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.

Multiple stories at once: second week

Lynn

Another week has gone by—already—and I have another week of data to support my growing belief that writing on multiple stories in the particular way I’m doing it now is the best thing I’ve done for my writing in a long while.

Thursday—Wednesday, April 14–20
4,185 (3 stories)
4,798 (3 stories)
1,752 (3 stories)
242 (2 stories)
0
(18)
0

Total: 10,959 words

Despite my five days off writing, I’ve still managed to make this a great week, relatively speaking. Two of those days will end up affecting the next week’s numbers, but I have to say, I’m really pleased with what I accomplished this week. I wrote 10,959 words, and that’s a good number for me based on my historical performance.

As long as I let myself write what I want, I still feel the excitement to get going. I had a moment today where I slipped and was making myself write something, and I finally noticed how it was affecting me. I felt a great deal of resistance. But once I realized what was going on, I opened a different book, read a bit of it, and then ended up writing on the one that had been bothering me at the outset anyway, just because I wanted to.

That’s where the real power of this method has shown itself.

Get rid of the need, and I’m left with want. And want is powerful.

Two days off writing? Make that five, but it’s over now

Lynn

On the 16th, I posted about my stumble. I finished that day with 1,752 words, and I was pretty happy with that, considering. Since then, I’ve worked on some publishing tasks, read a bunch of books (seriously, 3 in just one day this week), and—well, that’s it. When I haven’t been working on the publishing stuff, I’ve been reading. I binge. Read, write, whatever. I work best when I binge on work.

So my planned 2 day break for publishing stuff turned into a 5 day break, because of all that reading and my own reluctance to dig into the publishing stuff.

But it’s finally done. I finished up the last of the publishing stuff today, and although it’s a bit late to really go for a lot of words, I’d still like to write more than the 172 words I wrote the moment I finished the publishing stuff. I was anxious to get back to it—and I’d like to hang on to that feeling. I worry that if I relax too much right now, tomorrow I’ll feel pressured to get started again. I don’t want pressure. I want desire. Right now, despite the fact that I’m feeling kind of pooped and stressed, I have desire. So writing it is. :)

I think I’ll aim for a solid hour of writing. Maybe two, but one for sure. I’d just like to cross the 1,000 word mark for the day.

Update—

Unfortunately for my writing, I had an unexpected interruption that pretty much finished my day for me. I was bummed, but hey, it wasn’t the end of the world. I finished with 245 words.

A bit of a stumble

Lynn

It’s 7:35 pm and I’ve written only 766 words today, in one hour of writing that I did before lunch today. I’m not really sure where the day went, tbh. I started writing late today and stopped for lunch early. I slept badly last night and have had a headache most of the day.

I’d like to go to bed early tonight to make up for that bad sleep, but… I haven’t actually had much energy for writing at all until within the last half hour, which doesn’t bode well for an early bedtime.

So now, I’m going to cut this short and go to work on one of my books. My goal is to write for an hour and see where I end up. My plans to take tomorrow and Monday off writing to work on preparing some stories for publishing hasn’t changed, so I want to end today in a good place. If I can manage another 1,000 words in the next hour, I’ll be happy enough. Less won’t kill me, but why not try for better instead of good enough, huh? ;)

How I back up my writing files

Lynn

I keep multiple backups of my writing files.

I have saved jobs set up that use yCopy2 from Spacejock software. I’ve been using the program for so many years I can’t even say for sure how long that’s been. It’s a great little program and I love it. If it ever stops working, I’m going to be sad beyond measure.

I use Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, an SD card, an expansion drive, a second computer on my network, a backup directory on my laptop hard drive, and email.

It sounds a little crazy as I write it out, but I like it. Yes, I use a lot of hard drive space to store multiple copies of my important files, but no, I don’t ever get them confused because I have a system that works.

I have a main writing directory for all my writing related files (outside of the Windows My Documents directory). I run my yCopy jobs 2–3 times a day, when I’m ready to break from my work usually, but anytime, really, especially if I’ve accomplished something I want to be sure I don’t lose if a catastrophe were to strike within the next few hours. :D

Yes, I’m also a bit paranoid.

Those yCopy jobs copy my entire writing directory into my Dropbox folder, my Google Drive folder, my OneDrive folder, onto my SD card, onto the expansion drive over the network, and onto the second computer’s hard drive to a folder that mirrors my laptop folder. I manually email myself copies of my Word documents every so often, just as a last ditch safety measure, and once a month, I copy and archive my writing directory to a backup folder on my laptop’s hard drive. I do that one manually, so if there’s ever a problem with yCopy, I will at least have this. I recently cleaned those out to limit how many copies I had, because I was approaching one for every month since July 2012 and that’s a lot of duplicates (especially considering how I back up my word docs as I’m working on a book), and my main writing directory has been growing quite a lot since I became more focused on learning cover design so they were taking up ever more space on my laptop. It’s also the directory where I keep my stock art downloads and that’s been growing too. So… it was time to eliminate some excess. That said, I still have about 4 copies of my writing directory as it existed at the time I made the copies for each of 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, and monthly for 2016 to date.

Yes, I am terrified of losing work.

Yes, I have pulled files out of some of those folders after I regretted deleting a file from my main writing directory.

Yes, I check the files and associated directories regularly to make sure yCopy is doing the job I need it to do.

Yes, it’s totally worth it. I have peace of mind. If my house burns down, I have the cloud files. If the cloud becomes inaccessible, I have my hard drives. If my computer is stolen, and I get locked out of my cloud drives AND my email, I have my second computer, my expansion drive, and my Kindle. Did I fail to mention that I also use “Send to Kindle” to send my in-progress Word docs to myself each night? Yeah, I do that too.

I know there are probably many more ways to make myself even safer, but this is the level I’m comfortable with. To be honest, I know it’s much more than most people will ever even consider doing, but these files are important to me, and I do my best to treat them that way.

As for my other files, I finally started backing them up too, but I’ll be honest, I just don’t worry about them that much. It’s the thought of losing my books that terrifies me. :D

I think I might break my record today

Lynn

No pressure, and I’m definitely not saying I will but I feel good, the writing is going well, and I’m going to have some significant free time tonight, so the possibility is there.

This morning’s tally so far makes me optimistic. I’ve never written 6,000 words in one day and I’d love it if I did it today. :)

Hours Words Session WPH
1 1103 1103 1103

And YAY! I just discovered that the paste from Excel is working the way it used it and my table stayed together. The recent WordPress update must have fixed it. :)

And even better, those words in hour 1 were for my stalled out book. :)

Update: I ran out of steam at 4,798 words, so no record breaking day for me. That was 5 hours at 960 wph. I can’t say I minded. I’m enjoying writing too much to care. ;)

Multiple stories at once: first week

Lynn

I have 8 days worth of words to count now, so my first week writing on multiple stories is done, and I feel like I have something to say about this method: it really works for me.

Thursday—Wednesday, April 7–13
3,003 (4 stories)
1,009 (2 stories)
1,347 (2 stories)
3,557 (4 stories)
3,983 (2 stories)
5,391 (4 stories)
3,583 (3 stories)

Total: 21,873

What’s different about this attempt and any others where I worked on multiple stories regularly?

I can’t say 100% that this is an accurate list, but I do believe it’s close to the truth.

  1. Now: I’m writing in 1 hour blocks, but am free to switch if another story calls strongly to me. Then: my 50 word challenge.
  2. There is no most important story. See the 50 word challenge post again. I write what I’m most interested in writing. :D

That’s really it, the big differences that I think are leading me to write more and stay at it longer. And what it all boils down to is interest in what I’m writing, excitement, and fun.

When I’ve got those, writing is not hard.

The key to success: a high level of interest

Lynn

I’m only one day away from a great week of writing.

T: 3,003
F: 1,009
S: 1,347
S: 3,557
M: 3,983
T (in progress): 4,097 (at 2:45 pm, after only 4 hours of timed writing, which is remarkably early, and fast, for me to be at such a high word count.)

I believe it has everything to do with my switching between projects and letting myself work on the stuff that I have the highest level of interest for at the moment.

Seriously, I’m doing my best to refrain from falling into the trap of writing what I think I need to write (what will get me a finished book the fastest) and sticking with whatever I have the highest level of interest for. It’s working wonders.

This is the key for me right now.

I’ve finished a novelette length story, started another in the series, and have made good progress with several of my novels. All in all, I’m ecstatic. :D

And I’m also finding that in the end, I think it’s very likely I’ll finish all these stories in about the same amount of time it would take me to finish one if I forced myself to focus. Focus just seems to be another word for “stall” these days.

Or maybe it’s easier to explain this way: focusing doesn’t give my brain time to mull over alternative possibilities for one story without downtime and if I try to keep going instead of taking that downtime, I stall out and start to dread writing, which creates a vicious cycle of too much downtime, while jumping around gives me the time to mull while eliminating the downtime.

More writing, more fun while writing, and more words written. I can’t beat that.

Not a word count success today, but closer than usual

Lynn

Here’s my progress. Getting closer to that 3,933 a day goal.

Story Hours Words Session WPH
R 1 1165 1165 1165
O 1 1624 459 459
G 1 2015 391 391
Gf 1 2780 765 765
O 1 3146 366 366
R 0.25 3335 189 756

Wish it wasn’t quite so late, because I’d keep writing. I know I could reach my goal. But I need my sleep if I want to feel like trying again tomorrow, and it’s already past my bedtime if I want 8 hours of sleep tonight.

Tomorrow I need to focus on not letting so much time slip past early in the day. I want to be able to write for 3–4 hours before lunch, and another 2–3 hours before late afternoon.

Making progress; accountability for yesterday’s and today’s writing

Lynn

Considering the day I had yesterday, I’m happy to say I wrote 1009 words yesterday. Most of that was in one session yesterday morning from about 7–8 am, on story R.

Today, I’m working to make up some word count, hoping I’ll get in 8 hours of writing. I’m sticking with what’s working. I’ll do 1 hour for each story: O, R, G, Gf, T, W, plus 2 extra sessions for story O. W is the book I’ve been struggling to finish, but it’ll happen when it happens. I rarely do so many hours of writing in a day, so it’s not a given, but I’m going to try. There’s also a chance I’ll have to be gone for a 4 hour stretch today and if that happens, the 8 hours is going to be really difficult. But I’ll worry about that if it happens. :D

For now, back to writing. I’ve been at it about 25 minutes, but an interruption threw me off a bit and I decided to write this post before I restarted.

Hour: words
1 (story T)
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

I’ll update as I work, because that’s how I like to do it. :)

Today’s progress report

Lynn

Hour #1 (Story O*): 218 words (notes below)
Hour #2 (Story R): 853 words
Hour #3 (Story G): 996 words (notes below)
Hour #4 (Story Gf): 587 words (notes below)
20 minutes extra on Gf: 349 words

Cumulative words: 3003
Cumulative wph: 693

Hour 1 notes

One hour down. Lots to go.

And unfortunately, I’ve been away from most of these stories so long that if the first one is any indication, my word count is going to be much lower today than I’d hoped.

*Stories I plan to work on today are: O, R, G, Gf, T, W. The letters are as good as any other label, so I’m using it. If it were to try something like story 1, story 2, I’d just get even more confused. At least this way, I can figure out what I’m talking about. By the way, W is the book I’ve been struggling to finish, and O is the book I need to finish this month.

I spent a lot of time just trying to get back up to speed and make some adjustments in the first 5000ish words I had already written.

(I discovered I had screwed up is what happened. I had edited the story the last time I worked on it, and when I read the opening today, it sucked. I pulled the oldest backup I had, and re-did the opening of the story the way it was the first time I wrote it. In my last writing session with this story, I’d gone way beyond fixing typos and making corrections. I don’t have anything against making changes to a story in progress when changes are needed, but changing what happens in a story isn’t the same as changing how I describe what happens. I’d gone in with a heavy hand and attempted to do the latter, and I should have known better. It never works out well for the flow.)

Hour 3 notes

My average words per hour is recovering a bit from that rough first hour. Also, apparently that first book has issues unrelated to getting back into the story, because I’m doing great with the others so far and I’ve had to get back into those too. But it’s now time to switch again. So, back to work! Here’s hoping the increase in speed holds out for the rest of my sessions. :)

Hour 4 notes

Hour 4 turned out to be my last hour. I just ran out of time. I definitely didn’t run out of interest. But I have a busy day tomorrow and I don’t know exactly how much writing I’ll get done so I can’t stay up later. One thing I know though is that I MUST do a better job of managing my use of time. Somehow I let loads of it slip past and ended up struggling (and staying up later than I wanted) just to get in 4 hours.

Time to focus on the 12-month 1,180,000 words challenge

Lynn

So I’ve been giving some thought to what I can do to get moving on this challenge: 12 months, 1,180,000 words. I need to stay focused. I’ve had to step back from the cover design practice, because I had become well and truly obsessed.

57 of 98 days since January 1 have been zero word days. That’s… scary high. I don’t know that I’ve had that many in so few months at any time since I started writing to publish. Saying that made me wonder, so I pulled up my spreadsheet and set up a quick formula to count and discovered that I do have one period of 98 days that had 68 zero words days in it. That one ended in November 2013.

The fact is, I don’t want any zero word days anymore except for true emergency/sick days and publishing days.

I’ve got to figure out how to make that happen.

One way is to start having more fun with writing. I’m stagnating, I think, under self-imposed expectations, and that’s stealing a lot of the fun from writing. When it isn’t fun, I don’t want to do it.

I want to wake up excited to get started every day. I know I can get back there, but I’m going to have to break through this wall of expectation first.

I’ll be trying to do that today: putting all my fears and expectations aside and writing only what excites me. I have a rule: skip the boring parts. In fact, I have more than one rule: No more length limits / deadlines. Just write the story. Write the parts I like, skip the boring stuff. I also believe that art and great story do not come from purposeful thinking. That came from Dean Wesley Smith, although I can’t remember if he said it in a lecture or on his blog. A search of the blog didn’t turn up anything, so I’m going to assume it was a lecture. I’ve paid to watch several and I recommended them to anyone who asks about them.

As for the cover design practice, here’s what happened.

I’ve made some huge leaps forward with the cover design over the last few weeks, but I started to realize a few days ago that I’m suffering under the lack of a deadline for finishing the covers. In the past, I always waited to do covers until the book was finished and I was doing copy edits. That meant I had a hard deadline of ASAP, because I usually need to get those books published. Without that deadline, I’ve discovered I spend too much time trying variations, avoiding commitment, and being indecisive about whether the cover or the series look is good enough. And although I tried the outsourcing approach, it felt like more work than just doing it myself. And no, I wasn’t satisfied, in any way, with that experience. I won’t be doing it again any time soon. The designer was good, the covers were pretty, but they just weren’t what I wanted, and the whole process took away my control and made publishing a lot less fun.

Outsourcing cover design is not for me. I have 100% decided to stick to doing my own covers for the foreseeable future.

But night before last, I finally decided I have to go back to working on covers only when I’m closer to finishing a book. That’ll impose at least something of a deadline and I won’t be able to get hung up on all the little details that have led me to create 9 different versions of the same cover. Not tweaks. Entirely different versions. Nine. Yes the series needs a cohesive new look, but gah, that’s ridiculous. I have to be able to decide on these things. And I can’t decide when I have what feels like unlimited time—I need time pressure to force me to make decisions.

The fact is, I am very much still in the throes of this obsession. I’m waking up at night with ideas to try and today it’s going to be a challenge to set all that out of my thoughts.

I resisted yesterday, although I didn’t write as I’d planned to. Yesterday, I had to take some time to do my estimated 2016 taxes and make that first payment—something I started, I admit, as a way to avoid getting to work on writing, but it was something that had to be done and once I’d started it, I realized that. I spent about 4.5 hours on it, doing the worksheets, estimating an income that just can’t really be estimated because it’s so variable, and I was wrung out by the time I had made the quarterly payment.

Kind of amazing that I would do taxes to avoid doing something I like as much as I like writing. In the end, I decided to take the easy way out: I paid 100% of last year’s tax liability and decided to just save the rest until I file. I’ll probably owe a shit-ton of tax at that point, but I won’t owe penalties. My hope is to double my income this year, but if it doesn’t happen, I’m safe and won’t have paid in too much.

Finally, though, it’s time to focus.

Today I will work on multiple stories.

Tomorrow I’ll do the same.

I’m going to resist the trap of forcing myself to work only on the story I need to finish next. That method is how I become stuck and lose my forward momentum. Total word count is the goal. If my word count is going up, that means I’m getting my books written.

I won’t worry about finishing that book I’ve been struggling with (not like I’m expecting massive sales from it anyway, so what’s it matter when it gets done?).

I will write for one hour on each story that I have in progress in each of my series. That’s 6 stories, so 6 hours of writing.

I’ll write a few extra sessions on one particular story: I have 20 days to finish that one, with about 45,000 words left on it, meaning I need about 2,250 words every day for those 20 days. If it takes three sessions (~750 wph), then I’ll need to write for 8 hours; if it only takes two sessions (~1,125 wph), then I’ll only need to write for 7 hours. That last is what I’d prefer, but we’ll see.

I’ve only written for 7 hours in a day a few times; it’s not something I find success at often. But I’m hoping the switch between stories will keep me fresh and keep my interest going. We’ll see.

My long-term plan for 5 hours of writing a day hasn’t changed. I won’t be writing on every story, every day, but for now—until I catch up a bit and get excited about my books again, I do plan to do just that.

If I do as much writing as I want to do today, I could break my current one-day word count record and crack the 6,000 words in a day barrier. I’ve never written 6,000 words of fiction in one day before, not since I started keeping records. It’s also highly unlikely I ever did it before I kept records.

So, time to get to it. :D I’ll update later in a separate post. This one is already too long.

Thursday update #1: at 641 words

Lynn

I’m now at 641 words for the day. I’m still trying to write through the mess that is chapter 12 in this book. :o

I have about 4 hours to write 4.5–5 hours worth of speedy words and I’m not doing speedy today apparently.

But I’m getting back to it now and hopefully I’ll get through this sooner rather than later.

Excited to be writing again, slow progress, and timer woes

Lynn

I’ve been writing, but I keep forgetting to start the timer, so I have no idea how long I’ve been at it. It’s been excruciatingly slow going though.

I’m at 522 words for the day.

I input all the fixes I’ve had sitting around on my Kindles. I send my docs to Kindle (Kindle Fires to be specific) so I can read them on there (easier reading than on the computer) and I highlight problems to fix later. I had multiple versions of multiple docs on multiple Kindles waiting on me to get around to it. So that’s done. Docs are deleted and I actually discovered a bit of excitement for every one of my books in progress as I read through them looking for the highlights.

Then I turned to my main book, the one I’m trying so hard to finish, and I’ve been working on that problem scene again. It’s a mess. Just no other way to put it. I have no idea what was going on when I wrote it, but I do remember not liking it much at the time. It was the scene stopping me from getting back to writing back in December. I got past it in February (?) finally, but obviously I shouldn’t have ignored my issues with it. I’m paying for that now.

But now I’m going to quit forgetting to start my timer so I can at least track my speed for the rest of those 3,933 words I expect from myself today.

And all in all, I’m quite happy. I’m back at work on my books and I’m not feeling a lot of angst about it. (Yes, books. If I get stuck on this one, I’m moving to another. I’ve even opened all those files so it won’t take any effort at all. It’s really time I quit holding myself back because I’m afraid it’ll take too long to finish anything if I let myself switch projects like that. I have a much better chance of meeting my challenges if I don’t let myself stand still, so to speak.)

Next up: get to 3,933 words today in as little time as possible today.

Even without the timer to back me up, I’d say I’ve been writing for at least 2–3 hours already. That’s not great considering my word count, but when I get moving on this story again, I know I can do better.

Accountability check-in: 12-month 1,180,000 words challenge

Lynn

Time for some accountability for my 12-month 1,180,000 words challenge.

So far, I’ve made a ridiculously small amount of progress towards that big challenge.

My 2016 word count to date is 34,615.

That’s, uh, not good. If 2016 was the beginning of that challenge (and originally it was) I should be sitting at 290,958 words.

So, uh, yeah.

But that’s okay, because I can fail but that doesn’t mean I have to give up, and I’m not giving up. I’m restarting this challenge as of today, and I’m not going to let myself down this time. I’m feeling optimistic today, after a day when I was definitely not feeling optimistic yesterday.

I can do this.

And I don’t need a schedule to do it. I just need to focus on writing what I want (that’s where I find joy and motivation in writing) and I need to remember I do have something to prove, but only to myself.

I can do this.

Yesterday was a day of more time, less words; let’s avoid a repeat

Lynn

More time, less words is exactly opposite of my plan, but yesterday, that’s exactly what happened. I made very little progress on my word count for this book, but I did make progress. I don’t like rewriting stuff, but that’s what happened with the scene where I’d like to just ax everything and start fresh (but that’d mean losing 35,000 words and some of them I don’t actually want to lose).

I didn’t ax it, and I tried to avoid rewriting sentences in the vein of just trying to make things sound better, because that wasn’t the kind of rewriting it needed at all. It was about the scene itself. It’s just never really worked for me, and I gave some people some additional dialogue, tried to clear up some actions and movements, and stuff like that.

I’m actually still going to be working on this same scene this morning, at least for a bit, because I still need to finish that part up. I’ll be expanding a bit on an element I ignored so that I can tie things up at the end of the book. Honest to God, I don’t actually know what this is yet, and that’s why this is dragging so bad, but I’m going to come up with something if I have to gut this damn scene. (I’m actually very close to the end of this book, I think, but this scene takes place 35,000 words before where I’m at with the writing. If I don’t want to have to drag out the ending to clear all this stuff up, I need to set something up here so I can more easily deal with it there.)

Maybe I should just say I tried to fix the scene to do more of the things I want it to do—even if I don’t know what those things are yet, because I definitely didn’t go at it worried that the writing was bad, except in the sense that the actual scene didn’t read right to me. It doesn’t carry its weight and doesn’t do much but take up space, and yet it can’t be excised because it does have a purpose.

Gah. It’s all so hard to explain. Anyway, time to get to it. I have some enthusiasm going for the writing this morning and I plan to take advantage of it. I have one quick post to write about accountability and then it’s on to the writing. See you later for an update. :D

A couple more thoughts on the last post

Lynn

I’ve had a couple more thoughts on the last post I want to clarify.

The schedule is really a “routine” suggestion.

The routine I want is to start writing early enough every day that I can guarantee I’ll finish 5 hours of writing every day, because I need 98,333 words every month to meet my “1,180,000 words in 12 months” challenge and I can’t get them if I don’t.

That’s the real purpose of the schedule.

So, as before, the schedule is more of a suggestion than a rule, but I do need to get that 5 hours of writing in every day so that my publishing days don’t make it impossible for me to meet my challenge. The best way to make that happen is to get started every day either on schedule at 9 or before.

…which brings me back to the idea that I’m really just doing this so I don’t forget that I want to write in 4 blocks of 1.25 hours, and that I want to get started early enough so I actually have a chance of getting them all done.

So why do I need a schedule? I have no idea.

…which realization caused me to delete the schedule. What I need is a reminder I can’t ignore (which I just put on my daily word count spreadsheet) that I want to write 5 hours every day.

This is one day where my bad mood might have just rewarded me with some clear thinking.

Alright. Moving on. Tomorrow I will write for 5 hours.

Today I will write for about 2 (more), then call it a night.

New plan, same goal

Lynn

I haven’t been writing much lately. I’m just not happy with this book I have going and I’m going to have to choose to move on soon before I lose every bit of enthusiasm I have for writing. :o

On that note, I made a new schedule for myself today. I decided that although daily writing is still the routine I want, I know when publishing time comes, I won’t be writing, so I need to allow for that in my daily writing goal. I decided 5 days a month is a good estimate of the number of days I usually spend obsessed with publishing tasks.

1,180,000 ÷ 12 ÷ 25 = 3,933 words

I can’t write 3,933 words in 4 hours. I’d love to be able to, and maybe someday I’ll get there, but right now, if I aim for that, I’m setting myself up to fall short every time. I can write 3,933 words in 5 hours. It’ll require a bit of the “less time, more words” mentality, but I can do it consistently enough that I don’t believe I’m setting myself up for failure. :)

So, I split 5 hours into 4 blocks of 1.25 hours apiece. When I was drinking coffee and tea, this would have been a really bad idea, but I’m thinking I can do it now. Might as well take advantage of some of the benefits of being coffee and tea free, right?

Back when I had found what I believed was my ideal schedule, I started my writing day at 9 am and kept my lunch break as short as possible so I didn’t feel like it was an interruption. I decided to revisit that idea, and used it to hone my schedule. I want my midday break long enough, but not too long.

9:00–10:15 (need 984 words)
30 minute break
10:45–12:00 (need 984 words)
1 hour break
1:00–2:15 (need 983 words)
30 minute break
2:45–4:00 (need 983 words)

I usually get up between 6 and 7 in the morning. That gives me plenty of time to ease into my day, which I much prefer to rushing around and sitting down as soon as possible to write. I don’t like getting started first thing in the morning unless I’m really struggling to hold in some thought I woke up with. I remember really liking my 9 am start time. So I’m going back to it.

On the other hand, I would love to write through the evening, but I need to be done with my daily writing by 4 because I just can’t count on getting more words in later. So 4 is the cut off. Of course, if I want to write outside these times, I certainly won’t stop myself from doing it just because of the schedule.

Finally, I know a schedule isn’t something a lot of people need or want. I don’t even want it. (I really don’t.) But I do need it. I’m not good at visualizing how much time I have left in a day, and I’ve definitely found that without the schedule, I get lost in my days.

I spend more time making schedules than following them. I let myself down a lot when it comes to these things I don’t really want to do.* I don’t really know how to change that, because I want to but nothing I do seems to give me the push I need to actually change.

Heavy thoughts for the day, and I’m ready to end this post. There’s the schedule and I’m going to start tomorrow trying to stick to it.

Today I’m going for a shortened, modified version that starts at 4:30 pm. See ya when I get some writing done.

*I want to write, so I don’t even know what that’s supposed to mean, but it’s how the thought came out so I’m leaving it. Or maybe it’s that I want to want to write, but I really only want to write what I want and since I’m bored or otherwise unhappy with what I’m working on, I don’t want to write it. I usually stop myself from writing anything else when I’m going through this kind of thing with self-talk about how if I’m going to write, I should just push through what I’m working on and get it done. Then, of course, I avoid writing altogether because it all feels too damn hard.

No plan, no way; goal is 4 hours of writing and 3,233 words

Lynn

After yesterday, I don’t think “no plan” is going to work. I’m already fighting the urge to work on more covers, but I’m determined to resist. I want to get my 4 hours of writing in, and then obsess over covers some more.

Writing schedule
7:30–8:30
8:45–9:45
10:00–11:00
11:15–12:15

So that’s the plan. No covers until I’ve done my 4 hours. And if I get close enough to the end of the book to finish, I am going to do my best to push on through. The sooner it’s done, the sooner I can get those covers finished up. Win, win. :D

Also, I’m trying to break my back and neck cracking habit. That’s no fun. :o

Now I must get to work. I’m already late to my first session!

Update: And 869 words later I ended up obsessing on covers again!

No plan today; just write

Lynn

Hour 1: 737 words

I didn’t plan this hour, it just happened because I had words that came to me in the shower and had to sit down and get them out right away before I forgot them. Turns out I spent almost exactly an hour doing that. :D (I think I’m about 5,000 words or less away from the end of the book!)

I did a bit of cover design tweaking despite my new rule. I have that stuff on my brain and I just can’t get it out of there. I did stop, though, so I could go eat breakfast, and now I’m back and I’m going to stick to the rule until I’ve hit my word count goal for the day. Which even though I said above “no plan” is actually already planned out. I have that 3,233 daily quota. After that, if I want to get lost in some cover design practice, that’s fine by me as long as I don’t stay up too late again. That can’t happen again for a while. I have too much sleep to catch up on already. I don’t need to add to that.

Now, off to clip my fingernails so I can start hour 2.

I want 1,000 WPH with the next one!

And the next day…

HA! That first session was the last session I wrote during yesterday. I ended with 737 words and spent the rest of the day working on a book cover.

You see, I’m obsessed. :o I had to know if I could create a series of covers from the one I’d partially designed the night before. After an ENTIRE day of it (I finished at 9:30 last night), I succeeded! I have two complete covers now, (one needs a tiny tweak on text color but I really think it turned out very nice) and I’ve cracked the “people” issue. I can now say that if I work at it, I can get a person to look all right on a cover. People have by far been my weakest area. Typography is still up there, but it’s coming along. Buying that font (license) turned out to be a good idea. I’ve used that font for this series of covers and I really like the distinctive, but very crisp and clean, look it gives to the books’ titles.

Anyway, that’s the final word on yesterday. Today is something else. :D

New rule

Lynn

No more cover design practice until I’ve finished writing some books.

Do I have to explain what happened today? Let’s just say I wrote a lot less than I needed to and I didn’t even realize I had forgotten to eat supper until midnight. Not my best day.