Day 116: Experiment is an epic fail
Sorry for being AWOL for the last three days, but health issues kept me from writing for two of them, and the third day was a bit of a wash because I was feeling unmotivated to write.
I actually felt pretty down on myself yesterday that I couldn't force myself to JUST DO IT and get much work done, despite the fact I was feeling better-ish and probably could have written a bit more. But I'd also just come out of a tough two days of feeling like a truck rolled over me, so after staring at the book and walking away a few times, I decided to just take a mental health day for the rest of the day to try to recover my writing juju.
I do feel more refreshed mentally today, so I hope I can get some work done.
I mentioned earlier that I did more detailed blocking on my scenes in an attempt to get into creative flow, but it didn't seem like creative writing when I was doing it. Now that I'm writing again, I can confirm that the writing part feels much more creative, and nothing like the blocking. So I guess my experiment flopped pretty badly.
Also now that I'm writing, I'm worried about not writing very vividly or creatively, and I was wondering if I need to just bite the bullet and do like I did for the last several books on contract, which is to leave notes for myself to fix later so I can keep writing to try to get into creative flow. I'm sort-of certain it worked (?) but it also makes the self-editing that much harder, and Future Camy is throwing a hissy fit.
I guess I'm doing all this to try to have my cake and eat it too (and who came up with that phrase? It makes no sense). I want to get into creative flow state, but I also want to minimize the self-editing I will need to do later because it is such a huge mental stumbling block for me, and that's just not possible if I leave all the research and etymology checking for Future Camy.
The self-editing block was especially bad in the months after I'd finished writing volume 1 of the series and I just couldn't get myself to work as many hours each day editing the book as I'd done writing it. I tried all kinds of reward and punishment mechanisms and nothing worked.
Then, since I was having problems writing volume 2, I decided to outline the rest of the series and the self-editing was put on hold for a while.
But now that I'm close to the end of volume 2, I'll have to complete self-editing volume 1, as well as self-edit volume 2. So I'm desperate to figure out how to lower the bar of resistance for self-editing so that it doesn't cripple my writing output like it did late last year and early this year.
I had an idea today to maybe devote time everyday to go back and edit what I write right after I write it, but then I was stuck with the quandary of when I would do that.
I decided to try self-editing at the end of each sprint today and seeing how I feel. I don't know if I'll be able to get back into creative flow state if I'm editing in between sprints, but if my sprints are long, maybe it'll work.
***
I'm not sure how great an experiment that was. I tried just leaving notes for Future Camy to fix, but they ended up bothering me and distracting me even as I was writing. In fact, it was sometimes just as fast to switch to WordHippo or etymonline and look up a better word as it was to leave myself a note to look up a word later.
However, I suppose I’m still editing as I write, and the whole point is to get into creative flow.
I did find myself actively trying to write faster and just keep going rather than stopping to look over something and tweak it. If I knew immediately that a sentence or phrase or word needed fixing, I went ahead and did it, but for the most part I didn’t go back to look at what I’d written.
My pace was 1300 words per hour, even with a slow start to the sprint, so that wasn’t bad.
So, at the end of the sprint, I only had one note to myself to look up, and while I tried to do it right after the sprint, I actually couldn't because it involved finishing the self-edits for volume 1 first before I could add that little bit to volume 2.
I suppose I'll need to try the experiment again. I'm not really feeling it, because even though I really do want to get into creative flow and just rock this manuscript, I also want to try to avoid or dissipate that self-editing revulsion. Sigh. I guess I have to weigh the benefits of creative flow over the pragmatic difficulties of scaling that self-editing resistance cliff.
***
I guess I just got out of the habit of leaving notes to myself, because I kept forgetting and would instead fix my sentences or look up words.
To be honest, not being able to fix sentences easily when I was writing books on my Alphasmart was one of the biggest frustrations since I would see typos and it would take so long to move the cursor to fix them.
My word count per hour rate dropped a bit for my other writing sessions today.
So since I wasn't able to really eliminate my editing-as-I-go mode today, I decided to try to write on my Alphasmart. I figured I could start a large word count monster on 4thewords.com, which usually has a 3 or 4 hour time limit, and then start writing on my Alphasmart. When I reached the word count, I could hook up to my computer and input the words into Scrivener, then copy and paste into the game.
However, while I was feeling pretty good earlier today, I got hit with a bit of IBS discomfort that made it hard to concentrate, so I decided to hold off my Alphasmart experiment to tomorrow.
I'm sure I'll write faster using the Alphasmart. I hope I can get into creative flow. But I will also be looking at ways to get myself to self-edit rather than putting it off. I think I'll try what I couldn't try today, which was to self-edit right after the sprint.
Another day, I also might try self-editing only after my entire days' writing to see how that is.
I already know that if I put off the self-editing until the book is done, it'll be like pulling teeth. Actually, for me, self-editing really is like pulling teeth. Like when you have a cavity and it really hurts and you know you need to go to the dentist, but you keep putting it off because you know it's going to feel like he's taking a jackhammer to your mouth. I tend to procrastinate the most when I have to do self-edits.
And if I can't make the self-editing more tolerable, then I might just forget about creative flow and continue to edit-as-I-go. Because since my writing career is dependent upon my releasing books, then maybe I need to try to fix the editing bottleneck rather than trying to open the faucet and output more words.
Blocking: Time spent: 0
Blocking: Total number of words: 0
Blocking: Average writing speed: 0
Writing: Time spent: 2 hours 30 minutes
Writing: Total number of words: 2873 words
Writing: Average speed: 1111 words per hour
Time spent doing other writing-related business: 1 hour, 33 minutes
My takeaway for today: Try writing on the Alphasmart to reduce editing, and experiment with ways to make the self-editing manageable.
I actually felt pretty down on myself yesterday that I couldn't force myself to JUST DO IT and get much work done, despite the fact I was feeling better-ish and probably could have written a bit more. But I'd also just come out of a tough two days of feeling like a truck rolled over me, so after staring at the book and walking away a few times, I decided to just take a mental health day for the rest of the day to try to recover my writing juju.
I do feel more refreshed mentally today, so I hope I can get some work done.
I mentioned earlier that I did more detailed blocking on my scenes in an attempt to get into creative flow, but it didn't seem like creative writing when I was doing it. Now that I'm writing again, I can confirm that the writing part feels much more creative, and nothing like the blocking. So I guess my experiment flopped pretty badly.
Also now that I'm writing, I'm worried about not writing very vividly or creatively, and I was wondering if I need to just bite the bullet and do like I did for the last several books on contract, which is to leave notes for myself to fix later so I can keep writing to try to get into creative flow. I'm sort-of certain it worked (?) but it also makes the self-editing that much harder, and Future Camy is throwing a hissy fit.
I guess I'm doing all this to try to have my cake and eat it too (and who came up with that phrase? It makes no sense). I want to get into creative flow state, but I also want to minimize the self-editing I will need to do later because it is such a huge mental stumbling block for me, and that's just not possible if I leave all the research and etymology checking for Future Camy.
The self-editing block was especially bad in the months after I'd finished writing volume 1 of the series and I just couldn't get myself to work as many hours each day editing the book as I'd done writing it. I tried all kinds of reward and punishment mechanisms and nothing worked.
Then, since I was having problems writing volume 2, I decided to outline the rest of the series and the self-editing was put on hold for a while.
But now that I'm close to the end of volume 2, I'll have to complete self-editing volume 1, as well as self-edit volume 2. So I'm desperate to figure out how to lower the bar of resistance for self-editing so that it doesn't cripple my writing output like it did late last year and early this year.
I had an idea today to maybe devote time everyday to go back and edit what I write right after I write it, but then I was stuck with the quandary of when I would do that.
I decided to try self-editing at the end of each sprint today and seeing how I feel. I don't know if I'll be able to get back into creative flow state if I'm editing in between sprints, but if my sprints are long, maybe it'll work.
***
I'm not sure how great an experiment that was. I tried just leaving notes for Future Camy to fix, but they ended up bothering me and distracting me even as I was writing. In fact, it was sometimes just as fast to switch to WordHippo or etymonline and look up a better word as it was to leave myself a note to look up a word later.
However, I suppose I’m still editing as I write, and the whole point is to get into creative flow.
I did find myself actively trying to write faster and just keep going rather than stopping to look over something and tweak it. If I knew immediately that a sentence or phrase or word needed fixing, I went ahead and did it, but for the most part I didn’t go back to look at what I’d written.
My pace was 1300 words per hour, even with a slow start to the sprint, so that wasn’t bad.
So, at the end of the sprint, I only had one note to myself to look up, and while I tried to do it right after the sprint, I actually couldn't because it involved finishing the self-edits for volume 1 first before I could add that little bit to volume 2.
I suppose I'll need to try the experiment again. I'm not really feeling it, because even though I really do want to get into creative flow and just rock this manuscript, I also want to try to avoid or dissipate that self-editing revulsion. Sigh. I guess I have to weigh the benefits of creative flow over the pragmatic difficulties of scaling that self-editing resistance cliff.
***
I guess I just got out of the habit of leaving notes to myself, because I kept forgetting and would instead fix my sentences or look up words.
To be honest, not being able to fix sentences easily when I was writing books on my Alphasmart was one of the biggest frustrations since I would see typos and it would take so long to move the cursor to fix them.
My word count per hour rate dropped a bit for my other writing sessions today.
So since I wasn't able to really eliminate my editing-as-I-go mode today, I decided to try to write on my Alphasmart. I figured I could start a large word count monster on 4thewords.com, which usually has a 3 or 4 hour time limit, and then start writing on my Alphasmart. When I reached the word count, I could hook up to my computer and input the words into Scrivener, then copy and paste into the game.
However, while I was feeling pretty good earlier today, I got hit with a bit of IBS discomfort that made it hard to concentrate, so I decided to hold off my Alphasmart experiment to tomorrow.
I'm sure I'll write faster using the Alphasmart. I hope I can get into creative flow. But I will also be looking at ways to get myself to self-edit rather than putting it off. I think I'll try what I couldn't try today, which was to self-edit right after the sprint.
Another day, I also might try self-editing only after my entire days' writing to see how that is.
I already know that if I put off the self-editing until the book is done, it'll be like pulling teeth. Actually, for me, self-editing really is like pulling teeth. Like when you have a cavity and it really hurts and you know you need to go to the dentist, but you keep putting it off because you know it's going to feel like he's taking a jackhammer to your mouth. I tend to procrastinate the most when I have to do self-edits.
And if I can't make the self-editing more tolerable, then I might just forget about creative flow and continue to edit-as-I-go. Because since my writing career is dependent upon my releasing books, then maybe I need to try to fix the editing bottleneck rather than trying to open the faucet and output more words.
Blocking: Time spent: 0
Blocking: Total number of words: 0
Blocking: Average writing speed: 0
Writing: Time spent: 2 hours 30 minutes
Writing: Total number of words: 2873 words
Writing: Average speed: 1111 words per hour
Time spent doing other writing-related business: 1 hour, 33 minutes
My takeaway for today: Try writing on the Alphasmart to reduce editing, and experiment with ways to make the self-editing manageable.
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