Day 178: Tracking by total time rather than words per day
Strangely, even though I didn’t sleep quite as long, I slept really well last night and woke up early feeling pretty good.
I checked email first just to get that out of the way, but then after breakfast I dove straight into editing, and I’m now caught up on editing all the prose I’ve written so far in volume 3.
I ended up needing to do a fair bit of writing when editing the last scene, so I don’t think I’ll do any extra writing today. I’d rather work on the blocking, plus when I was doing the extra writing for the scene, I was confused by what had happened so far versus what I’ve blocked in future scenes. I think it’ll be a bit easier if I write only after I’ve blocked everything, and I can write linearly. I think I’ll make fewer continuity mistakes that way.
***
I ended up doing more of a lot of self-publishing and marketing stuff today. I got the corrected covers from my graphic designer so I uploaded the paperback versions of The Spinster’s Christmas, and then I worked on my newsletters for my two pen names. I also updated my drip sequence with another email.
Now I’m ready to start doing more blocking work on volume 3. I have to admit, I’m feeling much less stressed now that I’ve given up on NaNoWriMo. I can do the blocking like I want to without worrying about manuscript word count. I know I can write a lot when I have the blocking done.
I was talking to a friend on Facebook today (I had to message her about an issue with I had with one of my books in a BookFunnel promotion we’re doing in December). We were talking about a friend of ours who just finished NaNoWriMo. Our friend is a pantser, so she doesn’t have to account for outlining time. She just writes everyday.
The friend I was chatting with is like me, she also does a lot of outlining. We were talking about how we don’t write everyday like our other friend who won NaNo, because of the outlining. We outline first, and then we write.
It made me realize that because I have days where I’m doing outlining or blocking and not a lot of writing, that maybe I shouldn’t count words per day as an indication of productivity. I should instead look at total time it takes me to write the book.
I had recorded when I did outlining for each book in the series and for the side novel, so I already have a good idea of how long it takes me to outline a book. I have also recorded how long I spend to block the book and also edit it.
Since I seem to like blocking all the scenes at once, I’ll have several days with very little (if any) writing. And I have been doing well with the cycling, so when I start writing, I also edit a little every day rather than leaving it all for the end.
So if I take all that into account, I should instead look at the start and end dates for when I start blocking and then end writing/editing. I can determine how long it takes me to write a 100k word book based on that overall data rather than trying to figure it out by how many words I write each day, since there are some days I don’t write much at all.
Even more importantly, I don’t have to feel guilty about not writing a certain amount every day, since it seems my preferred writer’s routine is to block everything first.
(I do think I need to write a little bit of something every day, though, just so that my writing skills don’t get rusty. Since I’ve got a rather detailed outline of the side novel, I might be able to do some writing everyday in that book. It’s a different storyline than the main volumes so I don’t have to worry about being confused by the timeline. I just have to get used to jumping to a different story for a little writing everyday.)
Anyway, I looked at my time sheet and I started work on volume 3 on November 9th, so it’s been about 17 days, although that that also counts Sundays, when I don’t write. When I started work on volume 3, I was flipping between blocking, editing, and writing. Now that I’m more aware of how it’s difficult for me to keep continuity if I do that, I’ll try to finish blocking first.
I’d really like to work a little faster, but I also realize I’ve had a lot of days where I had several hours of work I needed to do on self-publishing and marketing, especially since volume 1 releases on December 8th, I participated in a promo in November, and I’m participating in two promotions in December. I also have a blog tour scheduled for February and I had some early work to do for that since it’s being hosted by another company.
I’m hoping other months won’t be so bad in terms of marketing work since I won’t have large launches for the other books in the series, at least not until maybe book 6 or 7, and the last one, book 10.
Okay, I had lunch after doing all that self-publishing and marketing work, so now I’m ready to start blocking volume 3.
***
I got almost 3 hours of blocking done! I was hoping to do a little more after dinner, but I got really tired. I forgot to post this blog post yesterday, so I’m actually posting this on Thursday.
Blocking: time spent: 2 hours, 56 minutes
Editing: Time spent: 2 hours, 4 minutes
Writing: Time spent: 0
Writing: Total number of words: 0
Writing: Average speed: 0
Days I have been working on this book: 17 days (since November 9th)
Time spent doing other writing-related business: 3 hours, 2 minutes
My takeaway for today: Because of my writing process and writer’s routine, I think I should focus instead on how many days it takes me to write a novel as opposed to words per day.
I checked email first just to get that out of the way, but then after breakfast I dove straight into editing, and I’m now caught up on editing all the prose I’ve written so far in volume 3.
I ended up needing to do a fair bit of writing when editing the last scene, so I don’t think I’ll do any extra writing today. I’d rather work on the blocking, plus when I was doing the extra writing for the scene, I was confused by what had happened so far versus what I’ve blocked in future scenes. I think it’ll be a bit easier if I write only after I’ve blocked everything, and I can write linearly. I think I’ll make fewer continuity mistakes that way.
***
I ended up doing more of a lot of self-publishing and marketing stuff today. I got the corrected covers from my graphic designer so I uploaded the paperback versions of The Spinster’s Christmas, and then I worked on my newsletters for my two pen names. I also updated my drip sequence with another email.
Now I’m ready to start doing more blocking work on volume 3. I have to admit, I’m feeling much less stressed now that I’ve given up on NaNoWriMo. I can do the blocking like I want to without worrying about manuscript word count. I know I can write a lot when I have the blocking done.
I was talking to a friend on Facebook today (I had to message her about an issue with I had with one of my books in a BookFunnel promotion we’re doing in December). We were talking about a friend of ours who just finished NaNoWriMo. Our friend is a pantser, so she doesn’t have to account for outlining time. She just writes everyday.
The friend I was chatting with is like me, she also does a lot of outlining. We were talking about how we don’t write everyday like our other friend who won NaNo, because of the outlining. We outline first, and then we write.
It made me realize that because I have days where I’m doing outlining or blocking and not a lot of writing, that maybe I shouldn’t count words per day as an indication of productivity. I should instead look at total time it takes me to write the book.
I had recorded when I did outlining for each book in the series and for the side novel, so I already have a good idea of how long it takes me to outline a book. I have also recorded how long I spend to block the book and also edit it.
Since I seem to like blocking all the scenes at once, I’ll have several days with very little (if any) writing. And I have been doing well with the cycling, so when I start writing, I also edit a little every day rather than leaving it all for the end.
So if I take all that into account, I should instead look at the start and end dates for when I start blocking and then end writing/editing. I can determine how long it takes me to write a 100k word book based on that overall data rather than trying to figure it out by how many words I write each day, since there are some days I don’t write much at all.
Even more importantly, I don’t have to feel guilty about not writing a certain amount every day, since it seems my preferred writer’s routine is to block everything first.
(I do think I need to write a little bit of something every day, though, just so that my writing skills don’t get rusty. Since I’ve got a rather detailed outline of the side novel, I might be able to do some writing everyday in that book. It’s a different storyline than the main volumes so I don’t have to worry about being confused by the timeline. I just have to get used to jumping to a different story for a little writing everyday.)
Anyway, I looked at my time sheet and I started work on volume 3 on November 9th, so it’s been about 17 days, although that that also counts Sundays, when I don’t write. When I started work on volume 3, I was flipping between blocking, editing, and writing. Now that I’m more aware of how it’s difficult for me to keep continuity if I do that, I’ll try to finish blocking first.
I’d really like to work a little faster, but I also realize I’ve had a lot of days where I had several hours of work I needed to do on self-publishing and marketing, especially since volume 1 releases on December 8th, I participated in a promo in November, and I’m participating in two promotions in December. I also have a blog tour scheduled for February and I had some early work to do for that since it’s being hosted by another company.
I’m hoping other months won’t be so bad in terms of marketing work since I won’t have large launches for the other books in the series, at least not until maybe book 6 or 7, and the last one, book 10.
Okay, I had lunch after doing all that self-publishing and marketing work, so now I’m ready to start blocking volume 3.
***
I got almost 3 hours of blocking done! I was hoping to do a little more after dinner, but I got really tired. I forgot to post this blog post yesterday, so I’m actually posting this on Thursday.
Blocking: time spent: 2 hours, 56 minutes
Editing: Time spent: 2 hours, 4 minutes
Writing: Time spent: 0
Writing: Total number of words: 0
Writing: Average speed: 0
Days I have been working on this book: 17 days (since November 9th)
Time spent doing other writing-related business: 3 hours, 2 minutes
My takeaway for today: Because of my writing process and writer’s routine, I think I should focus instead on how many days it takes me to write a novel as opposed to words per day.
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