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 less time to write the other volumes than it did to write volume 1, but I feel very positive about it since I have very detailed outlines for each one, thanks to the Snowflake method.

Derailed by my health and my emotions


My health really sidelined me this past month, and I fell victim to various ailments. When I wasn’t able to get a lot of work done, I also battled a lot of guilt and shame.

The guilt and shame were derailing me just as much as my health. Some writers can write when they’re upset and stressed (some write really well when they can channel their emotions into their writing), but I am not one of them. I have to be stress-free and relaxed to write.

Instead of beating myself up when I’m not feeling well, I have to learn to accept it and move on. I just need to take a sick day from writing and instead maybe do writing-related things (if I’m feeling well enough) or take a mental break (if I’m not).

After some really bad food poisoning last week Sunday, I gave myself permission to take a few days off from writing. The time off helped a lot because I was stressing about not working enough because I wasn’t feeling well. In giving myself permission not to work, I could feel my stress slowly leak away.

I’m still not feeling 100%, but I think I can get back on track tomorrow.

Writer’s routines


I’d been reading a bunch of articles and one mentioned that reading books before doing writing can drain you mentally, and you should try to write before doing those things. Since I usually listen to audiobooks while walking, I thought I’d try switching my walk to the afternoons instead of the mornings.

Very bad idea. I was a zombie and didn’t get anything done until a few hours after waking up. In talking to my husband about it, he suggested that the morning walk helps wake my brain up so that I can work.

So ultimately, even though a lot of articles talk about writing first thing when you wake up, I simply can’t do it. That morning walk has become part of my writer’s routine.

Dictation issues


After I finished outlining all the novels in the series, I was ready to start writing volume 2. However, I was not able to jump into dictation like I had wanted to.

It was very frustrating because I’d been able to do a lot of great dictation work when I had first started writing volume 2. (I stopped writing in order to try to edit volume 1, and then got waylaid by doing self-publishing work on the Japanese translation of Sushi for One, then outlining the rest of the series volumes.)

The exercises from the book Fool Proof Dictation were very helpful, but I still had a hard time getting work done. It was difficult for me just to start writing, and once I did, I was easily distracted and feeling very antsy.

I had been able to jump right into outlining every day, but for some reason I couldn’t jump into writing the same way. It could be because for me, writing is much harder and more intensive mentally than outlining.

What worked really well for me was sprints, which I had started doing more often back when I had those bouts of writer’s block. The only problem is that sometimes it was hard to start the next sprint after I’d finished one.

I also realized that I’d strayed from the writer’s rituals I’d developed when I was outlining—namely, listening to a certain music playlist and using certain aromatherapy essential oils. When I returned to doing that (it was a little tricky with the dictation setup), it seemed to help me focus a bit better. But things didn’t start feeling better until recently when I discovered 4thewords.

Gamify the writing with 4thewords.com


Until last year, I had not realized that I really enjoy fantasy video games. I had started playing an iPhone game, DanMachi - MEMORIA FREESE, and absolutely loved it. However, I had to stop because it was taking too much time away from my writing.

But then a couple days ago I was looking through my bookmarks for a good sprinting website and remembered the website 4thewords.com. I had joined back in October 2019 and tried it for a few days, but ultimately decided I wasn’t interested.

However, now that I was having issues getting my word count in for my book, I decided to give it a try again. This was especially interesting to me since I’ve been missing Danmachi Memoria Freese, and 4thewords is a fantasy RPG to gamify writing.

4thewords is appealing because you “defeat” monsters by writing a certain number of words within a certain amount of time—basically, a sprint. I was looking for something to motivate me with my writing sprints and this was exactly what I was looking for.

I started a few days ago and have been getting a fair number of words a day. Not as much as I want, because I don’t write as many words as when I’m dictating, but since I’m typing, I end up writing the typical clean copy I usually do. With dictating, I still need to spend some time cleaning up the rough draft (which is pretty ugly since I don’t dictate very cleanly).

You get virtual gifts in the game for keeping up a streak of writing 444 words every day, so I hope to be able to keep up. The game has good guides so I was able to figure out how to play pretty easily.

If you’d like to give it a try, you can use this promo code to get a few free crystals: WQCFL76961 along with their 30-day free trial period. Crystals are what you buy (via PayPal) in order to buy their subscription (which is $4 a month or a little less than $40 a year), and also to buy little non-essentials like wardrobe additions.

It’s only been 4 days, but I’m really enjoying the website/game so far!

Quarterly goals


Sarra Cannon has a video about her Kanban board, and my little organizational heart was quite excited. :) It gave me good ideas for how to use my electronic bullet journal for something similar.

What especially struck me was that she picks only 3 goals per quarter. When things for her to do pop up in her life, she evaluates if it will achieve one of her goals for the quarter, and if it doesn’t, she sets it aside for another quarter.

I’ve been keeping a To Do list for my marketing sales funnels, but it’s been getting kind of long since I have several funnels (one for each series). So I chose 3 goals for the next quarter (actually, more like the next 4 months):

1. Make $10k by December 31st
2. Promote romantic suspense on my blog and newsletter to keep current Camy Tang readers
3. Increase to 6 hours of writing a day (does not include writing-related work)

I then reevaluated my To Do list. I filtered out any marketing tasks not related to my goals, which made my To Do list a lot smaller and not as scattered across several projects.

I ended up cutting out some marketing tactics I had been planning to do at the end of the year because I want to instead focus on writing as many books as I can in my Lady Wynwood’s Spies series. Also, in order to bring in more income, I decided to release the Lady Wynwood’s Spies series one at a time rather than holding them until I’d written all the books in the series.

I had originally wanted to write all the books at once because the series is a serial, which means each book is not stand-alone. I didn’t want my readers to have to wait too long for the next book to come out.

But then an author in one of my writer’s groups mentioned that you can’t let your reader’s wishes dictate your writing schedule. You have to write what you are able to write and not try to push yourself to do something that doesn’t help you or that you simply can’t do.

Another author in a different writer’s group also mentioned that she doesn’t do huge release pushes for her books. Instead, she waits until there are more books out in the series and then does a more serious push to get the first book in more reader’s hands, which will sell the other books in the series.

So I decided to not hold all the books, but to publish them as I go. I am not expecting many sales to begin with. I hope I don’t discover a few books down the line that I need to make a huge change in an earlier book that’s already released, but the beauty of indie publishing is that I can update my books really easily and then just tell my newsletter that there was a revision of the book.

Also, in line with my goals, I want to write at least 5k words a day. So far, my word count per day has been all over the place, but my large word count days have been from dictation and I still need to spend time to edit that pile of poo. My lower word count days tend to be cleaner copy and so won’t take much time editing. I’m hoping the 4thewords site will also help me to gradually build up to higher word count days.

This is of course assuming my health is okay. I’m praying that I can get some of that under control, but if I can’t, I’ll just do writing-related work instead and not beat myself up about it.

Summary:


It’s been a rather unproductive month, which I’m feeling frustrated about. I can’t always control my health, but it still bothers me that I’ve had almost the entire month to write volume 2 and still haven’t gotten even halfway.

I hope I can adjust my writer’s rituals and routine so that I can get more writing done each day. Writing requires endurance training just like an athlete, so I just have to work on it with self-discipline.

This writing diary has actually been really good for me to express my embarrassment and frustration, but also to be able to brainstorm ways for me to overcome my weaknesses and roadblocks. It really helps to see my problems written out. It somehow enables me to step back and evaluate with a more detached and dispassionate eye, and try to come up with solutions to my problems.

I hope my writing will continue to improve! Here’s to the coming month!

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