Fiction writer. Expert procrastinator. This is my life.
Posts about writing. Writing is my work but since I work better when I pretend work isn’t work, I mostly call it fun—even when it isn’t. ;)
I’m making progress on this book but you sure wouldn’t know it by my word counts. Yesterday I came in at 328 words for the day. Gah.
Still, I’ve solved a major problem with the story and I’m just trying to get everything to line up now.
Something of note: this story is way more fun than I thought it was. I like it a lot. :D
I feel asleep at the computer last night. Well, mostly I feel asleep if you count head bobbing and momentary lapses in consciousness.
So no, I didn’t make it through my book so that today’s writing could go more smoothly. In fact, I kept tinkering with that particular scene I mentioned yesterday until the head bobbing and lapses in consciousness caused me to read the same two lines in the story about twenty times.
Today, however, I finally figured out why I kept tinkering with that scene, fixed the thing I needed to fix, and am so glad it’s done. The scene is also much more in line with what I wanted. I’m pretty happy with it right now.
I adjusted some chapter breaks (about 4 or 5 of them) and now I need to finish the read through edit I’m doing for about 14 more chapters. To be honest, I’m not really editing. I’m just fixing stuff so the damn story can start moving again. :D
As for the chapters, I like to have chapters of about 2,000 to 2,500 words, and definitely not more than 3,000 to 3,300. I usually have several good breaking off points in a chapter, so it wasn’t hard to find new cliffhanger style endings for the new chapter breaks. :D
Only one chapter defeated me and I had to leave it at 3,140 words. There just wasn’t a good place to split it and I liked the ending it currently had too much to bury it in the middle of the next chapter.
I’ve managed to gain 169 words today so far doing this and I’m hoping not to spend too much more time on that and get on with the real writing soon.
Since I’m not anywhere near where I’d need to be right now to have a 5,000 word day, I’m going to quit hoping for that and just write as much as I can.
So no more breaks for me until I’m ready to call it a day on the writing. WIFI is going off the minute I post this, and I’m going to hide my damn tablets and phone. (Okay, I just turned them off, but that should serve the same purpose!)
Yesterday I wrote. My word count was minuscule, but I went back to a scene giving me trouble and spent a few hours on it. I didn’t gain much word count, but I did make progress with the story.
Today I’ve been doing the same. By the time I quit, I want to have the story at a place where I can really pick up speed tomorrow. As of right now, I want to try to make tomorrow a four to five thousand plus word day.
It might not happen, but that’s kind of where I think I want tomorrow to go. I have to get the complications with this story straightened out first though. I can’t write at the pace I need for a high word count if the story isn’t moving along smoothly.
Whatever happens, I did start my effort to write every day yesterday and I’ve continued it today. I’m now on a two day streak. ;)
I’ve written 2,065 words this month. Let me just say that’s not where I imagined I’d be at this point in the month.
Since I have a book to finish, I’m going to have to try to write today and keep writing until I’ve written a damn lot of words. :o
To do that, I’m going to have to kick this damn perfectionism I’ve got going on to the curb. I keep letting people in my head, but they’re not even the main problem. I’m the problem. I’m the critic from hell. When I’m in one of my moods, nothing is ever good enough. I can’t write fast because I can’t stop criticizing what I’ve written as I write. I also over write. Seriously. I spend way too much time trying to draw a picture of the images in my head with words, and I’m starting to realize just how dumb that is. It’s limiting. I need to lean a little heavier on the reader’s imagination.
Or something like that.
Anyway, I’m about to have a late breakfast. It’s 11:07 am, but I stayed up until 2 in the morning so I’m not that surprised. What sucks is that I’ve actually been awake since 7 and I’m already tired.
But a writing day it is today.
Also, I’ve decided that today is the first day of me writing every day. I’m going to do it. I’m afraid to commit, but I’m kind of in a contrary mood today and by damn I’m going to start writing every day if I have to glue my fingers to a pen to make it happen.
I have to start writing more and that’s just all there is to it. I can’t be happy as a writer if I don’t, because writing stokes the desire to write more, and not writing just makes me apathetic and write even less over time. I can’t afford that unless I want to find another career.
And I don’t. I like this one just fine.
Today, instead of writing, I went ahead and reformatted a couple of books that have new covers, because those paperbacks need to be updated to match. I wasn’t going to do this yet, but as soon as I said I wasn’t going to do it, the idea was in my head and I couldn’t resist.
Surprisingly, it didn’t take long—my new style sets are really consistent, for a change—until I started tweaking stuff. Then of course it took a lot longer. I formatted 2 paperbacks in about 4 to 5 hours. But even with all the tweaking, that’s nothing like the time I used to spend creating my paperbacks.
Since I’ve been working on so many paperbacks at once this time, it was really easy to get my style sets consistent. And since I had recently reformatted my master files for these two books, I had the books set up just right to work with my fresh new paperback style sets. I changed my style set, adjusted my title pages for a consistent look within each series, and printed to PDF.
Still, I was dealing with some perfectionism and a lot of little gotchas. I swear I had to print to PDF about 10 times each for each book before I was done because of little things I forgot to check or fix beforehand.
Anyway, I’m done now with the paperbacks until I have time to work on those covers and I’m going to write, even if only for half an hour or so.
I’ll say goodnight now, and plan to post my progress tomorrow. I have books that really must be written, and dammit, I really want to write them. Time to start doing that!
So I posted about wanting to write every day and the very next day I finally start those paperbacks I’ve been putting off for half a year.
Funny how procrastinating on one thing can lead to a boost in productivity on another. My guilt over not writing pushed me to work hard on the formatting and kept me working until it was done.
I became a little obsessed with them to be frank. But I finished the formatting last night and now I need only to finish up the paperback covers to go with those newly formatted books.
I’d still like to reformat my older books, but writing needs to take priority now.
I also spent yesterday preparing my tax return. I just about finished it. :) I’ll confirm my numbers when the 1099s come in but I’m confident in my record keeping and am glad to have this out of the way early this year!
Today I intend to start letting myself write every day.
I started a post, didn’t want to finish it, then started another and didn’t know what to say. At this point, I realize I’m stalling. There are stories to be written and I need to write them.
I spent part of the day renaming files and changing my mind repeatedly about a couple of my file naming conventions.
I couldn’t decide if I was happy with the lower case and hyphens for my image names or not. In the end, I went with not, and renamed all my image files with the same case I’m using for the rest. I actually did this a couple of times—back and forth.
I also couldn’t decide if I wanted to name my old files “old1” “old2” or “ver1” “ver2” and then I couldn’t decide if I liked using “Cover” in my cover image file names. I decided not.
Basically, just a bunch of second guessing of stuff that doesn’t matter at all.
I have a sneaking suspicion that perfectionism has found a way to slip in and I’m going to have to do something about it.
During the process of navigating through every folder in my writing directory, I came across some fiction I wrote back in 1994–1996.
Oh my. I wasn’t sure if I’d improved that much as a writer, but this particular book proved it. If I could go back in time and tell myself anything to help speed up my development, I’d tell 19–21 year old me to use more contractions. :o
Also, it’s literally one of the first times I’ve read something I’ve written and can’t remember even a teeny tiny bit having written it. I mean, nothing is coming back to me about this, except for the odd fact that apparently I named my kid after two of my characters from this book—the hero and the heroine’s dead brother. Poor kid. :o
My chapters were ridiculously short. But I can see that I was learning. The writing gets a little better as the chapters go along. Little being a relative term in this context, for sure. ;)
Here’s a screenshot of a bit of one of the stories.
I thought those old versions of that particular book had been lost, but apparently I’ve been bringing them along with me in my writing folder with every migration to a new computer.
They’re buried deep, but they’re there.
After that bit of nostalgia, I found myself sorting and deleting email and trying to come up with a better system for handling my archives. I spent a lot of time on that and all I really decided was that there wasn’t a better system. I deleted some junk, saved a few files and deleted some non-junk, and got the number of emails in my email archive below 5,000. :) That’s over multiple accounts, with my primary account making up about half that with 2,273 emails according to Thunderbird.
(I have many email addresses and I refuse to consolidate them all. I’ve tried that and I didn’t like it one bit. I need to compartmentalize to be comfortable.)
I also started reading a new book today.
The thing is, I knew as it was happening that what I was doing was a mistake. I just couldn’t stop myself. Frankly, it felt a little compulsive.
On the other hand, I feel like maybe I’m done now. I hope so. I really don’t want to rename any more files. It’s making me crazy.
Tomorrow, I won’t let this happen. But today? There’s no way to deny it. I failed to be a writer today.
I ended yesterday with zero words written for the day. I had a full day away from home and I just didn’t have the energy to get started. I actually consciously looked at my writing streak in my daily word count log, said, “Neh,” and closed the computer.
Wondering what that big number is in the image? That’s my cumulative word count since I started tracking in 2012.
Anyway, on to make today the beginning of a new streak. I both want and need to make some significant progress today on this book I’m working on.
Today is the first day this year that both of my kids are back in school. I have no reason to put off getting back into this book and fixing the problems it’s giving me. I’m ready.
I’ve let the writing streaks end. Last night, I wrote, but I deleted and then wrote and then deleted, and I had a negative day and just couldn’t climb out of it before I was too tired to continue. I’ve been staying up way too late and 1 a.m. last night did me in.
However! There is a however. :D
I wrote. So technically I have a new writing streak to replace the old two.
148 – 12/30
172 – 12/31
203 – 1/1
209 – 1/2
246 – 1/3
277 – 1/4
345 – 1/5
470 – 1/6
(35) – 1/7
I’d love to know how much I wrote yesterday, because I have a feeling my >100 words streak would still be alive, but that’s not how I count words and I’m not going to change that. It’s not necessary anyway. I have no goals, am using no timers, and following no schedule. A broken writing streak isn’t breaking any kind of commitment to myself.
I’ll just let a new one happen.
Yesterday, at the twelfth hour, I did some writing and managed 470 words.
Another small win and another day to add to my streaks.
148 – 12/30
172 – 12/31
203 – 1/1
209 – 1/2
246 – 1/3
277 – 1/4
345 – 1/5
470 – 1/6
The streaks are:
At some point, the increasing words per day streak will end. There’s no way around that, because I do want to write a lot of words on a daily basis. But for now this is a great motivation to keep going.
I’m finding the challenge of doing better every single day not to be much of a challenge at all. Part of that is probably because I’ve let myself write on a variety of stories (all stories I hope to finish writing and publish within the first three to four months of this year assuming I eventually reach four digits with my daily word count). That’s led to me having no trouble at all getting out some new words each day.
I don’t know, it’s kind of making me rethink my ban on writing concurrently on multiple stories.
I’m not sold on backing off the ban yet, but I do notice my motivation to write everything increases when I’m writing on anything. That matters when I’m having a tough time getting myself started. I’ve said it before: Getting started is the single most difficult thing for me when it comes to writing (or anything else).
Anyway, off to work on paperback formatting for some books and then to do some writing.
(By the way, I love this font. Firefox says it’s Libre Franklin, and I’m seriously considering downloading this to my computer and using it for my notes.)
(And I did, and yes, it definitely wasted some time, because I got lost looking at fonts. But I’m away from there now and clicking publish here! Time to get to work.)
And another day goes down in favor of the streak(s).
148 – 12/30
172 – 12/31
203 – 1/1
209 – 1/2
246 – 1/3
277 – 1/4
345 – 1/5
Although I thought I would write more today, in the end, I’m pretty satisfied that at least I wrote something.
Maybe tomorrow will be the day I break out and write lots of words.
Now, I must go to sleep. It’s 12:55 p.m. and that’s already much later than I wanted to conk out tonight.
148 – 12/30
172 – 12/31
203 – 1/1
209 – 1/2
246 – 1/3
277 – 1/4
Last night I made time to write again and in the process managed to keep both my streaks going for another day. :)
Another small win for me in the new year. :D
Hey, small wins are serious business!*
Today I’d like to write quite a lot more but I had another late night despite hopes otherwise and I have a headache this morning. Only it’s really not morning anymore. It’s noon and looks so dreary out that I don’t doubt for a minute snow’s on the way.
It’s time for an evil glare out my window. I really don’t like snow. >_<
Anyway, off to do some writing or paperback formatting. Haven’t decided yet. The truth is if I procrastinate writing to do the paperbacks, I’m okay with that. One of them has needed to be done since June. :o
*I read an article about small wins a long time ago that has stuck with me… Ah, I think I’ve found it: https://hbr.org/2011/05/the-power-of-small-wins
The streaks continue. :)
148 – 12/30
172 – 12/31
203 – 1/1
209 – 1/2
246 – 1/3
I’m up to almost a page a day now. :)
I’ve been writing so few words because (1) kids are still home for the holiday/winter break and (2) I spent the last two days working on a massive spreadsheet project I’d been putting off for a couple of years now.
I thought having all my title sales in one Excel workbook would benefit me, but after getting it done, I’m just not sure I didn’t waste a lot of time on this. As someone who will write a book I want to write regardless of the possible payoff, I don’t have any need to see my sales broken down by title or series (which is what I did).
Not only that, but there weren’t any surprises there either. I’ve apparently been doing just fine consolidating in my head the information I gather from the individual sales reports from each vendor. I’d created a very realistic picture of where my money was coming from and the books were all doing just about what I thought they were as far as revenues go.
I don’t think I’ll update the spreadsheet going forward. I won’t delete it outright, but I see no need to keep it current.
I just don’t care how much each specific book brings in, and I don’t even really care how much each series is bringing in. I write these books because I really want to and I’m willing to take my chances with them.
Now, time to go write some words for today. I have to get to bed earlier tonight. I’ve stayed up two nights in a row until 2 a.m. working on that stupid spreadsheet. I need a better night’s sleep tonight so I’ll feel liking writing lots of words tomorrow if I decide that’s what I want to do. :D
I’ve added another day to my two writing streaks. My word counts are minuscule but I’m trying to build momentum during a time when I have a lot of distractions going on around me and I’m settling into a new year.
148 – 12/30
172 – 12/31
203 – 1/1
209 – 1/2
Addendum to the aside about my writing streak: I have two writing streaks going now.
So—awesome?! start to the new year. ;) (Stop laughing! *evil glare*)
Not only that, but I don’t feel feverish today, don’t feel sick, and don’t feel all that tired either. So good health too.
I think I’m losing weight but since I’ve abandoned my scale (it’s in the closet) I can’t say for sure.
I’m pretty happy with abandoning all these metrics of success and failure and the goal setting stuff. I feel free.
I need, now, to translate that into more writing and some real weight loss. 2017 seems like just the year for it. :D
Happy new year, everyone!
Coming up next: a new year’s update on the progress I’ve had building a pen name. Spoiler! I should’ve just written more books for my main name.
I’ve now written more than 100 words every day for three days. Hey, stop laughing! Streaks are serious business.
I’ve been thinking about goals and habits and systems again. I’ve talked about those things many times in the past, and I have continually chased goals and failed to meet the vast majority of them. I’m really getting tired of failing.
A forum post I read today talked about how binary the whole goal mentality is: succeed or fail. Sure, you can play mind games with yourself and try to remember that you haven’t actually failed if you’ve made progress, but… really? When you set a goal, if you don’t reach it, your brain is going to tell you you’ve failed. And too much failure definitely takes a psychological toll.
Just yesterday I had a talk with my son about how I’d made 2016 sound like my worst year for writing since I’d started publishing. But it wasn’t. It was very close to an average year, and better even than 2014.
2012: 146,821
2013: 268,191
2014: 217,641
2015: 250,011
2016: 220,017
The monthly averages show how close those numbers really are:
2012: 24,470
2013: 22,349
2014: 18,137
2015: 20,834
2016: 18,335
But it felt like a terrible year, all the way around, because I had set such large goals at the beginning of the year and I came nowhere near reaching them. 2016 was the year I tried to write 1,180,000 words in 12 months; it was the year I decided 4,558 was a reasonable number of words to expect from myself most days.
Looking back, I have no idea what I was thinking.
Headache is better today. Now I need to get back to my writing.
I’ve been hoping I would write if I didn’t have a plan other than my 2,000 words a day goal and took some time off from the timers. But so far nothing is happening. Maybe because of holidays and being sick so I’m not going to give up on it yet. I’m tempted, mind you, but I’m not doing it. It’s time to settle in for a longer experiment with this and see what happens.
On that note, I’m going for lunch, then getting started on something. My list of things I want to do today is significant. I won’t get to them all, but it’d be nice if I got to some of them, and still wrote my 2,000 plus words today.
It’s about time for my annual sweep up of categories and tags on this blog. I haven’t figured out a better system for organizing my many posts yet, but as soon as I get a good idea, I’m going to make some changes. I really hate the current arrangement of categories and tags. They just don’t work well at all for me!
Update: I’ve started making changes. They’re small so far, but more are coming.
Update the second: I think I’ve decided to let the old posts rest as they are, updating them as I feel like it, and go forward with the changes I want. That’ll mean a bit of a mess, but not too much of one. :)