Day 28: Evaluation
I think I learned a lot for the past 4 weeks of writing this blog diary.
I just seem to be able to concentrate on my work better when I’ve done all the little nagging things that need to get done first. That way, they don’t pop up in my head and distract me while I’m working.
Most writing teachers say to form a daily writing habit, so since mid-December last year, I tried doing a little writing and a little editing each every day. It took until May this year for me to realize that it just wasn’t working well for me. Some days I’d get a little of everything done, but most days I’d only get one or two done, and usually not a lot of it. I also stopped doing both when I had to work on plotting a book or fixing a plot problem that came up.
When I had to edit the furigana in the Japanese translation of my book Sushi for One, I stopped all writing in order to focus on that since that was time-sensitive. I realized then that focusing on just one major task enabled me to get much more work done on that one task and spend more hours working on it. I was much more efficient than when I was trying to do a little bit of several tasks every day.
When I started my writing diary on June 1st, I focused on only plotting my Lady Wynwood’s Spies series and no other project, and that seems to be working well for me. I’ve been getting more hours of work done each day when I only focus on one thing.
When it comes time to start writing the rough drafts of the series, I think I’ll again focus on just writing and nothing else, and see if I can still get a lot of hours done each day when only focusing on one major task. It could be that focusing only on one task might only work when I’m in the plotting stage of my book creation process and doesn’t apply to other stages. I’ll have to try it and see.
This is related to the above about focusing on one major task at a time. Once I realized what Snowflake steps I’d done and what steps were missing, I focused on finishing those Snowflake steps first. As a result, I’ve spent the past 4 weeks solely plotting the series, working from higher level (completing Snowflake step 4 for all volumes in the series) to more detailed level (completing Snowflake step 6 and the spiritual and romantic arcs for all volumes in the series).
It’s enabled me to get a better grasp of the plot threads—loose threads I’d been vaguely aware of became more solid, and I was able to make sure they were tied off at the end of the series. It’s also made me more aware of plot holes and broken logic, and I was able to fix that in the synopsis stage as opposed to suddenly discovering them after I’d written the rough draft (in which case I’d have to go through the previous manuscripts to fix the errors).
Related to this, I created lists that summarize each character’s spiritual and romantic arc as it moves across volumes in the series. It has been very helpful to see all on one page the progression of each character’s spiritual changes and also the progression of the romance between characters.
Lists might not work for other writers, and it might only work for me since I’m a die-hard plotter, but this has been a really useful tool for me.
I’m still trying to come up with other things I can incorporate into my writer’s ritual to help push me into flow state faster, but since writer’s rituals need to be unique and a little unusual for them to work best, I’ll have to think more about this.
I’ve thought about why this is, and come up with a few possible reasons:
1) Public accountabiliy: I think my increased writing hours are partly because of the public accountability of my writing diary blog, since I have to write down how many hours I worked that day.
2) Association with enjoyable things: I have started associating my writing time with things I enjoy, such as spinning wool into yarn on my spinning wheel (which I do when I’m brainstorming) or on my drop spindle, or knitting on an easy knitting project, and also eating my favorite snacks. (As I mentioned before, I am a tactile creator, so the tactile stimulation of spinning, knitting, and eating helps get my creativity flowing.)
The positive association of those things has helped me to spend longer hours working each day than I did before.
Before I started this writing diary, I did knit or eat snacks while working, but only since I started the diary have I incorporated spinning to help me brainstorm, and it has worked really well to motivate me to focus on my work for longer hours. I think this is because spinning requires a little more attention than knitting, but it is still mindless like washing dishes or taking a shower, and there is more tactile sensation when spinning as opposed to knitting.
3) Standing desk: For most of June, I switched from my kotatsu desk to my standing desk. My back feels a lot better when I write on my standing desk as opposed to sitting at my kotatsu desk, so I can go for longer stretches of time without needing a break. I also sit for short intervals (5-10 minutes) at my spinning wheel when I’m brainstorming, so I’m not on my feet for 90 minutes straight.
I also find that I step side to side when I’m pondering a problem or decision, and the physical motion (which I think falls under tactile stimulation) helps me to think and focus.
4) Peripherals: My standing desk has all my preferred peripherals—my mechanical gaming keyboard, which feels great to type on, and my trackball, which is easiest on my injured right wrist. Also, the peripherals are all at just the right height, whereas on my kotatsu desk, I can’t quite get the right height and distance from my torso of my mouse or trackball.
I don’t want to get to the point where I can’t write if I don’t have my “special” desk setup, but having my favorite peripherals and a comfortable setup has definitely improved my ability to focus for longer periods of time.
I’m not sure if these things will impact how many hours I work when I have to start writing the rough drafts of my books. I tend to use my dictation microphone, which is plugged into my computer, and it’s usually a little easier to do that while seated. However, I could try sitting near my desk to do my dictation. Also, I have my H1N Zoom digital recorder, which has great microphones and creates voice recording files that I can have Dragon Dictate transcribe for me, and the accuracy is nearly as good as my dictation microphone, so the digital recorder might be another option for me.
5) Music: I’m not entirely sure if this contributes to my longer work hours, but I’ve been listening to the same anime soundtrack (Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn by Sawano Hiroyuki) on auto repeat while I’m doing the plotting for this series. The soundtrack itself isn’t too repetitive, but by the time I’d listened to it 15 to 20 times, the music is familiar to me.
The reason I’ve been listening on auto repeat is because an article I read on getting into flow state mentioned that the same music can trigger you to enter flow state each time if you listen to the music enough times to form the habit. I’m not entirely sure if this is true for me, but I’ve noticed that a consistent background soundtrack has been undistracting and yet an auditory stimulus (sometimes silence is a little too empty for me, especially when I’m in the plotting phase of my book).
So the soundtrack might? be helping me to get into flow state, which would help me work longer hours.
So I looked at how I could cut down on my home chores each day (mostly by deferring them to Sundays) to try to get 8-9 hours of writing-related work time. I’ll try this for the next four weeks to see if I can increase my writing time.
It might be a question of building stamina, but the fact I’ve been so easily distracted with reading for the past week has been especially frustrating. When I first noticed it happening, I thought it might be because I haven’t spent as much time each day refilling the creative well. For the first two weeks, I spent hardly any time reading (maybe 20-30 minutes a day, maximum). After I started noticing my distraction, I tried increasing that to 1-2 hours a day. However, for a few days I was distracted right in the middle of my writing session and ended up reading for 3 hours. I know I need to regularly refill the creative well, but I want to do that in 1-1.5 hours a day, not 2-3 hours a day.
When going through my diary and my Toggl entries yesterday, I noticed that my distractions usually happen when I take a break, whether to go to the bathroom or to eat something. I think I need to be more careful about what I do during breaks.
I had also noticed earlier that taking scheduled breaks hasn’t been helpful for me, because when I take a scheduled break, I’m more likely to get distracted doing something that takes longer than 10 or 15 minutes. I tend to do better when I just work straight through until I’m tired or interrupted (like when I have to go cook dinner).
For now, I will continue to a) not take scheduled breaks and just work until I’m tired, b) spend at least an hour each day refilling the creative well, and c) be much more careful about not reading when I’m taking a break. I’ll see if that helps things for the next few weeks.
I’m going to continue this diary for another 4 weeks to see how I can continue to improve. Ideally, I’d like to continue this diary through my writing, editing, and self-publishing phases of my book creation process, so I can see how I can improve each stage.
Clearing the decks:
First off, let me say that every person is different, so this may not pertain to other writers. But for me, when I do all my daily chores first, then I am free to focus only on my writing until I have to cook dinner. Also, after dinner, I am free to focus on my writing until bedtime.I just seem to be able to concentrate on my work better when I’ve done all the little nagging things that need to get done first. That way, they don’t pop up in my head and distract me while I’m working.
One major task at a time:
Again, every person is different, but for the past month, I have been more efficient and productive when I focus on just one major task at a time, whether that’s plotting, writing the first draft, editing, or miscellaneous self-publishing work (formatting the ebook and print books, uploading to Kindle, etc.).Most writing teachers say to form a daily writing habit, so since mid-December last year, I tried doing a little writing and a little editing each every day. It took until May this year for me to realize that it just wasn’t working well for me. Some days I’d get a little of everything done, but most days I’d only get one or two done, and usually not a lot of it. I also stopped doing both when I had to work on plotting a book or fixing a plot problem that came up.
When I had to edit the furigana in the Japanese translation of my book Sushi for One, I stopped all writing in order to focus on that since that was time-sensitive. I realized then that focusing on just one major task enabled me to get much more work done on that one task and spend more hours working on it. I was much more efficient than when I was trying to do a little bit of several tasks every day.
When I started my writing diary on June 1st, I focused on only plotting my Lady Wynwood’s Spies series and no other project, and that seems to be working well for me. I’ve been getting more hours of work done each day when I only focus on one thing.
When it comes time to start writing the rough drafts of the series, I think I’ll again focus on just writing and nothing else, and see if I can still get a lot of hours done each day when only focusing on one major task. It could be that focusing only on one task might only work when I’m in the plotting stage of my book creation process and doesn’t apply to other stages. I’ll have to try it and see.
Lists:
I use the Snowflake method of plotting, and I found that listing out exactly what I’ve done (what Snowflake steps I’ve completed for each book in the series) was really helpful for knowing what I ought to focus on.This is related to the above about focusing on one major task at a time. Once I realized what Snowflake steps I’d done and what steps were missing, I focused on finishing those Snowflake steps first. As a result, I’ve spent the past 4 weeks solely plotting the series, working from higher level (completing Snowflake step 4 for all volumes in the series) to more detailed level (completing Snowflake step 6 and the spiritual and romantic arcs for all volumes in the series).
It’s enabled me to get a better grasp of the plot threads—loose threads I’d been vaguely aware of became more solid, and I was able to make sure they were tied off at the end of the series. It’s also made me more aware of plot holes and broken logic, and I was able to fix that in the synopsis stage as opposed to suddenly discovering them after I’d written the rough draft (in which case I’d have to go through the previous manuscripts to fix the errors).
Related to this, I created lists that summarize each character’s spiritual and romantic arc as it moves across volumes in the series. It has been very helpful to see all on one page the progression of each character’s spiritual changes and also the progression of the romance between characters.
Lists might not work for other writers, and it might only work for me since I’m a die-hard plotter, but this has been a really useful tool for me.
My Writer’s ritual:
Praying my Surrender statement seems to be a good writer’s ritual to trigger the start of my writing session. I’ve been doing it for about a week now and it helps put me in the right mindset to write. (This is after I’ve gotten all my home chores done and “cleared the deck” so that I can focus solely on my writing for a few hours, which I suppose can also count as part of my writer’s ritual.)I’m still trying to come up with other things I can incorporate into my writer’s ritual to help push me into flow state faster, but since writer’s rituals need to be unique and a little unusual for them to work best, I’ll have to think more about this.
Writing more hours:
I track my writing time with Toggl.com, although I admit that in years past I have not been consistent about starting the timer when I’m working, so there are long stretches in my Toggl reports where it looks like I did no work. However, I’ve been more consistent in tracking with Toggle for the past several months, and according to the hard data, for the past month I’ve written more hours each day than I did for the last several months. In fact, my total number of writing hours in June is triple my average for each month this year so far. (In May, I spent a lot of time doing work on the translation of Sushi for One, but I consider that writing-related work and not actual writing where I’m actively working on an unpublished manuscript.)I’ve thought about why this is, and come up with a few possible reasons:
1) Public accountabiliy: I think my increased writing hours are partly because of the public accountability of my writing diary blog, since I have to write down how many hours I worked that day.
2) Association with enjoyable things: I have started associating my writing time with things I enjoy, such as spinning wool into yarn on my spinning wheel (which I do when I’m brainstorming) or on my drop spindle, or knitting on an easy knitting project, and also eating my favorite snacks. (As I mentioned before, I am a tactile creator, so the tactile stimulation of spinning, knitting, and eating helps get my creativity flowing.)
The positive association of those things has helped me to spend longer hours working each day than I did before.
Before I started this writing diary, I did knit or eat snacks while working, but only since I started the diary have I incorporated spinning to help me brainstorm, and it has worked really well to motivate me to focus on my work for longer hours. I think this is because spinning requires a little more attention than knitting, but it is still mindless like washing dishes or taking a shower, and there is more tactile sensation when spinning as opposed to knitting.
3) Standing desk: For most of June, I switched from my kotatsu desk to my standing desk. My back feels a lot better when I write on my standing desk as opposed to sitting at my kotatsu desk, so I can go for longer stretches of time without needing a break. I also sit for short intervals (5-10 minutes) at my spinning wheel when I’m brainstorming, so I’m not on my feet for 90 minutes straight.
I also find that I step side to side when I’m pondering a problem or decision, and the physical motion (which I think falls under tactile stimulation) helps me to think and focus.
4) Peripherals: My standing desk has all my preferred peripherals—my mechanical gaming keyboard, which feels great to type on, and my trackball, which is easiest on my injured right wrist. Also, the peripherals are all at just the right height, whereas on my kotatsu desk, I can’t quite get the right height and distance from my torso of my mouse or trackball.
I don’t want to get to the point where I can’t write if I don’t have my “special” desk setup, but having my favorite peripherals and a comfortable setup has definitely improved my ability to focus for longer periods of time.
I’m not sure if these things will impact how many hours I work when I have to start writing the rough drafts of my books. I tend to use my dictation microphone, which is plugged into my computer, and it’s usually a little easier to do that while seated. However, I could try sitting near my desk to do my dictation. Also, I have my H1N Zoom digital recorder, which has great microphones and creates voice recording files that I can have Dragon Dictate transcribe for me, and the accuracy is nearly as good as my dictation microphone, so the digital recorder might be another option for me.
5) Music: I’m not entirely sure if this contributes to my longer work hours, but I’ve been listening to the same anime soundtrack (Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn by Sawano Hiroyuki) on auto repeat while I’m doing the plotting for this series. The soundtrack itself isn’t too repetitive, but by the time I’d listened to it 15 to 20 times, the music is familiar to me.
The reason I’ve been listening on auto repeat is because an article I read on getting into flow state mentioned that the same music can trigger you to enter flow state each time if you listen to the music enough times to form the habit. I’m not entirely sure if this is true for me, but I’ve noticed that a consistent background soundtrack has been undistracting and yet an auditory stimulus (sometimes silence is a little too empty for me, especially when I’m in the plotting phase of my book).
So the soundtrack might? be helping me to get into flow state, which would help me work longer hours.
Time management and priorities:
The blog has helped me understand how I’ve been spending my time. I’m taking too long to do house chores each day, which I didn’t do when I was in biology work, simply because I didn’t have the time each day. My home chores leave me with only 6.5 hours a day for all my writing-related work, which is much less than the 9-10 hours I did when I was working in biology research full time.So I looked at how I could cut down on my home chores each day (mostly by deferring them to Sundays) to try to get 8-9 hours of writing-related work time. I’ll try this for the next four weeks to see if I can increase my writing time.
Distractions:
However, I have had a lot more distractions for the past two weeks than I did the first two weeks. I’m still writing 3-4 hours a day, but for the first two weeks, I was writing 5-6 hours a day. Eventually I want to increase that to 7-8 hours a day. Even if I manage to decrease the time spent on home chores (as mentioned above), it’ll be useless if I can’t take advantage of the increased writing time because I’m too easily distracted.It might be a question of building stamina, but the fact I’ve been so easily distracted with reading for the past week has been especially frustrating. When I first noticed it happening, I thought it might be because I haven’t spent as much time each day refilling the creative well. For the first two weeks, I spent hardly any time reading (maybe 20-30 minutes a day, maximum). After I started noticing my distraction, I tried increasing that to 1-2 hours a day. However, for a few days I was distracted right in the middle of my writing session and ended up reading for 3 hours. I know I need to regularly refill the creative well, but I want to do that in 1-1.5 hours a day, not 2-3 hours a day.
When going through my diary and my Toggl entries yesterday, I noticed that my distractions usually happen when I take a break, whether to go to the bathroom or to eat something. I think I need to be more careful about what I do during breaks.
I had also noticed earlier that taking scheduled breaks hasn’t been helpful for me, because when I take a scheduled break, I’m more likely to get distracted doing something that takes longer than 10 or 15 minutes. I tend to do better when I just work straight through until I’m tired or interrupted (like when I have to go cook dinner).
For now, I will continue to a) not take scheduled breaks and just work until I’m tired, b) spend at least an hour each day refilling the creative well, and c) be much more careful about not reading when I’m taking a break. I’ll see if that helps things for the next few weeks.
Summary:
Overall, this diary has been extremely useful to me! I’ve identified areas where I need to improve my habits, and the public accountability of the diary itself has enabled me to work harder and be more productive.I’m going to continue this diary for another 4 weeks to see how I can continue to improve. Ideally, I’d like to continue this diary through my writing, editing, and self-publishing phases of my book creation process, so I can see how I can improve each stage.
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