked the Smashwords mobi by sending it to my Kindle, I’d never noticed the problem.

My decision to be more thorough this time and check the Smashwords mobi with the Kindle Previewer instead of just on my Kindle turned out not to be such a great idea. :o

Formatting is fun

Lynn

I have no idea why I like it so much but I do love formatting my books! I also finally, finally figured out the solution to an issue I’ve been having with my table of contents not working on the Kindle and me having to do all kinds of things to get it to show up properly. I always intend to write down how I fix it when I format a book and then I forget and have to try to figure it out all over again.

To get the toc I’ve already created in Word to work once I import the file into my Jutoh project, all I had to do was right-click my Table of Contents document in the project organizer, choose Projects, and then select toc for Guide type. I also unchecked Show in Table of Contents.

I’m almost positive I’ve tried this before, but if I have, it didn’t work for some reason. I always ended up having to use the table of contents wizard and try the different options until I got one of them to generate a working TOC in the Kindle. The last few times I’ve had to delete my own table of contents list and let Jutoh manage it. I don’t like that because by default the generated TOC never quite matches my formatting and that bugs me.

But no more! The quick right-click thing worked without a hitch on two different projects last night. Yippee. ;) Just in case I actually knew this at one point and forgot, I wrote it down. The fact is, I’ve read the quick start guide and basically learned everything else in Jutoh by trail and error. :D Ah well. It works!

Scheduling shouldn’t take longer than the work being scheduled

Lynn

Here’s the thing. I’ve spent more time working on my schedule the last few days than I’ve spent writing. So I’m calling that experiment a complete and total failure. It didn’t work at all the way I’d hoped and there’s nothing to do now but move on.

So, time to try something different.

  1. I’ll be using a timer to count up my writing time throughout the day. (I usually set blocks of time and count down.)
  2. I’ll be taking a day off writing here and there to work on getting some publishing stuff done that I need to have finished ages ago. (I just can’t seem to fit anything else in when I’m wallowing in the feeling that I must write every day.)
  3. I’ll be aiming for about 6 hours of writing a day through the end of January. (It’s not a quota, but I’d really like to write that much each day so I can finish the books I want to finish when I want to finish them.)

I’m unlikely to ever become a speed-demon who can write thousands of words an hour, but hey, fast is relative. ;) If I stick to writing about 500 words an hour, those six hours could translate into about 3,000 words a day, which is well above the number I need to end up with a 2,000 a day average at the end of the year.

So there it is. Now, I’m going to go do some more writing before this day is completely gone.

Oh, and the reading hiatus (except fiction, except on Saturday) is going really well. Today I discovered that even though I hadn’t read certain forums and blogs for days, once a week might still be more often than I need to visit, because I had missed nothing at all. :o

Minor epiphanies

Lynn

Yep. I’m going to get a lot of fiction read this month. Because apparently I’ve been spending a lot more time reading stuff other than fiction than I realized. :D

And, by the way, I chopped off the last 3,800 or so words of the book I’m working on today and started fresh. I do believe it was the right choice and that probably explains why my subconscious hasn’t had me in a hurry to get back to this book this week while I’ve been distracted by other things.

I have one minute to write this post

Lynn

I’ve never managed to write a blog post in one minute, but here goes. My timer is set to start just as soon as I hit publish on this thing.

Here are some things I’ve tried over the last week or so while I’ve been quiet here.

(Oh, and the reason I’ve been quiet is because of household maintenance issues! Frozen pipe, ruined water heater, water softener (which is absolutely necessary for my well water), and getting all that dealt with has taken up a bit of time, but the biggest issue with it all was the anxiety this stuff caused me. I have yet to figure out how to write when I’m anxious about something. I usually turn to reading instead. This time I unfortunately turned to reading forums and blogs instead of fiction, which lead me to start a new experiment.)

My experiment of grouping my writing into one big block has failed. I’ve tried and tried to have another successful day after that first one and I just haven’t been able to pull it off.

I’m behind on my 2,000 a day word average I wanted to maintain in 2015. I usually try to avoid trying to play catch up, but I want to reach this goal, so I’m going to do something I don’t usually think is a good idea and try to catch up to my goal this month. I’ll need to write about 3,000 words a day on average through the end of the month. That’s a huge stretch for me but it’s not impossible. I can do it even though I’ve never before written that much for more than a few days at a time.

It comes down to this: It’s time to stop putting limits on myself when the limits shouldn’t exist. I mean, even on bad days I can write about 300 to 400 words an hour. 3,000 words is only 8 to 10 hours at that slow pace. I can physically write for 8 to 10 hours if necessary and saying I can’t would be an outright lie. I can read for that many hours a day if I’m bingeing, and I can watch tv for that many hours, and I can work on code for a website for that many hours, so I know that any limit I have regarding this is entirely made up in my head. I can write 3,000 words a day for a couple of weeks. Frankly, there shouldn’t be anything stopping me from doing it long-term (because I don’t always write at that slow pace), but I really don’t need to do more than catch up my goal and then go back to my daily 2,000 words.

Finally, yesterday, I started a new experiment limiting my time reading stuff. I need to cut back. Not fiction—of course not! But I read too much other stuff and end up overwhelmed with information and that makes it hard for me to concentrate sometimes. Also, all the publishing industry news can be frustrating and put me in an anti-creative mood. So it’s time to do something about it.

This experiment: No reading anything but fiction for the rest of January except on Saturdays.

I read this stuff on my Kindle and computer mostly, and sometimes on my phone. I did read a story this morning instead of the usual forums and blogs but it didn’t really help because the story was short enough that I convinced myself I could just finish it before getting started and I ended up starting later today than I wanted anyway.

What I’m hoping to accomplish is an interruption in the habitual opening of these websites so that I don’t just read this stuff out of habit. So even though maybe this won’t help with the time management issues I have, I still think it’ll benefit me. Reading fiction makes me want to write my own stories; reading that other stuff doesn’t. :D We’ll see how this goes over the rest of the month.

Well, it’s been a bit more than a minute and I really have to go start my writing today. I’m sure I’ll be back later with a report on my successful day. :D That’s the plan anyway!

I’m hoping to write a LOT of words today.