Tag: Session logs

Posts with writing session details: time, words, progress, etc.

Today’s challenge progress

Lynn

The writing isn’t going well today. I set out a challenge for myself this morning and I’ve fallen so far behind that I’m not seeing a way to catch up. On the other hand, I see no reason not to continue for as long as I can and see just where I do end up.

This chart is how I’m keep track of the challenge. The numbered columns (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) stand for the session number, and the numbers below are my word counts.

 Sessions ~To Go~ 1 2 3 4 5
5 1,272 3 55 84 86
5 1,500
5 1,500
5 1,500
5,772

Since I’m aiming for 300 words each, you can see I’m very far off the mark today. I’ve had to do a lot of reading of previous books to look up stuff and that’s really slowed me down. I’ve also done some editing of previously written stuff for this book and that has slowed me down. And then there’s the fact that I’ve just not been good at making myself sit and write the sessions like I should be doing today. The fact that I haven’t even finished the first block of sessions says that quite clearly.

Anyway, I’m not going to linger over this since I do want to keep the sessions going while I’m having a little success at that part at least. I’ll update again later. :)

ETA: I ended with 228 words. Seriously. I don’t know if I’m ever going to learn how to be a steady, consistent writer.

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. ;)

Not going to let resistance win today (It didn’t! Yay!)

Lynn

I’m going to sit down five times today and write at least 600 words. That’s the plan.

This little table of word counts that I put into my spreadsheet fits just perfectly on the main page so I don’t have to flip between worksheets. I’m hoping it will keep me on track.

The 12 is minutes. I do find it easier to keep my pace high in shorter sessions, so that’s the reason for that.

12 is .2 hours so all my decimal equivalents for the day’s writing will be nice and even.

20 x .2 = 4 hours

Now, time to write. I’m going to update this post regularly with my session counts today, to keep my mind focused on my plan.

Update #1

273 words in 4 sessions. The screenshot from my spreadsheet shows how poorly I did during each session. Only the last one shows promise.

I spent most of my 4 sessions working my way through already written material so maybe I can make up for some of this deficit in the next group of sessions.

Update #2

495 words in 4 sessions. Still under-performing.

Update #3

475 in 4 sessions.

Resistance hasn’t won, but something is sure holding me back. I’ve not reached 600 a group yet.

Update #4

558 words in 4 sessions.

There’ll be no more updates tonight because I had a few interruptions and came up short on time.

I finished the fourth block in two batches of two sessions each (notice that 49 when I came back? Obviously lost some momentum there…) and won’t finish the last block at all. It’s already past my bedtime by an hour or more. :)

However, I do feel like this little plan worked great and I’m going to try to keep it going, starting with tomorrow. Tomorrow might just have 4 blocks, but we shall see if I can fit one more in there. :D

Writing plan for Dec. 16, 2016

Lynn

Today I’m planning to do 10 sessions of 24 minutes each. (There’s a reason.)

It’s 11:19 AM and the day is dreary but writing is going to make it more fun. On the other hand, because I’m freezing, I’ve decided my character should be freezing too, and I’ve put him in a situation that makes that possible. ;) Poor baby. I’ve made him miserable, but hey, misery loves company as they say.

Anyway, I have to get busy if I want to do 10 full sessions today and I DO.

Also, no caffeine this morning and no headache so we’ll see how long that lasts!

Somewhere in the realm of 6 hours later…

I’ve had no caffeine today. I’ve also done no writing today.

Not sure what’s going on, except that my fingers are cold and stiff even though the outside temperature is about the same as yesterday (frigid), and that’s kept me hesitating every time I think of writing because I hate feeling cold and I find it impossible to write when my fingers are cold.

I’ve turned the heat up to 72. We’ll see if that helps. I won’t hit 10 sessions today, but I’m not going to bed until I get over the 1,000 word mark.

No early bedtime for me tonight!

And it was like a scrubbed launch. Crap.

Today’s “must make myself write” progress report

Lynn

Well. Some stuff happened. That stuff interfered with my writing stuff, so I haven’t written as much as I’d hoped, by a lot.

2 sessions of 36 minutes each got me 505 words. The first session was terrible. I deleted more than I wrote and ended up at -18 words. The second went much (much) better and I wrote 523 words.

I’m going to get 2 more before bed, and see where I end up for the day.

I did not manage to format that paperback, so over to tomorrow it goes. (Can’t say I’m surprised. I’m never surprised by this kind of thing anymore.)

I did pay bills, catch up my checkbook, and shop for groceries. I also put a sick kid to bed and

I did not read a book, any book, and I did not drink coffee today. I forgot to drink the tea before I left for the shopping, but I didn’t get a headache until nearly 6 p.m. so it worked out okay. I drank the green tea at about 7 p.m. and it did take away my headache but it took longer than the coffee and I still feel the faintest twinges but I’m calling it a win.

Tomorrow I will avoid all caffeine until I feel the twinges of a headache coming on and then I’ll do the green tea again. It contains between 25 to 35 mg of caffeine while the coffee contains between 95 to 200 mg.

Also, my stomach is feeling much better and the jitters are much improved.

I’ve let myself get behind—by a lot

Lynn

I have a deadline coming up, very much a “can’t miss this date” deadline. It’s making me anxious.

I mean, technically, I could miss it. The date is still listed as tentative, but in my head, I know it’s not a deadline I need to miss. I don’t want to miss it. The fact is, though, that it’s really getting beyond my current capabilities to reach unless I have some kind of breakthrough in my writing.

So here I go trying to force that breakthrough.

I’ve found a schedule I don’t remember having tried before, and I’m going to try it today.

It pushes my pace a little bit, but nothing out of reach (~667 wph needed to stay on track). Where I’ll have the most trouble is just focusing on start and end times for my sessions and actually doing them when I’m supposed to do them. Five minutes late getting started is no big deal, but my history shows that I tend to get behind early, start every session late, until it’s snowballed and I’ve eliminated massive swaths of writing time just by letting five minutes here and there become twenty.

Here’s the plan.

1.5 hour writing sessions where the goal is 1,000 words each session. (Yes, I’ve tried this part before.)
.5 hour breaks between sessions (This is where it’s different. The writing sessions are all evenly spaced all day long.)

Here’s where I’ll update results.

12:00–1:30 – 1,296 words – Woo hoo! Things are off to a good start.
2:00–3:30 – 977 words – Only 1.23 hours, because I’ve fallen pretty far behind. I’ll have to skip the next session to get back on track. I’m hoping I can get ahead with some better word counts for the next couple of sessions. I had just enough time before 6 to finish it off before I started that one. :)
4:00–5:30 – Skipped to catch up
6:00–7:30 – 840 words – I’ve fallen behind again. It’s 8:17 and I have half an hour on this one to go. I’m going to keep going with it at this point.
8:00–9:30 – Skipped, because I was still working on the previous session.
10:00–11:30 – Skipped because I’m exhausted and I’m going to bed early so I can start off strong tomorrow.

If I get behind, I’ll cut a session or break short and move on to the next session.

If this goes well, I’m going to try it again tomorrow, starting earlier and taking a full hour between sessions (if I want—it certainly won’t be mandatory). The only reason I’m not doing that today is that I’m starting so much later than I planned when I came up with this idea last night.

Now, gotta go. I’m already 15 minutes behind. Yeah, I know. Not kidding. :o

**This might seem like it hasn’t gone well, but considering how badly I fail at this and how often, I’m actually really pleased with what I accomplished using this schedule. I’m definitely going to try the slightly modified version tomorrow, with the hour between sessions and see how that goes. I don’t yet know if the longer breaks will help or hinder my ability to stay on track.

Can I write 6,000 words today?

Lynn

No? Yes? Maybe?

The plan: three blocks of writing time that last three hours each, during which I need to write 2,000 words so I end up with 6,000 words total for the day.

8:30 to 11:30 – 1,162 words

12:30 to 2 – Make up time.

2 to 5 – Was 1 to 4 until I added make up time.

7 to 10 –

Panic! Panic! Panic!

Lynn

Yeah, I’m still having trouble getting moving on this book. I’ve done edits today instead, so my chapters are all edited through chapter 15. (I generally edit as I go, but these are what I’d call copy edits, and some very limited line edits.)

I even timed them just like I did on my last book. It made a huge difference in how focused I was able to stay. I mean HUGE. I’ll be doing this from now on. Every time. It made that much of a difference.

Chapter Read Time Edit Time
1 3
2 14
3 10
4 17
5 13
6 14 10
7 18
8 11
9 12
10 14
11 12
12 15 16
13
14
15

12.75 = Average minutes per chapter reading time

26 = Number of minutes it took me to actually make the edits*

*I highlight stuff that needs fixed or changed on the file by sending the Word docx to my Kindle email address where I read it on my Kindle. Much easier to “see” the story (and mistakes) that way and not get lost in the writing phase again and start rewriting stuff that’s just fine the way it is.

Chapters 13–15 aren’t on the chart because I did those the night before last and don’t consider what I did the final edit.

Chapters 1–12 are done, completely, unless the next 20,000 words I write requires me to go back and change something—which I’ll avoid unless it becomes unavoidable. ;)

I’ve been done with the editing for a while now, but I still can’t seem to get started on the writing. The stuff I read was so good that now I’m afraid I can’t follow up—ugh! I know how that sounds, but I really liked what I read, and if I don’t like it, how can I expect anyone else to like it? :P

I need to start writing RIGHT NOW, or I face missing my personal deadline. In fact, that ship might have already sailed, but I’m not quite ready to admit defeat.

Somehow I need write 6,582 words in the next 3 hours. :o

Knowing my average pace—and even my above average best pace ever pace, there ain’t no way that’s happening, so I just need get as many words as I possibly can before I have to call it a night 3 hours from now.

So… see ya! I have important things to do.

Word count post for Oct. 3, 2016

Lynn

1,470 words.

Not as many words as I hoped. (See below.)

Daily average since 9/19: 522 words.

At least it’s still rising, right?

===Notes===

One thing I’ve decided today is that I have to get serious about starting on time in the mornings.

Starting late seems to have a major effect on how well I’m able to stick to the schedule the rest of the day. It also sets me up for a slow start and a low word count.

That’s not what I want.

Today was an excellent example of what starting late does to my day.

What I was aiming for

625 by 8 am
1250 by 9 am
1875 by 10 am
2500 by 11 am
3125 by 1 pm
3750 by 2 pm
4375 by 3 pm
5000 by 4 pm

What actually happened

Session Time in Hours Session Words WPH
0.8333 496 595
0.8333 391 469
0.8333 409 491
0.45 174 387

There’s really only one way to solve this, and that’s to get to bed on time, then get to writing before I let any distractions get in the way.

Of course, my word counts weren’t up to speed either, but that’s likely something I’ll have to address after I get settled into a better routine.

Writing update post for Sept. 30, 2016

Lynn

Yesterday was a total failure in terms of words written. The more elaborate the plans, the more likely I’ll spend all my time on the plans and not on the doing of the plans.

Today’s plan was simple. I set aside some time for writing only (using my calendar and schedule) and I wrote during that time. Finally, a day of (mostly) success!

The last several months constitute the worst string of months for my word counts that I’ve had since I started this gig in 2012. I felt a strong need to end today feeling like I’m finally getting back on track.

9:30 to 2:30

The goal was 200 words x 3 sessions of 15 minutes each hour x 5 hours = 3,000 words.

I wrote 1,766 words. I came up short 7 sessions. Not sure how I got so far off track, but I did have a lot of coffee and tea this morning and had to take very frequent breaks.

2:30 to 4:30

I wanted to get started proofing this book, so I planned to proof 4 chapters. I proofed half a chapter, short of my goal by 3.5 chapters. I was just not feeling it when I was reading this book this afternoon.

5:00 to 8:00

Became 5:30 to 8:30. Then 6:45 to 9:45. Then 7:30 to 10:30. Unfortunately, I had a really hard time getting started with this one. My bad night’s sleep last night caught up to me.

The goal was 200 words x 3 sessions of 15 minutes each hour x 3 hours = 1,800 words.

I didn’t do any writing at all during this time (except for this post) and finally just decided to spend the time with family instead.

 

Writing in progress post for Sept. 28, 2016

Lynn

So, what to call this kind of post? I’ve decided on “writing in progress post” because it seems to fit.

Yes, I really do hope my stories come across as more creative than my blog titles. ;)

I’ve done plenty of these kinds of posts before, but I want them to be easier to pick out when I’m skimming the list so they’re getting their own special name, just like the word count posts I’ve started posting.

Now, on to today’s writing.

The plan and my session updates

3 × 15 minute sessions per hour, with a goal of 250 words a session

HOWEVER, if I haven’t reached 750 by the end of the hour, I’m going to consider that hour not finished. An hour must reach 750 words before I can move on to the next hour. I’m hoping this will only actually take 8 hours of writing, but… wishes and horses, you know? ;)

Spreadsheet tracking my sessions

Updating at the end of each hour… or so. :D

End of hour goal
1 750 38 218 433 530 719 774
2 1500 835 915 1101
3 2250
4 3000
5 3750
6 4500
7 5250
8 6000

It’s very, very obvious that I’m not up to speed. I’m not actually at new words yet because I started with the chapter I left off at when my progress stalled. It’s okay. I’ll be past it soon and on to all new stuff. I just have to figure out what the heck is supposed to happen next (which is possibly part of the reason I’ve been avoiding this book)!

Halfway through hour 2, I had to change how this table was set up. It wasn’t working at all easily with my word count spreadsheet.

Something that’s really bothering me today (and it could just be a today issue) is that the 15 minutes isn’t giving me enough time to get into the zone. I’m taking advantage of too many breaks, and they’re taking too much time away from the writing. I should have finished significantly more sessions by now than I have. Possibly time to reevaluate.

Alrighty. I did some reevaluating. For the moment, the 15 minute sessions just aren’t working. I don’t know why, exactly, but I have thoughts on it. So, for the moment, and maybe for more than the moment, I’m going to switch the 3 15 minute sessions an hour to a 45 minute session. That’s the only adjustment I’m making right now. Since the whole point is the scheduled writing time, my session lengths are the least important part of the plan and I’m not the least bit put off that I’ve already needed to make changes to that. It’s all about the trade off between how long I need to get into the zone and how long I can stay focused and keep my writing pace high enough to get me better word counts. :)

It’s unfortunate that I couldn’t seem to stay on schedule today enough to get in all the hours I wanted. All I can assume (because I wasn’t tracking it precisely) is that the breaks were just significantly longer than they needed to be and that it added up to a huge chunk of wasted time. Not feeling well for the last couple of days has also made me drag a bit, so I understand some of that. Anyway, on to tomorrow. I have high hopes I’m picking up some momentum. Now all I need to do is get a better night’s sleep.

Day 2 of the new schedule

Lynn
Scheduled 9:00-10:30 1:00-2:30 7:30-9:00 Words
Day 1 10:15-11:57 4:29-5:22 .75 hrs  771
Day 2 none  none  none  0

All sessions are 1.5 hours of writing time regardless of length unless I say otherwise.

Day 2

As you can see, I’ve written nothing today. I wasn’t sick, despite being sick yesterday. I just didn’t get started. Instead, I spent lots of time with my daughter and the stray puppy my daughter recently adopted. My daughter left this evening for a week, and the puppy isn’t feeling great after having been spayed yesterday, and I guess I’ll just have to try extra hard to make tomorrow a really good writing day.

Puppy is cute though, huh?

Puppy

Turns out she’s about 6 months old. She’s a very sweet puppy. I wish I liked animals more, but I really don’t. Luckily, my daughter does, so the puppy has someone to play with her.

The puppy makes me pet her every time I go to the door, and she licks my toes. It’s yucky, but I put up with it because I can’t stand the thought of being mean to her. :o

The vet says she’s a mix of a mix, possibly with some Labrador and German Shepherd in her. Whatever she is, she listens better than most, and she’s one of the friendliest dogs I’ve known.

When she arrived, she was clean and well-behaved and looked like she’d been eating well. I also had one of the weirdest incidents I’ve ever had here a night or two after she showed up, and it has me convinced that the puppy showing up on my doorstep wasn’t by chance.

Someone dumped that poor little dog in my yard on purpose.

At about 8:30 the night after she arrived, the neighbor across the street called to let me know someone had stopped in my driveway and then left quickly. Thinking it was strange, and that maybe they’d been messing with my mailbox, I took a flashlight and walked down the drive.

There, right in the middle of my driveway, someone had left an aluminum pie plate piled high with dog food and another full of water.

Someone obviously wanted to make sure the puppy thought my home was her new home.

Like I said, weird. Who the hell stops in someone else’s driveway and leaves food and water for a dog?

Also, what an asshole thing to do. I really didn’t need or want a pet, but I couldn’t very well let the puppy starve. I tried to find her a home, but I couldn’t find anyone interested, and by then, my daughter had really taken to her.

So now we have another dog. Blackie’s getting old so he wasn’t that thrilled to find himself sharing attention, but he’s adapting. I’m not sure I am. I don’t want to care about another dog, but it’s hard to stay hard hearted when they look at you like they do.

June 28 writing

Lynn

I’m going to log my writing today.

I finally got a really good night of sleep, but that means I’m starting one hour and a half later than I’d planned. Here’s the revised plan.

8:30–10:30 Write
11:30–1:30 Write
2:30–4:30 1:30–3:30 Write
4:30–6:30 Work on paperbacks Write
7:30–9:30 8:30–9:30 Work on paperbacks Write

(Edited as changes became necessary, but I’m leaving original entries so I can see what worked and what didn’t.)

I decided on two hour blocks with one hour between, because… I’m not really sure. It felt right: enough time to really get into what I’m doing and a nice long break between. If I can make the two hour blocks work, I’m going to carry this forward.

(Not such long hours though—ten isn’t too many for today, when I need to get so much done, but I certainly don’t think this is good for me long-term. I’ll stick to the four hours a day and 3,233 words I want long-term, but I’ll try to do it 7–9 & 10–12. That’ll leave me two two-hour blocks for publishing stuff every day so I can really dig into my cover design studies and do lots of other stuff that’s been backing up on me. Honestly, I’ve been squandering time for too long.* It’s time I used what time I have for the things that are important to me.)

We’ll see. Today is definitely more experiment than anything else.

Results (as I go)

Hours Words Session WPH
Story 1 1.08333 199 199 184
Story 2 0.91667 606 407 444

I’m numbering the stories in the order I work on them so my work pattern is clear to me later.

At this point, I’m completely off the scheduled times. I’m not sure how I’m going to adjust, but I’m going to figure something out. Likely I’ll lose the last paperback work session. (I figured it out and edited the plan above.)

Well here it is many, many hours later and I’m just not getting ready to write for another hour. Can I explain why I didn’t work during the other times I planned to work today? No.

I really don’t have an explanation and all I can say is that I feel like I’m trapped inside myself, unable to get free. Like my head needs to be opened up and I need to take my brain out, shake it around, wipe it off, and then put it back. It just doesn’t feel right. There’s a tiny voice in there telling me I should probably be on some kind of medication, but I don’t listen to imaginary voices, any more than I listen to the voice of reason. :D

 

*I’m not much of a sports fan, but I read the news today about Pat Summit’s death. I’ve always respected her drive, and her abilities. It made me feel… regretful, you could say, that I’ve not valued my time more. Maybe the feeling won’t last, but I want to take advantage of that feeling while I can. RIP Pat Summit.

June 24 session log

Lynn

At 11:30 am:

Hours Words Session WPH
0.7 374 374 534.286
0.9 725 351 390

I didn’t plan for a late start, but that’s what happened. Then I had several interruptions that interfered with me finishing sessions on time. Finally, I stopped for a bit of reading and lunch and I’m going to finish the 4 hours just as soon as I finish reading this book and possibly take a quick nap (thunderstorms last night and a barking dog meant I had a rough night of sleep). I have less than 20 pages of the book left, and I know I’ll concentrate better having it finished. It’s at the big finale.

All right. It’s 2:31 pm and I’m back. My hands are out of practice with the typing! Which matters, because I need approximately 1,045 words an hour for the next 2.4 hours to reach my goal in the total 4 hours I planned for today. :o

I’d better get to it.

June 18 session log

Lynn

What is this? It’s my new session log! :) I’ve decided I don’t like challenges. Well, the word “challenge,” anyway. For some reason, every time I say I’m challenging myself, I immediately start resisting getting started on said challenge. It’s a thing, a very real thing.

And tomorrow I’m going to have to actually use my session log to record something besides: 0.

Editing and proofreading continues

Lynn

I need to be accountable for today’s editing and proofreading work, and that’s a fact. Yesterday, I did not come close to finishing and I really needed to. So today is it. I must work, stay focused, and get this done, even if it takes all day.

Consider it a challenge: I must finish my edits and proofreading for this book today.

I’m starting at location 641 of 4185 total locations this morning, meaning I have 85% of the book left to edit and proof.

I’m going to follow a pattern today, to see if it helps me get into a groove and maybe eliminate the overwhelm that usually comes at the end when I realize I have 32 Kindle screens worth of highlights in the “Notes” section to deal with. The plan is to have nothing left there when I’m done but the bigger issues I need to double check or fix.

The plan:

  1. Read in 1/2 hour one hour sessions
  2. Make corrections/edit
  3. Break for five to ten minutes
  4. Do it again.

Record of time and locations (percent complete):

  • 8:49 am:
    • At location 641 (15%)
  • 9:43 am:
    • At location 856 (21%)
      • And I’ve already discovered that 30 minutes is just too short. I’m going to do an hour of reading for the rest of the sessions.
    • Finished edits for this session at 10:18 am
  • 2:28 pm:
    • At location 1412 (34%)
      • Finished the last reading session around 11:30 am, but then lost 2.5 hours to lunch and several interruptions, and lost another half hour to Kboards.* I also feel like I need a nap, but I really don’t have time for one.
  • 5:02 pm or somewhere thereabouts:
    • At location 1997 (48%)

It’s 9:06 pm and bedtime and I’m not going to finish. I’ll have to do this all over again tomorrow. And the high tomorrow is forecast to be 88°F, with an air quality alert for ozone, and I still have no A/C. :o I’m really starting to wonder if the part they need to fix my unit is ever going to arrive. It’s been 4 weeks now.

*I’m going to have to start staying away from forums and blogs and other writer communities unless I have real downtime (not downtime between writing sessions, etc., but actual downtime, when I’ve already finished everything I need to do for the day and just want to do something to pass the time.

Playing to win today

Lynn

After two more days of pathetically small word counts, I’m planning to make today a winner. I had a great night of sleep and I woke up determined to do better today than I’ve done the last 4 days. My pace has been so bad that I only made it to 477 words in 1.32 hours of writing yesterday. And no, that wasn’t because of deletions; it was because I was second-guessing every word I put down.

Here’s to making today a better day.

Goal: 3,933 words in 5 hours or less.

Second goal: 5 hours or more of writing.

I’m going to make both of those happen by doing the following.

  1. Stop trying to force myself to put all my effort and thought into the one story I most want to finish right now. It’s dragging down my interest in writing and killing my word counts!
  2. Let the stories carry me along without second-guessing them.
  3. Run my kids out of the house if they can’t respect my writing time and leave me alone for 5 hours of writing today. (Sixteen and eighteen year old kids shouldn’t need to interrupt mommy every ten minutes to complain about each other. If they do it again today, I’m putting them to work in the basement or outside in the heat. A little hard work might be good for them both.)

I’ll check in later and post an update below.

Hours Words Session WPH
1 997 997 997

Getting in the hours today has been much harder than I’d hoped! The house hasn’t been too hot to work in, but the distractions have been just as bad as ever. I’ve managed to get up some speed, but only because I followed through on #1.

Total: 1,673 words in 2.18 hours

Hmm. I need a new plan. :o

Follow up to the summer routine post

Lynn

I said yesterday that I’m trying to start a summer routine, but nope, it really didn’t work. I ended up writing in scattered sessions throughout the day, and just one day of feeling like I was supposed to write on schedule was enough to make me rethink the idea of an artificially constructed routine.

I did manage 4.5 hours of writing, but did none of the other stuff I’d hoped to also do yesterday. And honestly, 4.5 is not 5. My goal is 5 hours and 3,933 words minimum. So I’m happy I did what I did, but I’m sad that I keep falling short of what I want.

Hours Words Session WPH
1 650 650 650
1 1454 804 804
1 1777 323 323
0.5 2293 516 1032
1 2840 547 547

I’m really tired of disappointing myself time and again, but I don’t think a schedule is going to get me into a routine (and that plan yesterday really was mostly a schedule).

The problem is that if I don’t find a way to get into a nice routine, I’m going to end up never doing anything but writing—even though I won’t actually be writing that much, because I never do!

In other words, when I put too much focus on meeting a writing goal, I hesitate to do anything other than writing, afraid I’ll set off my obsessive tendencies and not meet my writing goals at all because I’m too busy being obsessed with something else. So although yesterday would have been a good day to finalize the cover for the pen name book, I didn’t, because I was afraid I would become obsessed with that and spend all day doing cover tweaks instead of writing. Because, to be honest, I’ve done it enough times to know that’s exactly what’s likely to happen.

I really need to figure out how to split all this up into a work day that makes good use of my time and doesn’t make me feel like I’m wearing a straitjacket.

Excuses: too hot, too tired, and too little focus

Lynn
Hours Words Session WPH
1 1071 1071 1071
1 1728 657 657

1,728 words total in 2 hours of writing. If only I’d put in more hours! At today’s pace, I would have made my word count goal easy.

Here are the reasons why I didn’t reach my five hours of writing goal. Or, let’s just call them excuses.

First, it reached 82 degrees Fahrenheit in here today and stayed there for most of the day. It’s still 80 as I type this at 9:20 pm. I’m wilting in the heat. I can only boggle at how people without A/C make it through the summer around here. I couldn’t do it—not without feeling like I’m suffering great distress. The laptop gets too hot to get comfortable with, and my wrists get sweaty against the frame around the keyboard. Sure doesn’t make writing fun or interesting.

Second, I didn’t get enough sleep last night, because, of course, I started reading a book at bedtime. I knew better and I did it anyway. I was ready to kick myself today for that mistake, but alas, it was too late to do any good.

Because of #2, and possibly #1, I had no ability or interest in staying focused today when the normal interruptions that come from having kids at home interrupted me. I gave in and didn’t write almost every time I sat down to try. I spent most of the day procrastinating.

So instead of a really good day of 5 or even 6 hours of writing, I got 2.

Still, I wrote something, and that’s always a win. Hell, I almost made it to 2,000 words, and there was a time when I would’ve considered today’s word count a good day’s work.

I LOVE this new faster pace I seem to have settled into. I haven’t changed my writing at all, so I still don’t know how or why I’ve gotten faster. My only guess is that it’s because I’m doing my best to put my writing time to use writing what I’m most interested in writing at any given time. (Although that’s not strictly true for today’s writing, because I really should have let myself write a bit of something else for a while—that might have been enough to get me past some of today’s procrastination.)

Tonight I really do have to get a good night’s sleep. I know I’ll do better with my goals tomorrow if I do, even in the heat.