Day 51: New blog template and procrastination

-
I chose a new blog template today! And … it took up about 15-20 minutes, so it was pure procrastination. These bouts of procrastination just sneak up on me at random times. I guess that means I’m not really focusing hard enough on the task at hand, if I can be distracted by thoughts about my blog template.

I also wrote some blog posts today, so it seems like I spent a lot of time on marketing work as opposed to my novel. I’m not sure what to do about that since my blog is part of my marketing strategy and so I need to spend time on it, but I also don’t want it to cut too much into my fiction writing time.

My house chores today also took longer than usual, not because I had a lot to do, but just because I was moving slowly this morning.

So I’m starting a little later than I wanted to, but I’m continuing Snowflake step 6 (expanded synopsis) for the serial novel.

***

It seems like a lot of my posts recently have been about my health derailing me, and today was no exception. I started getting a sinus headache because of my allergies, and while medication kept it from getting too bad, it’s starting to bother me now, so I’m going to stop work before it grows into a full-blown migraine.

But it’s already getting close to bedtime, so I would have stopped in another hour or so. I feel like I could have been more productive today, but the procrastination seemed to set the tone for the rest of my day.

I think tomorrow I’ll try to shake it up and do just a little bit of writing work before I do my non-writing work. I usually do non-writing work first, because otherwise the thought of it tends to nag at me while I’m writing, which can be too distracting. But I’ve been so distracted lately, I thought maybe I need to change up my routine a bit to see if that helps me to focus better. (I hope I remember to do this tomorrow! I’m liable to forget I want to try to change up my routine.)

Mini-scenes plotted so far: 51
Time spent writing: 5 hours
Time spent doing other writing-related business: 3 hours, 8 minutes

My takeaway for today: I haven’t been focusing lately, so maybe changing up my writer’s routine a bit will help.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 21: Bullet journal, Surrender statement

-
Today was my writing Sabbath so I didn’t do any writing today, but I spent a lot of time doing writing-related things. I did some blogging, and I also reviewed my writing To Do list. I cleaned it up by checking off what’s been done, deleting what I no longer need to do, and making note of what I need to do this coming week. Before I started bullet journaling (in an electronic journal app, Day One Journal ), I had my To Do lists in a couple different places and I’d usually forget things I needed to do. Now I have them in my bullet journal, which combines journaling with task organizer, and I’m less likely to forget. I still set reminders for myself in my phone, but since I’m using my journal throughout the day every day, I’m more likely to see things I need to do. I found some of my old To Do lists today and incorporated some things in my bullet journal. One of them was my writing Surrender Statement, which is a prayer I pray before starting each day’s work. What’s a Surrender Sta
Read more

Day 783: Evaluation 7

-
It’s been almost seven months since I wrote my last Evaluation 6 , but I finally got around to Evaluation #7! Here’s the gist of what I’ve learned over the past few months about my writing and productivity. New schedule My IBS was slowly been starting to feel better recently. I am still extremely strict with my diet, but I am also starting to experiment with what foods I can and can’t eat. I have also started a new eating and sleeping schedule, which I have dubbed my “chrono-diet” because I’m trying to take advantage of my circadian rhythm, according to the book Change Your Schedule, Change Your Life (I had borrowed a copy from the library but I enjoyed it so much I went ahead and bought it). I have started waking up at 6 am and exercising first thing, then having breakfast after exercise. I do house chores and/or work until noon, which is when I eat lunch. I’m supposed to not eat until dinner around 5:30 or 6, but I haven’t been able to break the habit of snacking in the aftern
Read more

Day 91: Evaluation 3

-
Even though I was taking a few days off because of my health issues, I ended up doing some work after all, and also came up with some new ideas. But first, let me summarize the past month. Outlining my series Something which I thought was interesting was looking at the raw numbers of how long it took me to outline my Lady Wynwood’s Spies series. It had a rough start, especially because I changed my mind about it several times and had some bouts of writer’s block, but things picked up this year especially when I wrote down my writer’s process and began systematically doing the Snowflake method on each of the volumes in the series. I finished outlining all the books in the Lady Wynwood’s Spies series on August 1st! Yay! This included the serial novel. Unfortunately those numbers were not included in the above post on my raw numbers, but I will eventually do a follow-up post and also list how many hours it took me to write and edit the volumes in the series. Hopefully it will take
Read more