Day 9: Deferring email tasks, house chores

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I realized something that in retrospect seems like a very obvious productivity tip. Today I cleaned up my email inbox (it’s not as impressive as that sounds, I spent a few days and cleaned it up completely a few months ago and so I try to keep it clear every day or every other day) and usually I would need to spend time to put files away or record purchases (for my records), but this time I threw all the files in a folder on my desktop and made a reminder in my Task list to do all that stuff on Sunday, which is technically my writing Sabbath (although I kind of cheated a couple days ago).

I don’t know why I didn’t think of this sooner, but usually I’m too OCD and feel like I need to do all that stuff right when I check my email. I’m also afraid I’ll forget to do it later (which happens a lot more than I like the older I get). But because I made a reminder for myself, and the reminder lists exactly what I need to do, I won’t forget to do anything. And so I finished my email a lot sooner than I thought I would.

My email takes longer when I have to do self-publishing stuff and do stuff for my translator, but on normal days like today, answering my email took very little time.

Unfortunately, I didn’t count on all the house chores I needed to do today, which took up a lot more time than I expected. I’ve gotten into the habit of trying to do one house chore a day so they don’t all pile up and overwhelm me, and it keeps the house relatively clean, but I had been sick for a couple weeks with headaches and so the chores got shunted to the wayside. My chore for today ended up taking a lot longer since I hadn’t done them in a while. But I don’t want to take several hours to clean house every weekend, so taking shorter amounts of time during the week is the only way to keep my weekends from sucking.

How do other writers handle house chores? I know some who hire a maid to come every couple weeks, but I have a real problem letting strangers into my house, so that option is out for me. I suppose I just need to suck it up and take the time to do this stuff every day. If I try to keep up with it (aside from days when my headaches derail me), it won’t be so bad, I hope.

Anyway, I probably won’t have as much time to write today, but I’m going to try anyway, without going to bed too late. My new mechanical keyboard arrived yesterday and it feels great! I’ll be using it today to work on Snowflake step 4 (one-page synopsis) on volume 8 of my Lady Wynwood’s Spies series.

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I had been making good progress, able to do Snowflake step 4 on each volume in the series in about a day, but I ran into another snag today. Because of some major changes I made in the plots of the previous volumes, especially volume 6 (which originally was volumes 6 and 7, but I combined them), I had to redo Snowflake step 2 (1-paragraph summary) for volume 8.

I ended up deciding to combine volumes 8 and 9 (which will be the new volume 8), but it took me a long time to even realize I should combine these two volumes. It’s also taking a long time to do Snowflake step 2 on the new volume 8, because it involves some rearranging of my plot and figuring out what my characters would do now in the face of new events from previous volumes.

So I only managed to finish part of Snowflake step 2 on my new volume 8. I’ll continue tomorrow and hopefully be able to do Snowflake step 4 on volume 8 tomorrow, too.

Time spent writing: 6 hours, 17 minutes
Time spent doing other writing-related business: 1 hour, 5 minutes

My takeaway for today: Making a reminder and a list of little things to put off until the weekend frees up my time during the week for more writing.

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