Day 177: Giving up on NaNoWriMo

I woke up today with my jaw clenched and my head aching, and I think the stress of NaNoWriMo is getting to me. I got a late start on NaNo since I was editing volumes 1 and 2 of my series at the beginning of the month before starting volume 3, and I also hadn’t done any blocking for volume 3 before I started writing. I know from doing The Gentleman Thief that I seem to prefer to have all the scenes blocked before I write.

I’m also getting antsy seeing all the scenes I haven’t edited yet because I’m trying to get words done for NaNo, especially since my self-editing mental block can make my productivity go way down.

So today I decided to just give up on NaNo. I’m disappointed, but I think it’ll be better for me, mental health-wise.

I also decided to check email before starting work today, and I’m glad I did since I had some issues that came up. I didn’t realize that you need a new ISBN to change the trim size for a book, and I’d asked my graphic designer to change the trim size for The Spinster’s Christmas because she was already doing a redesign of the ebook cover and paperback cover. She delivered the paperback covers today, and when I went to upload my new book in KDP, that’s when I found out I couldn’t change the trim size. After a little Googling, I discovered you need a new ISBN for each trim size change.

So I had to email her to ask her to redo the paperback covers back to the original trim size. That’s kind of an expensive lesson but at least I won’t forget it!

However, that also meant I had to redo the interior for the two versions of The Spinster’s Christmas (regular and illustrated) so that I could give her the page counts. The illustrated version was a pain to redo the interior, but it’s much easier than it used to be now that I’m using Mac Pages instead of Microsoft Word!

I also found a word I had forgotten to change in the Spinster’s Christmas, so it wasn’t bad to go over it again.

Also, I was able to release the new cover ebook versions of the Spinster’s Christmas, since there was nothing wrong with the new ebook covers. I also had to add the illustrations in the illustrated version ebook, so that took some time, too, but it’s not bad since I’m just copying and pasting the html code to insert the illustrations.

So I got a lot of work done on my self-publishing today, but not much on my writing (yet)!

However, since I’ve given up on NaNo, I think I’ll start by doing the editing on the rough draft chapters. I have quite a build up since I was trying to get words out for NaNo, but now that I don’t have to worry about that, I can do the system that seems to work best for me—cycling, writing for maybe 30 minutes (so that I do a little writing every day), then blocking the rest of the book. Once the blocking is all done, then I’ll do cycling and writing every day until the book is finished.

I also decided that once volume 3 is done, then I’ll start work to publish volume 2. If I’m lucky, I can release it February 10th, 2021.

***

I did a lot of editing today! I’m almost caught up, I only have one more scene to edit. I didn’t get writing done today, though—the self-publishing stuff took so long, and then I did a lot of editing, and now it’s late and I think I’ll go to bed. I’ll finish up the editing tomorrow, and then hopefully do a little writing and more blocking.

Blocking: time spent: 0

Editing: Time spent: 3 hours, 5 minutes

Writing: Time spent: 0

Writing: Total number of words: 0

Writing: Average speed: 0

Time spent doing other writing-related business: 7 hours, 17 minutes

My takeaway for today: I think my least-stressful, most-productive writing routine is doing blocking first, and then writing and cycling.