Day 56: Evaluation #2

I can’t believe it’s been almost two months! Since this is the last Sunday in July, I’ll write my evaluation today. Here it is in no particular order.

Increasing my writing stamina:


I mentioned this on Day 54, but I’m starting to see that I’m able to increase the number of minutes I’m working each day as the months progress. This is only during the plotting phase of my writing, so I’ll have to see if this continues throughout the writing and editing phases, too.

I think part of the reason I’m able to focus for longer hours is because I’m making more of an effort to refill the creative well (although I still need to work on this), which makes me less distracted.

Also, the act of writing down the number of minutes worked each day on this blog has been motivating me to work for longer hours.

I’ve also been smarter about my breaks, which I realized can mess up my work momentum. I’ve been working for longer periods of time before taking a break, so I take less breaks during the day. This method will not work for everyone, but I’ve found that more breaks means more distraction for me, and it also makes it hard for me to get into flow state. I also am careful about what I do during the breaks so that I can bounce back to work easily.

Other than that, I’m not sure how I’ve been able to work for longer hours each day. I’ll try to pay more attention this coming month to see if I can analyze why my writing stamina has been increasing, other than just increased practice.

Non-writing time management:


I had the idea to shunt all my work to Sundays, which is when I don’t write, so that I can free up more time during the week for my writing. However, that made Sundays way too busy and I didn’t like it, so I’m back to doing a little bit of home chores every day. I rearranged the chores this time around, so they’re a bit less demanding each day.

I also started doing more social media, which I had avoided for the past few years since it was such a time suck. I still don’t know what the heck I’m doing on Twitter, and for some reason Facebook puts my friends’ stories that are months old on my newsfeed. But other than that, I think I’ve got a better handle on my social media this time around.

I am only doing the social media I feel I can do. Twitter is fun to read but I couldn’t be pithy if I tried, and I’m such an introvert that interacting with people on Twitter is still difficult for me, so I don’t do much of it. However, I enjoy making Bible verse images with the hibiscus pictures from my dad’s garden, so I’ve been doing those in both English and Japanese. I also still blog twice a week on my regular blog. I’ve also reconnected with writing friends on Facebook.

So each day, I spend about 20 minutes doing social media stuff, which adds to the non-writing stuff I do before I start writing, but it hasn’t been as much of a time suck as it used to be. Added to checking my email, which usually doesn’t take more than 10 minutes since I’m terribly unpopular, I’ve been able to keep my non-writing computer time down to a manageable level.

However, with exercise and home chores, I’m still spending about 3 hours before I start writing. Which leads me into something I realized yesterday:

Slow starter:


I have never been a morning person, and my brain is usually firing on all cylinders between 10 p.m. and 3 a.m. When I was working in biology, I would get up and out the door to work within 30 minutes, but once I was at work, I usually had my day planned out already and I could jump into an assay or experiment without needing to think too much. And that type of laboratory work can be rather mindless.

Even though I’ve been writing full-time for almost 13 years, it’s only when I started this daily writing diary that I’ve become more observant about how I spend my days. I knew that I worked better when I did my chores before starting writing, but I thought it was just the way my slightly OCD brain worked.

Yesterday, however, I realized that even when I was working in biology, it took me a few hours before my brain started waking up. I couldn’t do complicated math or statistics and analysis until the afternoons.

It’s the same with my writing, which requires just as much brainpower as analysis work, but a different part of my brain. I can’t focus and work efficiently until a few hours after I’ve woken up. It just takes me a while to get in gear.

So while most people say to write as soon as you get up, it has never worked well for me (and over the past 13 years, I’ve definitely tried many, many times). I’m starting to see how doing my home chores before I start work may help me be more efficient overall. Scrubbing the shower doesn’t require me to think very much, and if I do that during the time of day when my brain is most mushy, that leaves more time during the day for my writing when I’m at peak mental efficiency.

For other people, the mornings may be their most creative times, in which case they should do their writing first thing. For me, however, I can barely string a sentence together after I wake up, so the first few hours of the day are reserved for exercise, cooking, cleaning. When I have to stop writing in order to cook dinner, cooking doesn’t take quite as much time if I’ve done the prep work earlier that day.

Personal days:


This writing diary made it all too clear when I had to take sick days or personal days off from my writing, but each of those were important, and I was able to jump right back into writing afterward.

I have been suffering from IBS and also from sinus headaches which often turn into migraines, so I am careful not to aggravate either of those. If IBS is bad, it makes it hard to focus and write, and if I’m getting a headache, once it gets past a certain pain threshold, I have to stop work so that it doesn’t get any worse. I’ve been taking sick days when I’m simply not feeling well, but it’s been heartening that I can get back into work with renewed energy.

I’ve also taken a couple personal days when personal stress got to me and it was too difficult for me to focus on writing. Instead of writing, I did writing-related work or read or watched Netflix, and then the next day it was easier to start writing again.

Since I’m self-employed, it’s easy for me to take days off, so I think the time I take off has actually helped me be more productive during the days I’m able to work.

Marketing:


I read a lot of marketing books this past month, and I still have lots more to read. However since I had zero experience in business, the books I read gave me a good primer about basic things like what a sales funnel is, and the different types of marketing strategies there are.

I chose a marketing strategy that works for my personality, my time budget and my financial budget, and I’ve been making notes and lists of things to do that are in accordance with the strategy I’ve chosen. I was surprised to find it fun to come up with ideas for my sales funnels.

It was remarkably easy to figure out what to do and what to focus on right now after reading Prosperous Creation, which gave the basics of marketing and business strategies, and Get Your Book Selling, which talked about the 10 Stages of Audience. I came up with several ideas for each Stage of Audience, and then prioritized them with what I need to focus on right now, while I’m still only writing the series. It made this whole marketing thing so much easier and so much more manageable.

One marketing tactic I came up with is the Regency serial novel I’m currently plotting. It’s sort of a side story to my Lady Wynwood’s Spies series, with main characters different from the ones in the main series. However, the serial novel’s plotline has a strong impact on the events in the main series, and when I post the serial novel on my blog, it will fit nicely into the marketing strategy I’ve chosen.

I also came up with plots for both a funnel book and a Reader Magnet, which also fit into my marketing strategy. It adds to the amount of fiction writing I will have to do, but I find that easier than some other marketing tactics I could spend my time on, so it works for me.

I admit that while I was reading those marketing books, I also had a bit of a meltdown and my author friend MaryLu Tyndall had to remind me that God is in control of my marketing. I only have to do what I feel I can do, and trust God to take care of the rest. Marketing is something I have to do, but it shouldn’t take too much time away from my writing, and it shouldn’t stress me out so much that I can’t write. Not writing is not doing what God wants me to do, so I need to protect my writing time.

Plotting a series:


This diary has been especially useful because it’s been documenting the outlining phase of writing my series. I like seeing my progress on each day of the diary. Since I use the Snowflake method of plotting, my plotting has been very methodical and easier to document, and by the time I start writing the rough drafts, I’ll have a good record of how long the outlining took, to compare.

I think what I’ll do tomorrow is look over my Toggl time entries to see exactly how long it’s taken me to brainstorm and plot this series. I changed my mind about it at least once, so the numbers may not be entirely accurate, but it will be good for me to see my actual raw data.

I’m also glad I waited to release volume 1 of the series, even though it’s almost completely edited, because I made changes to the plotline that affect the very beginning of volume 1. This probably wouldn’t have been a problem if the series were composed of stand-alone volumes, but since the story progresses sequentially through the books in the series, things that happen later have more of a ripple effect on things that I had plotted earlier.

Refilling the creative well:


My biggest problem is still being antsy and distracted and procrastinating. I still think it’s linked to my lack of discipline in refilling the creative well every day.

I need to make sure I spend at least an hour a day refilling the creative well by reading books or watching movies or TV. When I don’t devote some time each day, then when I’m trying to focus on my work, I start getting antsy and distracted.

Right now, I only read a little throughout the day—a few minutes during lunch, and I listen to an audiobook while I’m walking or running. What I should do is try to finish work early so that I can read or watch a little Netflix before bed. The only problem with that is I could spend 2-3 hours on Netflix easily and I want to get to bed on time.

The important thing is that, even if it’s not in one chunk during the day, I need to spend more time reading a book. I think will help me to be able to focus for longer periods at a time.

And if I can do that and I’m still not able to focus, then I’ll know it’s not my creative well and I’ll have to figure out why I’m so distracted and unfocused.

Summary:


I think I learned quite a bit about myself (or realized things I probably should have noticed years ago) over the past month, and hopefully I can use that knowledge to increase my writing productivity.

I also started work on marketing, even though the series is not yet completely written, because there are things I can work on now, and it will save me the time to do them later when the marketing has to ramp up.

Hopefully this daily writing diary over the next month will be even more useful and help me to be even more productive.

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