Day 162: Sidelined by negative feedback

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Got a very late start today because of IBS issues, and then I had a lot of house chores (mostly cooking) to do today (I have to feed the hubby at least once a week, after all …).

I got some negative feedback on my book today which has made me a bit sad. I really hate that I’m so sensitive to this stuff. It’s easy to tell myself to get a thicker skin, but I can’t suddenly make myself feel better if I’m feeling sad. I had a bit of depression in high school, too, so I also think I’m a bit prone to this type of stuff.

Then after that, I discovered an error in the cover for volume 1! I’m just not detail oriented enough! Luckily I caught it before the book is released! So that got me paranoid about other things I might have missed.

I’m trying to remember Elana Johnson’s words (I think it was in her book Writing and Releasing Rapidly) where she mentioned that she’s made tons of mistakes and they’re not bad, because they propel you to improve. And she’s right.

I suppose I can still do some blocking of volume 3. I don’t think my mood will affect my blocking too much. I’ll give it a shot.

***

4thewords.com was really useful for the blocking. I tried blocking in Scrivener but ended up just staring at the screen, so I moved to 4thewords and started a monster with a long time limit, one of the new ones especially for NaNoWriMo.

Having a monster running and also seeing the word count go down was very motivating and I started doing more brainstorming by freewriting. However I didn’t need to freewrite for very long before I started doing the actual blocking of the scene.

***

I got some blocking done although I think my mood made it difficult for me to focus. It was also a difficult scene to block because there’s a lot that happened and I had to think through all the emotions the character might be feeling, which was tough.

I might simply call it a day and try to get more done tomorrow.

Blocking: time spent: 3 hours, 17 minutes
Editing: Time spent: 0
Writing: Time spent: 0
Time spent doing other writing-related business: 2 hours, 14 minutes

My takeaway for today: Suck it up, buttercup!

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