Tag: Progress posts

Posts that track my progress toward my goals.

Resistance didn’t win

Lynn

(I thought I posted this last night but must have missed it, so here it is.)

Last night, I extended my streak of writing more than five hundred words a day to five days with 515 words. Resistance didn’t win. The total word count is adding up slowly but it’s better than a streak of zeroes any way you look at it.

I’ve learned something over the last few months, or maybe just been reminded of something I already knew but haven’t taken seriously enough. I can’t tolerate boredom. Spending two hundred and fifty-six days on one story is just asking for trouble.

Once I lose the thrill of the idea, writing becomes hard, and I become too critical of myself, the writing, and the idea.

I have to start writing more often. I started to say faster, but the truth is, speed isn’t the problem, not in the sense of how many words an hour I write. Writing even 200 words an hour would get me 1,000 words a day in 5 hours! Two months is pretty doggone reasonable for a novel. Even three months wouldn’t be so bad if the story grew to the length my current book has reached. Anything more than that is just too much time. I can’t sustain my excitement for a story that long and I’ve proven that time and time again.

But there’s good news.

What I did last week, last month, last year doesn’t have to be what I do tomorrow.

See you tomorrow. :-)

A small win last night that bodes well

Lynn

Yesterday I somehow made it until nearly 1:00 a.m. without writing. But I was determined not to break my 500 words a day streak so I finally overcame the resistance to getting started and sat down and wrote.

Instead of 500 words, I ended up with 1,004. Considering I didn’t use a timer and honestly only intended to get 500 words and then go to sleep, I think that’s pretty amazing. I went to sleep around 2:20 and don’t feel so hot this morning, of course, because I’ve now had two nights in a row of about six hours of sleep, but I feel great that I had that small win turn into a big win.

After four days of the 500 word minimum, my daily average of 644 words is already better than my all time daily average of 614.

This is exactly the result I was hoping to see. It only takes a few days of better than 500 words a day to start pumping up my average. And 500 a day feels like such a doable number of words. It’s enough of a commitment to writing each day to make me feel accomplished and it also seems to be enough words to set off the creative part of my brain so that I’m actually getting somewhere instead of just staying stuck in place.

What I mean by that is that with say 100 words, I can often add a little here and there and never actually move the story forward. I might be able to get away with editing enough words into a scene to reach 500 words once, maybe twice if the writing was thin to begin with, but after that, I have to move forward, which is what happened last night. Once I started moving forward, I didn’t even have to work to pick up momentum. The story was pulling me forward.

Now, despite all that success after midnight last night, I don’t want to repeat the after midnight part tonight, so I’m going to go write. This story is actually interesting me again, and I feel a need to make some more progress on that never-ending ending I’ve got going on! I’ll post later with results, unless I fall asleep at the keyboard. :D

Focus on action and small wins; a new daily minimum

Lynn

Today I’m starting work on my book much later than I planned. Mostly because I’ve spent too much of the day thinking about a decision I made a couple days ago and trying to decide if it’s the right one. I’ve finally decided it is.

Tuesday, I decided to lower my minimum word count for a day to 500 words. That was a good call, I think. My average daily word count is 614 words. Since I have a complete record of every day’s word count since mid-2012, this isn’t a guess. This is my actual daily word count average for more than 5 years of writing.

That said, just because I’ve averaged 614 words a day for 5 years doesn’t mean 500 words a day should be a no-problem, no-trouble, easy daily goal for me. Averages are just that: averages. And averages never tell the whole story.

Consistent daily writing is still a major problem for me. I do not do well with long term daily writing. My longest streak to date is 122 days and I had to count many days of less than 100 words to even get that.

Writing 500 words a day, every day, will be a considerable challenge. But I don’t think I can go any lower than that, just because it doesn’t feel reasonable and it doesn’t feel like a challenge. It feels like giving up.

Daily, it’s only a small win, but 500 words a day will get me a book of average size (50,000 words) in 100 days. Meaning even if I totally fail at all else and ONLY write the 500 words a day every day and never one word more, I’ll write more words in the next 12 months than I wrote in the last two years combined by a little more than 40,000 words.

That’s a win, no matter how I look at it.

And my hope is, as always, that this small win will drive me to write more and reach some of the bigger goals I have.

Every time I write more than 500 words a day, it’s going to push my average up, and I’m going to get that much closer to my long-term goal of being a prolific writer. I can’t ask for much more than that considering where I’m starting from.

But I have to start somewhere and becoming a consistent daily writer is where I’m choosing to start.

The fact is, a small win is better than no win, and I have to start focusing on action if I want to change.

This isn’t just a post about intentions; this is a post of action! I made this minimum word count change two days ago on Tuesday. On both Tuesday and Wednesday, I successfully met this challenge with 517 words and 533 words, respectively.

Yay! I have a new writing streak going. :-)

Now, it’s time to go write and keep this thing alive.

Update: Yep, I did it. 520 words for the day.

Writing and an experiment with mealtimes

Lynn

Yay! I’ve been writing today. Nowhere near the amount of writing I wanted to do, and my only excuse for that is distractions, but it’s nice to NOT be struggling to sit down and write.

One distraction of note is my new mealtime schedule. I’m still trying to lose some of the weight I gained after transitioning from a job to writing at home and it seems I’ve plateaued. Therefore, I’m moving meal times to 7 a.m., 11 a.m., and 3 p.m. :-)

The new mealtimes should make snacks much less appealing, reduce my meal sizes, and give me a longer fasting period overnight. It’s also a mealtime schedule I grew up with and maintained into my twenties. It’s an experiment, doubly interesting because it loosely matches the mealtimes I had during all the years when I was at my ideal weight. I’m hoping the new mealtimes will work to my strengths and shore up some of my weaknesses. I like going to bed on an empty stomach and always try not to eat in the few hours before bed, but I don’t like feeling hungry during the day—in fact, when I get hungry, I feel sick and weak, and I don’t like that feeling at all. Ideally, I’ll go to bed on an empty stomach, but won’t actually get hungry until really close to my bedtime which I’m finally getting moved back to a reasonable hour for me. :-)

As a first run today, I’m pretty happy with what I found. I ate almost exactly what I ate yesterday, just so I’d have something to compare. Because I ate it all so much closer together, I realized really quickly that my meals these days are probably still too big. I think I’ll be able to scale back the amount of food I eat and not really notice it at all. And that, I hope, will help me lose a few of these stubborn pounds I need to lose!

Anyway, I’m sleepy and I’m calling it a night. 466 words. May tomorrow be better than today!

Why am I even writing these posts?

Lynn

Saturday, I didn’t expect to get much writing done at all, because I had blocked off noon until 7 pm for a family event. Somehow I managed to get up Saturday morning and get started quickly, and I did two sessions for a total of 1.516 hours of timed writing making it to 814 words. After 7 I was too tired to even look at my computer. :o

Sunday, I expected to get a lot of writing done, but I totally flaked out and didn’t do any. Nada. It was a weird day, tbh. I spent too much time in a reflective, depressed mood and I didn’t like it. Not sure what happened there.

Today, I’m going to write today’s three hours, then yesterday’s three hours and then Saturday’s 1.484 remaining hours and see where it takes me. A 7.484 hour day is a huge challenge but strangely enough, I feel up to it today.

*I don’t have an answer for the question posed in the post title, so… no point discussing it.

More time, fewer words

Lynn

Yesterday I managed to stay focused for 5.417 hours of timed writing. I did not manage to write 1,557 words. My word count at the end of the night was -556 words. I’ve just started going through chapter 10 and new words start at chapter 16. Today’s plan is to get through the rest of those chapters AND write 1,557 words. I’m determined. I might run out of time, but I don’t project any distractions today so I’m hopeful. :) But I’m a pretty optimistic person so I’m always hopeful, lol.

I’ve had my playlist on shuffle and repeat for the entirety of my writing time and it’s really helping me stay focused. Trust me, that’s something I need help with on a daily basis. And repeating a short playlist seems to work better than anything else. Sometimes I go as short as one song, but even I can admit that’s pretty crazy.

Usually I just listen to songs I’ve purchased, but my previous playlist wasn’t working for me. I needed something a little different and came up with this one and have been very pleased with how well I’ve focused with it. Eventually I’ll get around to buying these to add to my collection. But right now, I’m not messing with a winning formula! :D

Anyway, on to today’s writing.

Writing after the eclipse

Lynn

I meant everything I said last night (this morning, really). But I did have plans for today because of the eclipse, so I knew I wouldn’t start early. I started at about 6 pm. My goals were entirely reasonable, even for a late start. 3 hours. 1,557 words. And then a little more just because.

Here’s what I did.

I wrote for 4.35 hours. I didn’t make it to 1,557 words. In fact, I only made it to 109 words, because I’ve deleted much more than I’ve written after finding more than one problem to fix and I’m still working on getting a handle on this book. I’m actually not sure how long it’ll take but I’m hoping only another few pages of major stuff to fix.

Either way, it’s forty minutes past midnight and I don’t think I can stay up any longer without compromising tomorrow’s writing.

I might have to accept that until I get through this read-through, a positive word count is probably asking too much.

Revisiting yesterday’s plan—but not

Lynn

I’m going to keep an open mind with today’s writing, because it’s possible I might want to try again for a record setting day, despite the fact that I have the AC guy coming to repair my unit. (Which is now working again, but which I just know will quit the moment I cancel him, so I’m just going to let him come and do maintenance on the thing. It seems to need it every year, and if anyone ever asked me, I’d say yes, my geothermal unit has save me a lot on my electric bill but most definitely not on my nerves or my home maintenance costs.)

The reason I say open mind is that I’m just not sure actually planning the thing isn’t partially to blame for me not writing yesterday.

I’ve found success with the 1,557 word daily minimum. Jumping right into higher word count challenges might be self-sabotaging behavior—or at the least, seriously counterproductive!

So today I will write my minimum and go from there. Once I do today’s minimum, I might finish off yesterday’s minimum. Once I do that, I might go back to the next day where I didn’t finish my minimum and do that one too. And if at the end of the day, that leads me to a record setting word count, I might celebrate.

Sounds like a good plan for the day to me.

Hmm. Anything else? Oh, yes.

I’ll be sticking with 15 minute sessions today so I can keep an eye on my speed. I’ll be trying to reach 250 words at least once today during those sessions. 250 is a big number for me, and I know I can hit it but I don’t do it often. So, yeah, it’s a challenge, but a tiny one. :D

Update: It’s down to the wire. I have 30 minutes to finish 440 words, unfortunately. Might be a problem because my last several sessions have been in the 200–300 wph range. I don’t even know why I’m taking time to write this except that I had a compulsion to do it. Anyway, getting back to it so I can get those 440 words asap.

Update two: I wrote until just a little later than midnight because I was so close that I couldn’t let my day end without reaching that 1,557 words. I did! I came in at 1,661 and 3.5 hours of timed writing. I just can’t believe how difficult I find it to accumulate those hours of writing time over the course of a day. This is something that’s bugged me for years. I just can’t figure it out.

Update three: Ha! You thought I forgot about the challenge, huh? I did. Sorry. The fact is I didn’t make it to 250 words in any of my sessions. My closest came in at 179, I think. (I deleted the log before I remembered I was supposed to be keeping up.)

Yay for that, at least

Lynn

I ended yesterday with 384 words. Considering I was up to 468 after two of my 40 minute sessions, that seems impossible, right? But nope, not impossible. I completed another 40 minute session but before I started it I deleted 349 words.

Boom, just gone.

I must have written a few hundred words there in that last session or I’d have ended the night with a lower word count than I did, so yay! for that.

On another note, today I plan to begin substituting the word “plan” anywhere I might be tempted to use the word “goal.” It’s a mind-trick I want to try out. We’ll see how it goes.

Also, today I will definitely be picking up the challenge I set out for myself last night but was unable to follow through on. I’m going to try to write as constantly as I can during my sessions, and stay away from the backspace or delete key as much as possible!, and see where that gets me. It’s going to be challenging, but if I don’t practice, I won’t improve.

Word counts for the last 6 days of writing

Lynn

Date—Words
6/25/17—694
6/26/17—1,063
6/27/17—592
6/28/17—0
6/29/17—604
6/30/17—251 (might increase, might not)

Not great by any means but I’m happy that I’ve been writing again. I’m also happy that I seem to be in a mood to push myself to improve. I don’t want to stagnate.

Today was supposed to be a day off, because I had a meeting with a friend planned. Those plans fell through, probably for the best, because I woke up with a stiff back and no will to go anywhere. :) I haven’t written much today because of that, but I’m trying now to at least do some writing before I call it a night.

 

Challenge day nine (yes, I’m still trying)

Lynn

I got up ready to get started writing, but of course I was still having issues with the thing that stopped me last night. It took me hours to get past it this morning.

HOURS.

But I did. Finally.

It’s 7:10 pm and I’ve written 1,093 words today.

Here are my Gleeo time tracker entries. (Super easy to export from my phone to .csv and Dropbox so I can access the file quickly here on the computer, delete a few excess columns, and copy/paste it here.)

Task

Start-Date

Start-Time

End-Date

End-Time

Duration

Decimal Duration

Writing

2/9/17

11:45

2/9/17

12:26

0:41

0.683333

Writing

2/9/17

13:18

2/9/17

13:46

0:28

0.466667

Writing

2/9/17

17:29

2/9/17

18:15

0:46

0.766667

Writing

2/9/17

18:20

2/9/17

18:56

0:36

0.6

Total

2:31

2.516667

Not great, as you can see, but I’ve done worse.

Anyway, the day’s not over and I don’t have to get up early tomorrow, so I’m going to keep going for as long as I can tonight. :D

And as for the thing, well, I can say honestly that I am finally over it and the writing is going pretty well all things considered.

I’m not going to have to scrap the 4000+ words of material I was afraid I’d have to scrap if the pieces of the story didn’t join up where I’d gone back and taken things in a bit of a different direction. I just need to make a few changes to account for that change of direction for the parts that happen afterward that I had already written, and I think it’ll be okay. It’s shouldn’t require much adjustment, just a timing issue mostly.

If not, there’s always the delete key. I refuse to get bogged down at this late date in the story. ;)

Word count minuscule, but I wrote

Lynn

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. ;)

Another day goes down in favor of the streak(s)

Lynn

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

  1. > 100 words each day
  2. increasing number of words each day

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.

Changing how I monitor my daily average word count

Lynn

I track my daily average word count in a number of ways, including yearly and monthly, and more recently, since 9/19. You see that last one in my word count posts. I’ve been adamant that I’m not going to change the start date for that count and I haven’t. Until today.

I decided today to change that column in my spreadsheet to hold a 30 day rolling average instead.

What I realized today is that there’s a problem with using a set start date for the average I’m using to monitor improvements to my daily word count. Over time the average becomes weighed down by the past and the present gets lost. If I have 90 days of numbers, the current 30 days are 1/3 of the average. If I have 180 days of numbers, the current 30 days are only 1/6 of the average. As the history of numbers grows larger, the average becomes less representative of the present and how I’m doing now.

A 30 day rolling average will be much more focused on current progress and will tell me if I’m doing well now and let me to see course corrections more clearly.

Update: This was a fail. I no longer even include this in my spreadsheet at all. :)

Word count post for November 2016

Lynn

November word count: 27,423
Cumulative word count: 1,092,076
Daily average: 914
Number of zero word days: 9

0
0
0
0
0
0
0
326
548
2,369
2,612
1,178
3,113
224
1,846
1,054
3,073
1,977
218
393
3,325
315
1,033
103
0
0
970
1,867
176
703

I considered a nicely formatted table but decided this is just fine. I do have the other posts that label dates, and that’s good enough for me. :)

Word count post for Nov. 25-28, 2016

Lynn

Nov. 25: 0
Nov. 26: 0
Nov. 27: 970
Nov. 28: 1,867

I’ve been sick. I started feeling sick on the 22nd, but the morning of the 26th was definitely my worst day. I had planned to write on the 25th but I just couldn’t make myself do it. Then I started to feel better by the night of the 26th and here I am, just about completely over it. I have a bit of heaviness in my chest that still bothers me, but the sinuses have cleared up remarkably fast.

Daily average since 9/19: 992 words.

I really didn’t want to fall below 1,000 words again, but I just wasn’t up for another 1,000 words tonight. 2,000 words tomorrow will get me there again and then I can work on making it stick.