Less time, more words_v2

Today’s plan is 8 hours of writing. 4 are my normal daily 4 hours. The other 4 are extra that I’d like to do to make up for some of the time I didn’t write this past week and because I’m just getting so close to finishing this book, I’d like to get on with it! Also, I’m dying without my tv. (I can’t crack on that rule and I won’t; it’s a practice in self-discipline. I said I wouldn’t watch tv until the book was done and I meant it.)

Sessions Log:
Hour 1: 443
Hour 2
Hour 3
Hour 4
Hour 5
Hour 6 (extra) (Seriously unlikely to happen at this point)
Hour 7 (extra)
Hour 8 (extra)

I want a minimum of 4,526 in 5 hours today.

If I write for 8, I could hit 6,464 words. That would be might highest one-day word count on one of my books in a day. It’s probably not going to happen but there’s absolutely no reason I can’t try. :D

Both goals will require writing more and writing faster.

Now, time to get to it. :) Will update as I have progress to report.

Update: final numbers were 788 words, 1.46 hours.

First 3,000+ words day in a while; schedule tracking

I thought I’d track my schedule today, to see just how far from my planned schedule I end up, but it really didn’t work out. I forgot to record more half the data. :o

Block #1

  • Scheduled: 7:30–8:55 (40m, 40m)
  • Actual: 8:30–10:07 (40m, 40m)

Block #2

  • Scheduled: 10:30–11:55 (40m, 40m)
  • Actual: 12:07–

Block #3

  • Scheduled: 1:30–2:55 (40m, 40m)
  • Actual:

Still NO TV until I’ve finished my book. That’s been really hard on me, by the way. I miss TV something fierce. I have, however, read more fiction since the ban started. I’m really hoping to end this book this weekend so I can binge watch the latest season of Grimm. I’m hearing some good things about it, and since I put off watching because I was afraid it was going to be terrible, but I really do love the show, I’m really looking forward to this binge as a reward for finishing this book. If I don’t finish by at least midday Sunday, there’s no way I’ll have time to binge watch anything. I have another book to start right away that I can’t put off!

Today’s session log

Minutes Words Session WPH
40 502 502 753
40 1,207 705 1,058
2 1,248 41 1,230
40 1,871 623 935
40 2,368 497 746
40 2,868 500 750
11 3,051 183 998
213 Total minutes
3,051 Total words
859 Total WPH

Yay! for being over 3k today. It was my first since February.

Boo for not sticking it out and getting my full 4 hours. (Came in at 3.55 hours.)

I came up 27 minutes short. Those minutes would certainly have been enough to put me over my goal of 3,233 words, but it’s bedtime and I put it off too long. I shouldn’t even be writing this post. So… goodnight! I need my sleep after that 2 hour night the night before last!

Getting started when I have other things to do today

Today, I have a lunch date to keep. I find that when I have things to do, I usually have a lot more trouble focusing. I’m also getting started late, because I spent two hours on a thing that I was sure would take me no more than half an hour to do.

Also, I’ve had a bit of a change in thinking. I think because of the why of the how I write, it might be smart to stop focusing on my words per hour completely. The reason is that I have to do a lot of organizing of my thoughts as I write, because of how disorganized they often are—it’s not often that stuff comes out in the order it needs to be in or that even makes sense, and pushing against that limit could be entirely futile because it’s how I think. It’s something I really haven’t thought too much about, but there’s probably an upper limit to my writing speed (WPH) because of that.

Trying to change how I think—not my thoughts, but actually how I think—might be a huge waste of time. And even if I could change that—and who knows how possible that is?—why try to shore up weaknesses when I can focus on my strengths? I have a decent amount of willpower when I can see the sense in using it. A more effective plan to reach my goals might be to put 100% of my focus and effort on time.

(NOPE. NOPE. NOPE. Can’t do this right now. I really have to stick with my current plan. If I try to change things up right now, I’ll never get to 22,630 words each week. I have to have something to strive for besides just forcing myself to reach a certain number of hours of writing each day.)

It’s funny how I end up in places I’ve already visited, but maybe knowing why I keep ending up there will help me make it stick this time. :)

The fact is, every day is a new day. I can change my mind if it turns out I’ve made a mistake. (YES. I can. And I just changed it.)

I’m still not convinced a schedule should be anything more than a suggestion, but I am thinking a daily time quota should be.

Anyway, it’s 10:20 now and I’m NOT going to let myself keep screwing up today’s start. I have a lot to do, and waiting until tonight to write my first words of the day is not the right plan—it never is, tbh.

So, let’s see how much writing I can get done before I have to stop this morning. Onward!

 

Looking forward: plans for 2016

I posted about my new plans for the year in another post and then decided I should highlight them in a post of their own.

Last night I sat down and reevaluated. I decided I absolutely didn’t want to give up on my big plans for the year, despite the month and a half I’ve fallen behind.

I want to challenge myself to do something amazing this year. So here’s what I ended up with.

I set aside the following time for writing, daily, including weekends: 8–11 am & 2–3 pm. It adds up to 28 hours a week.

I figured it based on some ridiculously grand plans I have for the year. But those plans aren’t so ridiculous at all, if I actually put in the damn writing time. The only reason they’re “ridiculously grand” is because I still haven’t shown that I can write more than 268,191 in a year. In fact, my average for 3.5 years is 252,190 because I appear to be quite regular on an annual basis with my irregular output!

But I want 2016 to be the year that changes. Therefore, the plans…

Novels: 6 x 60,000
Novels: 12 x 50,000
Short stories: 12 x 10,000
Novellas: 4 x 25,000

1,180,000 words / 12 months = 98,333 words / 4 hours a day = 3,233 @ 808 wph

Yes, that’s a higher WPH than my average. But there’s a benefit to squeezing the amount of work you need to do into a shorter amount of time. It’s been proven time and again that if most people have time to waste, they’ll waste it. I want to stop wasting so much time so I can write more.

Because there are two variables to the writing more equation: time and speed.

Spend more time and do it faster. Combine the two and you have two multipliers instead of one.

Yes, these are big plans. But I can do it if I get out of my own way.

This is a challenge and I’m going to give it a name—as soon as I think of one! :D

If you don’t look, it’s not real, right?

You know how you avoid looking at your schedule and the clock because you know if you do, you’ll find out it’s way past time for you to start writing on the new schedule you made for yourself last night and how you get this feeling that as long as you don’t look, you haven’t screwed up yet?

That’s me, this morning.

I just looked at the clock and my calendar and I am now having to admit that I’m two and a half hours late getting started.

:'(

FYI, it’s a nice schedule too.

I set aside the following time for writing, daily, including weekends: 8–11 am & 2–3 pm. It adds up to 28 hours a week.

I figured it based on some ridiculously grand plans I have for the year. But those plans aren’t so ridiculous at all, if I actually put in the damn writing time. The only reason they’re “ridiculously grand” is because I still haven’t shown that I can write more than 268,191 in a year. In fact, my average for 3.5 years is 252,190 because I appear to be quite regular on an annual basis with my irregular output!

But I want 2016 to be the year that changes. Therefore, the plans…

Novels: 6 x 60,000
Novels: 12 x 50,000
Short stories: 12 x 10,000
Novellas: 4 x 25,000

1,180,000 words / 12 months = 98,333 words / 4 hours a day = 3,233 @ 808 wph

Yes, that’s a higher WPH than my average. But there’s a benefit to squeezing the amount of work you need to do into a shorter amount of time. It’s been proven time and again that if most people have time to waste, they’ll waste it. I want to stop wasting so much time so I can write more.

Because there are two variables to the writing more equation: time and speed.

Spend more time and do it faster. Combine the two and you have two multipliers instead of one.

But anyway, today was to be day one of getting back to it, and I’ve already screwed up. Cue the silent screaming while I remind myself that I don’t have to give up on today just because the schedule is a bust.

Increasing my daily word count average

It’s time I started to focus on increasing my daily word count average. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, something I’ve been writing about here, off and on, for more than a year. (That link goes to all the posts I tagged with the relevant tag. They started back in April 2014.)

Two things I’ll need to do to increase my daily word count average—

  1. increase my writing speed
  2. improve my ability to write for longer periods of time without tiring out or succumbing to boredom or distraction

Despite the popular notion that all it takes to write faster is to spend more time writing, those are two distinctly different things as far as I’m concerned. There’s writing more and there’s writing faster. Writing faster means increasing my speed, and my writing speed is how many words I write during a specific unit of time. Increasing the amount of time I spend writing doesn’t change my speed.

I’ve realized over the last few months that even though I say I’ve given up on the idea of writing faster in favor of writing more, that’s not exactly true. I do want to write faster, because there are just so many stories I want to write, and I want to have written them already! It’s unfortunate that I can’t go back in time and make that happen. ;) The next best thing is to get them written as fast as I can.

As for improving my ability to write for longer periods of time without tiring out or succumbing to boredom or distraction, I’m still working on it. Right now, with the success I’m having with the schedule, I’m definitely writing more on the days when I stick to it. So to accomplish item #2 on the list, I’ll just keep pushing myself to stick as close to my schedule as possible. Six hours of writing each day is enough. Anything over five hours of actual writing is going to make me happy.

That leaves me with trying to figure out how I can increase my writing speed. For the next few weeks at least, I’m going to be recording my efforts to do just that.

A Writing Technique For the Distractible Writer

Write in super short sessions. Not short as in one hour, or thirty minutes, but really, really short. So short that there’s almost no chance your mind will wander, and every time your timer goes off, you’ve just been reminded of what you’re supposed to be doing.

Here’s why I’m giving this advice.

Three days ago, I started writing in 5 minute sessions.

I’ve written at a faster pace in the last three days than I’ve done since I started keeping track of that kind of thing in January 2013.

These 5 minute sessions have gotten me to 1,581 today on one story. I wrote almost all those words in eleven 5 minute sprints, although I did have one 15 minute session where I was just writing some stuff that I needed to get down before I stopped on that story—I had made it to 1,200 but wasn’t quite ready to stop. That’s 1,355 words an hour. My usual pace is 300–500 words an hour.

Last year, I spent a lot of time trying to reach 1,000 words an hour consistently. That didn’t work out. In case you’re thinking I’m losing time to the breaks between the sessions, I tracked the time and found that over 5 sessions, I spent 3 minutes in breaks, total.

This has made me really think about how easily distracted I am and how that’s been affecting my writing. I mean, I know it’s been affecting my writing, but I haven’t really had any way to see just how short a period I’m able to stay focused at a high level when I’m writing until this experiment started.

I don’t want to over think this, but I’m definitely having thoughts about it, and I’ll be keeping it up for as long as it works.

I haven’t yet reached 200 words in 5 minutes, but that’s what I’m aiming for.

For those not in the know, I write what I consider finished words. I don’t do rough drafting with the intent to fix stuff later. I make sure things are right before I move on from one sentence and paragraph to another. If I fix stuff later, it’s because there are mistakes that need fixed.

What that means is that I don’t allow spelling mistakes, typos, or other stuff to slide as I write. So 200 is a GREAT goal for me. And I’m just going to keep trying until I reach it. :D Someday I will.

Ready for a Breakthrough

Earlier today, I wrote 126 words in 5 minutes. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but that’s on pace for 1500+ words per hour and that’s exceedingly good for me. EXCEEDINGLY. My average pace is more like 300 to 500 words an hour. In fact, I’ve never written 1500+ words in an hour before. Although it’s possible I’ve written 126 words in 5 minutes before, I certainly haven’t done it while timing myself.

What led me to this today was some journaling I was doing in Evernote where I revisited the typing speed versus writing speed debate I have with myself on a fairly regular basis. Don’t bother hacking into my Evernote account, because all you’ll find is a lot of rambling notes I’ve written myself and what amounts to a diary’s worth of angst over my writing woes. Seriously.

Selected excerpts from my notes to myself today:

Typing speed versus writing speed

I know I type faster than 50 wpm most of the time. I could even time myself to see what it comes to, as I write random stuff from my brain. I voice all these words, by the way, as I type them. I wonder how much that slows me down as I write?

Anyway, off to test my typing speed. I’m going to set a timer for 3 minutes and just type and then do the math.

I got 188 words in 3 minutes. That is a speed of 63 wpm. Not that great to be honest. I thought it would be more. I definitely need to start practicing my typing with some typing exercises.

So, my top speed possible in a hour would be about 3,760 words. If I did 50% of that, that’s 1,880 words. This might be “hard” but it is totally doable. Completely and totally doable, and I need to remember that. And 1,880 is 470 words in 15 minutes.

So why can’t I? There’s no reason. I can do it. I absolutely can do it.

While I’m waiting on my coffee to brew I’m going to try this again, slower, and see where I end up.

Okay, 122 words in 3 minutes this time. Much slower, and I deleted some stuff as I was writing just to get that in there. That felt more like real writing and yet it was still 2,440 wph. To turn that into my average speed, I can only be writing at 23% of my slow speed. That’s 15% of my top speed. Which makes no sense. I have to be letting my mind wander a ridiculous amount while I’m composing for that to be possible.

I think I can hit 2,440 words per hour. Probably not all the time, but I can definitely hit it some of the time.

Here’s the thing. I think I’m chasing the wrong ideal here. I don’t think putting all my effort into trying to make myself want to write for the sake of writing is the answer.

I enjoy competition, and competing with myself is just as good as competing with other people, possibly better, because I’m not comparing myself to anyone but myself.

Okay, I’m going to do some writing. What is my goal?

I’ve deleted lots, so really I should just write. I am going for 200 words in 5 minutes. If I keep typing and stop letting my mind wander, I should be able to do that. If I managed to type at top speed I could type over 300 words in 5 minutes. That would be AWESOME.

I’m going to give it a shot.

I wonder what I might gain from forcing myself to write really really fast and not worry about it being nonsensical. Would I get better at it as time went on? So that I could in a sense train myself to write super-fast and it make sense? This is something to think about.

I just wrote 126 words in 5 minutes. That’s the equivalent of 317 in 15 minutes. That is GOOD! If I kept that up for an hour, that would be 1512 wph.

Yeah. It was kind of boring. But it was also very interesting to me, because it wasn’t hard—although I admit it was hard to keep my focus on exactly what I was writing for even 5 minutes, but I did it.

I think it’s time to start working on a breakthrough in my writing speed.