Tag: Writing fiction

I write fiction—it’s how I earn my living—and I like to ramble. Just so you know. Nearly everything I do these days relates in some way to writing and publishing, so most of my posts are here.

I’ve made a mistake I don’t plan to make again

Lynn

Yesterday morning, I read a good chunk of my current book. I was pretty damn pleased with it. But there were a few things I needed to fix. Only I decided not to highlight those things because I knew I was going to have to get back to the read through on the computer and what was the point?

The point was that if I’d just highlighted those little bits I could have sped through this second read. I forgot just how much time it takes me to thoroughly read 40,000 words. So today has not been the kind of writing day I really wanted it to be.

It’s a mistake I don’t plan to make again.

Note to self: Next time, just highlight the damn mistakes!

Making progress

Lynn

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

Trying to read a couple of craft books

Lynn

I’ve been stalled out reading a couple of craft books lately, but I’m going to make more of an effort to get through them as soon as I finish this particular book I’m working on.

A while back, I picked up the Kindle version of this one: 27 Fiction Writing Blunders – And How Not To Make Them! by James Scott Bell. I started it but got distracted, and I keep meaning to go back to it, but I just haven’t. I liked what I read, I just need to read the rest of it.

I got the paperback edition of this one as a gift: The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller by John Truby. I started it, skipped to the end because I do that sometimes and read several chapters out of order. Now I just need to start at the beginning and make it there.

This is my note to myself to remember to get back to these. Frankly, it might be time. It’s been a while since I’ve read anything about the craft.

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. ;)

New year, no plan

Lynn

Today begins the new year. On the other hand, my plan hasn’t changed. In case I haven’t done a good enough job of laying out that plan, here it is again.

There is no plan.

Here’s what I wrote in one of the Google+ communities I’m in.

2016 words written: 220,071

Definitely want to see some improvement in 2017, but this is the year of no goals and no timers! I’m ready to fall in love with writing again.

I’m hopeful a little less focus on goals and a little more focus on just writing as much as I can will prove to be a winning combination.

In fact, I just told my daughter I’m making year 2017 the year I quit trying stuff I’ve already tried (goals, schedules, timers, sprints, etc). My word counts have actually gone down, not up, since I started in 2012 and I’m done with beating myself over the head with this stuff.

I think the best shot I have for writing lots and lots of words is making sure I’m having so much fun doing it that I can’t stop myself. :)

Truly, no joke, that is my plan. That’s this year’s big experiment. It came about because of yesterday’s thinking about goals, and how much they haven’t helped me progress as a writer.

Here’s to a happy 2017 and lots of words written. :)

Why 24 minute sessions?

Lynn

I’m writing in 24 minute sessions today (and yesterday) and I thought I’d explain why.

24 minutes = .4 hours.

That’s why. :D .4 hours is very close to my favorite session length of 20 minutes but has a nice and even decimal equivalent in hours, much like 30 minutes at .5 hours.

Really, that’s it. That’s the reason for 24 minutes instead of 20 minutes or 25 minutes.

As for why it’s not just an even 30 minutes… Well. 30 minutes feels so much longer than 24.

It does! I’m not kidding. 30 minutes throws up all kinds of mental blocks for me that 24 minutes doesn’t. So there you go. Who said humans were rational beings? We really aren’t. :)

An experiment for today

Lynn

I wrote a post or two yesterday but decided after posting to delete them because they just didn’t feel like they represented what I was really thinking and feeling even just a few hours later. That happens sometimes, so the best way to deal with it seemed to be DELETE. :D

I’m doing an experiment today, with breaking up my writing into chunks that I’ve scattered throughout my day. I’m really hoping to get 12 sessions of 24 minutes each done by the end of the day. I’ve already completed two.

Hours Words WPH
1 0.4 86 215
2 0.4 213 533

.4 hours = 24 minutes :)

I’ve scattered them out with breaks between pairs, but the breaks aren’t really meant to be breaks as much as opportunities to do other things—distractions, in other words, but useful distractions.

The hope is that by allowing the distractions, and planning for them, I will accomplish a lot more and not feel a bit of guilt about any of it! Let’s just call them structured distractions. :D

And I did put these on my calendar, but it’s not a schedule, it’s a plan. :D

Schedules feel so set, don’t they? As if you miss a start time, you’ve failed. Plans feel flexible. Sure, it’s a bit of a game, but all of life is in our heads, and I’m just playing to the referee.

I have several things to do today that ARE on my schedule, and those can’t change, so I’ve used it to see how many sessions I should do at various points in the day to stay on track. It’s working well so far.

I need to finish 4 before lunch, 4 before dinner, and 4 more before bedtime. If I finish all these today, I’ll end up with 4.8 hours of timed writing.

Anyway, off to write more, because I do want to finish the next two by lunch and stay on track. :)

3 0.4 276 690
4 0.4 299 748

And the numbers continue to improve. :D

Hours Words WPH
1 0.4 86 215
2 0.4 213 533
3 0.4 276 690
4 0.4 299 748
5 0.4 287 718
6 0.233333 207 887

My final numbers. Unfortunately, I had to take a nap. The caffeine withdrawal is getting to me. I had a cup of decaf coffee hoping that would be enough to stave off the headache, but it didn’t work. Just not enough caffeine. I finally ended up drinking about 3/4 a cup of green tea when I was supposed to be finishing session #8 but was in actuality only on session #6 because of the desperately needed nap. Said session was interrupted when I had to leave for a family event.

The event lasted longer than I thought it would and made me more tired than I expected. I came home and did some puttering around online and didn’t even finish session #6 (as you can see in the table above).

Well. Tomorrow is a new day. :) I can only aim to fit in 10 sessions because of more family obligations, but I’m going to try for a full 10 sessions! :D Wish me luck.

Deadline looms; I must make myself write

Lynn

I’ll be frank. I haven’t been writing. I’m not sure what happened, but I started reading books and I just couldn’t quit. I read a lot of books this last week. As of last night, I’m in the middle of reading 3 books. I’m somewhere around chapter 6 in a contemporary romance I started last night, and 66% done with a historical romance I started yesterday morning, and 4% into another I started at lunch yesterday.

I read about the same way I write—all over the place.

Today I decided I wasn’t going to read anymore of anything until I finish my own book, the one with the looming deadline that just keeps getting closer and closer and driving me to avoid it at all costs.

That’s a pretty hefty cost, too, by the way.

So today I must write. Yes, I must. Excuses won’t get me closer to done and they won’t stop the holidays from coming. I can’t write during the holidays, just can’t do it, so while I do still have time to write, and no headache from the caffeine withdrawal I’m facing, I must write.

My challenge for this unscheduled day

11 sessions of 36 minutes each.

No word count goal, although 500 wph minimum would be nice. I have a lot of other things to fit in today too, so I’m going to have to avoid too many distractions.

Get a paperback book formatted at some point today before I go to bed.

I’ll post later with results. :)

I’m not where I wanted to be

Lynn

It’s been four years since I started self-publishing. I published my first story in July 2012 and I’ve never looked back. I quit my job in September of that year, lived on savings, and wrote as much as I could. I had a ridiculous amount of faith that it was going to work out, even when it really didn’t look like it was going to work out.

But it has, and I’m making a living on the money I earn from my fiction.

But now I feel stuck.

It’s been four years and I’m not where I wanted to be at this point, with either income or output. I know what to blame: My inconsistency. I don’t meet my word count goals. I can’t stick to a regular production schedule. I don’t have a regular publishing schedule.

The only thing I’ve done with any consistency is spend weeks and months struggling to keep myself writing when the doldrums hit. My latest zero word day streak ended today after 35 days.

I’ve had 145 zero word days this year. That’s already more than in any other year, and this year has 4 months to go.

I’ve got a problem, and I’m not sure how to fix it.

On the other hand, my output over the last four years is eerily consistent considering how irregular my writing schedule is.

2012: 146,821 (tracks to 291k for the year)
2013: 268,191
2014: 217,641
2015: 250,011
2016: 137,080 (tracks to 205k for the year)

Of course, if I continue to fail to write, this year could be the first year I dip below 200k for the year. I really can’t let that happen. I already feel disconnected from my writing, and I don’t like that feeling. I’m just not sure what’s going on.

I want to change this, to improve my output numbers, but at this point, I’m just not sure what it’s going to take, or if I’m capable of it. As you can imagine, this is a very frustrating time for me. I’m at a low point, and I’m very much feeling like I just don’t have that something special that drives people to exceed their limits and achieve great things.

June 27 writing schedule update

Lynn

As you’ve probably already guessed, the schedule hasn’t helped in any way to get me started writing again. I haven’t even come close to getting started on time a single time since I came up with it, because for some reason beyond me, I’ve gone from going to bed at a reasonable hour to staying up until midnight. Needless to say, I haven’t been getting up at 6 AM and I haven’t been getting started by 7 AM.

I’ve revised the schedule for tomorrow and tried to set up another for today so I don’t end the day having written nothing again. But I have a feeling I have deeper issues to worry over.

Allowing myself to work on multiple books at once without making any kind of commitment to finish any one before another was working great for me.

I screwed that up. I’ve cost myself loads of time that I am CERTAIN I wouldn’t have lost if I’d just stuck to that. I bet I’d be finished with at least one of my almost finished books by now.

Instead I changed my focus, and now I’m in a terrible position of REALLY needing to finish a certain book before the others, making me feel overwhelmed and stressed and setting off a wave of procrastination and avoidance that I knew would happen—but thought, foolishly, that maybe this time it wouldn’t.

I don’t know if I can get out of this without missing my deadline—a deadline I put on myself but that I mentioned in several places in a way that makes it feel like an honest-to-God obligation.

I suspect I’m going to miss it and I suspect there’s nothing I can do about that.

I don’t like failing in situations like these, when I know it’s all my fault—I totally set myself up for failure in this instance.

Okay, deep breath. I’m moving on to another post, one where I set out my plan to get out of this mess I’ve created for myself.

Also, this is not in any way related, but I’ve decided my categories and tags on this site are pretty useless for finding things. Expect changes.

When something isn’t working, it’s time to change something

Lynn

I still believe that writing on multiple stories is the way to a better word count for me. So this isn’t about that. What it’s about is the fact that I just cannot seem to get moving again on ANY of my books. I am stuck.

So if what I’m doing isn’t working—and nothing I’ve tried of late has worked to get me started again—it’s time to try something different.

Something different doesn’t mean something new

I’m going back to a schedule. I know I have a terrible history with schedules, but for the moment, I think it will help. I don’t know how long I’ll need it, but starting tomorrow I’m going to make it very important that I sit down and write EVERY DAY during my scheduled writing time.

I’m dropping back to my 3,233 daily goal (which is 1,180,000 / 365) from my more recent attempt to write 3,933 daily (1,180,000 / 12 / 25). This means I need only 4 hours of timed writing if I can reach an average pace of 808 words per hour—a stretch, but definitely possible with my increased speeds of late.

At this lower daily word count, I will have to write every day to reach my goal, so I’m setting aside the idea that I can’t write on publish days, if only because I blame the days I took off this past month for my current inertia. I need my daily writing to become habitual.

The schedule

The schedule is a morning schedule, because I wake up early whether I want to or not, and trying to mess with that never works out well for me. The fact is, I’ve been getting up early for several months now, and I don’t expect that to change until the sun stops coming up before 6 AM.

  • 7:00 to 8:00
  • 8:10 to 9:10
  • 9:20 to 10:20
  • 10:30 to 11:30

I’m going to make a big deal about upsetting my schedule or changing my routine. Writing daily is important. At 4 hours a day, that’s only 28 hours a week of writing time. There’s just no reason for these hours not to be treated as the critical hours they are. I’m hardly asking too much of myself even after you factor in break times and the time I need for publishing related activities.

And that’s really all I have to say in this post. The plan is not all that different from many other plans I’ve made over the years, but it’s different at this moment from what I’ve been doing. Schedules have worked for me in the past, even if only for a while, and I’ll take that if that’s all I get. I just need something to get me focused on writing again. Wish me luck. :)

I’m accepting no excuses for tomorrow. At 11:30 am tomorrow, I’ll post my first results (accountability) post for this new schedule.

June 21 no sessions

Lynn

Not much to report, other than the fact that I didn’t write today. I meant to. I just didn’t.

In light of that, I’ve decided to plan out tomorrow.

  • 7 to 8
  • 8:15 to 9:15
  • 9:30 to 10:30
  • 10:45 to 11:45
  • 3:30 to 4:30
  • 6 to 7
  • 7:15 to 8:15

I’m interested to see how closely I can adhere to this. I don’t plan to return to scheduled writing—not at all—but tomorrow is a bit special, and I think I could use the focus.

I’m most interested in working on one particular story tomorrow, although I do plan to allow myself to switch to something else if the words just aren’t coming.

So there it is, all laid out. Wish me luck. :)

I am an object at rest

Lynn

Three things

  1. I become an object at rest after I publish a book. (Current streak of 0 words proves it.)
  2. Procrastination is a habit.
  3. I’ve already forgotten the third thing.

If I want to get the law of inertia working in my favor, I need a plan. I’ve let some bad habits slip into my routine over the last several weeks. Time to stop them. I’ve let procrastination become a habit.

My challenge

  • No more visiting forums or blogs for a while—preferably until I’ve completed the four books I most need to finish.
  • No more reading articles about procrastination. :o
  • No more reading the “Trending” tab on my Kindle Fire* or my other Fire tablets. Worst use of my time ever. I don’t know why I have so much trouble resisting a look at it every time I open the browser.

The secret to this plan is to get boredom working in my favor.

If I find myself turning to fiction reading to relieve said boredom, at least then it’s somewhat productive, because any fiction writer should consider fiction reading a necessary part of the job. !

Plus, reading good fiction has a major tendency to make me want to write. So there’s that.

I know that as soon as I get back into one of my stories momentum will take over and save me from myself for at least a little while. :)

*My Kindle Fire is one of the 2nd generation devices. I won it in a drawing at a local restaurant, after eating there for the first time (and last time to be honest). I love it and I still prefer it over the newest generation Fire tablet I bought in December. It’s a much better device, to be honest, all around. Still doesn’t have a scratch on it.

June 19 no sessions

Lynn

I just didn’t do any writing today. I’d hoped I would, but I didn’t, and now I’m tired and I think I’m going to bed early. One of my kids is sick, and I’m a bit worried I might be showing symptoms of what she’s got. Considering how badly I need to finish this book, I’ll be in trouble if I do. :o

But tomorrow? No question. I MUST start making progress on my writing.

It’s obvious, isn’t it?

Lynn

I’ve messed up by pushing myself to write on a specific book instead of letting my interest guide me. But I’m now at a point where I HAVE to finish this book I’ve been working on. Really, I have to finish it. ASAP.

But trying to force myself to work on only one story is killing my word counts and my momentum.

I’m going to have to back off and just write, something, until I’m past the resistance that’s keeping me from getting started again. History tells me that I’ll find my way back to my book and finish it sooner than I would otherwise. It worked for my last book; I bet it’ll work for this one.

All I know for sure is that a streak of zeros certainly isn’t helping me reach my goals. At least if I’d written something, I’d have more books closer to done.

So, today, I’m going to focus my time on whichever book I’m most interested in working on, in one hour sessions.

Goal = 3,933 words

(Why do I even bother with that? My goal is always 3,933 words except on publishing days. I’ve got to come up with a better way to use this blog for a bit of accountability. What I’m doing sure isn’t working.)

Yesterday was a total bust; a challenge for today

Lynn

Update: Nope. Didn’t work. I’m still struggling.

Too many distractions: the repairman didn’t leave until 7 PM. Well, one of them. The other left at 4:15. But I have A/C now! I’m loving it! I feel SO MUCH BETTER today. It’s really amazing.

Anyway, I also feel like I can accomplish anything I want right now and so I’m setting myself the goal of writing as much as I want today. :D

No interruptions expected other than comings and goings of family, and they’re on notice: I’m working on my books today!

A challenge for today

I’d like to finish this book I’ve been working on by Friday. That’s 3 days from now. At a minimum, I need 10,000 more words. I feel like the story might go long, so that might mean I need as many as 20,000 words. The longest book to date in this series is about 63,000 words, so maybe I’ll need 23,000 words, but I honestly do not want the book to go that long, and I don’t think it needs to.

Here’s the breakdown of what that all means if I want to finish this book in 3 days.

If I need… I need this many words per day
10,000 3,333
20,000 6,667
23,000 7,667

My plan is simple: Aim for my 5 hours—and 3,933 words—goal, and then try to get as many extra words as I can.

Hopefully, this will give me a finished book on Friday.

I will update my progress at the end of the day; I’m about to shut down my WIFI and I’m not going to turn it back on for a while.

Starting early, starting tired, but it’s got to be done

Lynn

I woke up tired today. Which is a huge bummer because I really wanted to wake up energetic so I wouldn’t have to fight so hard to write this morning. I’m just… tired. I don’t really know why and I still have a bit of a headache.

I’m sure it’s all related, but for the moment, I need to set all those feelings aside and sink into my book.

I’m going to keep my sessions short this morning, and I’m not going to focus on the timer so I can ease into this. Maybe some 15 minute sessions just to have a record of time spent. No pressure. I’ll be back to post an update when I have something to report.

Praying the A/C repair people show up quickly and get my A/C sorted out before evening. (Supposed to be an all-day job, according to what I’ve been told. My biggest fear is that they won’t finish today. That would make me ridiculously sad.)

Eh. Forget that. I’m sad already. The new pen name book is doing about what I expected: nothing much. I started that pen name to do some pricing experiments, and yet I’ve fallen right back into my groove and done no real experimenting at all. And that genre? Probably can’t support the pricing scheme I’m using. I’m going to have a make a decision on that, but I feel weird about changing the price so soon after publishing, because I have sold 6 9 copies at the $6.99 price. But since I have zero intention of running ads or anything of the sort on the pen name at the moment, the books are just not going to do anything more than what they’re doing if I don’t change something. The smart thing to do here would be to get the next book out within 30–60 days, and ha ha ha, that’s a total laugh. I have too many books due for my primary pen name to even contemplate that.

And… this sent me off to create a spreadsheet to calculate just how it would be possible, and I’ve had to face the fact that it’s very possible, if I were able to stick to writing 98,333 words a month, which I’m supposed to be doing. Gah. Today is not the day to stare my failures in the face. It’s too depressing when I’m already bummed.

But yes, if I wrote approximately 3,233 a day (3,933 a day with my 5 publishing days off a month), I could have the next pen name book done in—get this—about 47 days, and that’s after completing three other books first. I’m so disgusted with myself right now, because now I know it’s possible, but I know the chance of me successfully reaching and maintaining 98,333 words a month is… not good.

Why does this feel so hard sometimes?

I make it hard. That’s why.

Time to just get back to focusing on getting my 5 hours / 3,933 words a day in, and let the rest fall into place.

Looks like I’m going to need some accountability

Lynn

Update: It looks like accountability didn’t help. I did 0 words, 0 minutes, and I feel terribly guilty about it. Yet, despite the fact that I could probably spend the next half hour writing something before I go to bed, I’m sitting here writing this update instead. :o

I’m having a very hard time getting started. I’m hot and uncomfortable and sweaty, and all I really want to do it sprawl out on my couch under the ceiling fan with a wet rag over my forehead and do nothing. But I have a book to finish and I’ve set myself the challenge to finish by the end of the week. (And tomorrow could be questionable for me being able to concentrate because the repair crew will be here working on my A/C.

Screenshot 2016-06-13 16.38.07
Screenshot from weather.gov for my location. The high today is supposed to be 90! I feel like they’re letting me down here… :o

It’s 4:15 pm already and I really need to get some words down. So here’s the plan.

I’ve sent the doc to my Kindle. I’m going to alternate reading for typos and writing as a way to get me back into this story.

I don’t think it’s realistic to expect myself to start this late and get in my full five hours of writing today, so I’m just going to make this a “less time, more words” challenge.

I’m going to push for 3 solid hours of writing and try to get as many words* as I can during that time.

  • Read a chapter
  • Write for 60 minutes
  • Read a chapter
  • Write for 60 minutes
  • Read a chapter
  • Write for 60 minutes

If the 60 minutes feel too hard, I’ll switch to 30 minute sessions. Whatever it takes to get me working on this book again. :) Heck, maybe I’ll even switch to a different book for a bit.

*Here’s the deal. In case I’ve never mentioned this before, because I honestly can’t remember if I have, but when I push for high word counts it’s always with the assumption that they’re going to be words that make sense and that don’t make a mess for me to clean up later. I write clean, and I like it that way. I just don’t have a “get the words down and clean up the mess later” attitude, and I can’t imagine why I’d want it. Tried it many years ago when I was trying to figure out how to write, and I set it aside in favor of something actually productive for me. :)

 

Editing and proofreading finished!

Lynn

Finally, I finished reading the last section of the book this morning, and the edits for that bit were super quick. I actually like the book much more than I remember thinking back when I finished it! :D

But it’s been more than a month since I finished the book, so I guess that makes a difference. :)

So, now I’m onto formatting and publishing. I need to finish all that today. :o

Also, I’m still trying to decide if I want to go back into KDP with this pen name or not. I pulled the book out when the last renewal came up, in anticipation of making sure both books were either in or out, on the same time line.

This is the second pen name book, and I’m not expecting great things from it, not after a wait of nearly a year since the last book came out. :o

So: do I want to put the book into KDP?

  • In favor of KDP
    • Time saved by publishing only at Amazon (about a day)
    • First book was in KDP, so I might see better results for second book if it goes in for at least a little while
  • In disfavor of KDP
    • The first book will be a new book on all vendors other than Amazon, so I’ll have two new books on those sites
    • I like my books being available in lots of places
    • I don’t like being paid by page reads. Reminds me too much of the rip-off that is Google Adsense, etc: big companies taking advantage of small publishers to make big money and share only a pittance with the person responsible for the actual content. Amazon’s page read program isn’t that bad, but it feels bad.

Hmm. I’ll have to decide, but I can finish the formatting first!

Finally, do I want to continue with a pricing experiment (which is one reason I created the pen name) or do I just want to price at $6.99?

Both questions I need answers too by the end of the day today.

Now here’s some accountability for today’s activities. (I’ve decided I really like using lists for this stuff, no idea why.)

  • 11:29 am
    • Time to format my Word docx, will try to finish before I stop for lunch today.
      • Stopping at 12:30 pm with only the table of contents to finish. The other formatting only took so long because I was puttering with my styles and updating the formatting of the first book in the series.
  • 4:10 pm
    • Starting on the table of contents
    • Finished shortly thereafter
  • Worked and reworked the blurbs (descriptions) for the current book and the one before too many times to count before I came up with something I really liked. Two hours at least, although I didn’t really keep up.

Uh, I gave up. It’s just been ridiculously hot in here this afternoon/evening, with 90° Fahrenheit and sun outside, making it hard to cool down at the computer. I’ll get back at it in the morning when it might be at least a little cooler. (Did I say they’re finally coming on Tuesday to fix the A/C? Yay!)

Also, I got distracted by a movie I didn’t intend to watch to the end while I ate supper. But it was lovely and wonderful and I couldn’t turn it off. Consider this a rec for The Age of Adalind. I loved it!

Supper was frozen blueberries, fresh cherries, and plain Yogurt and just enough honey to make it sweet (makes a really cold desert), a peach, an orange, and some strawberries. Too much fruit, I know. But I’m not cooking in this heat. Forget that.

Anyway, I’ll move on to generating my EPUB tomorrow and publish sometime after that.

The truth is, I haven’t decided on the KDP or pricing issue anyway, so I’ll make a commitment on those tonight. Then I’ll get up and get this stuff done, so I can get back to writing, ASAP.

Now, off to bed so I can be up early enough to get some windows open and get this house cooled off before facing another 90° day.