Camy's Writing Diary

So, except for one day of work on the 21st, the last ten days were pretty much a complete wash because of health issues—migraines, IBS. I really don't know what I could have eaten to cause either of them, so I was rather shocked to be incapacitated when I'd been feeling well on Monday the 14th. It was also frustrating because I thought I'd been finally figuring out some tips and tricks to make my dictation work, and I'd been looking forward to trying them. Anyway, I spent most of the last 10 days in pain and listening to audiobooks. I suppose refilling the creative well isn't a bad way to spend my time—it wasn't a waste of time, anyway—and reading always helps me with my writing in some way. In the meantime, I got a new computer monitor, but the stand it came with is too high for my desk. I had to order an adjustable monitor mount. I suppose it was good I was too sick to work, because otherwise I’d have had to work with a very unergonomic monitor setup.

I ended up sleeping a long time on Sunday and then getting up ridiculously early Monday morning, so I'm just going to count it as Monday starting. Since I finished blocking volume 3, I'll start writing today. I have committed to trying to get better at dictation, so I will try dictating for 10 minutes or so, then editing the transcription in Dragon. In a dictation Facebook group I joined, there was a nice Dictation Outline that one member provided, which not only has you list the beats of the scene (I'm assuming it would be the same thing as my blocking , but some writers refer to beats as larger plot points rather than smaller plot points), but also things like the purpose of the scene, the emotions, the setting, imagery, character reveal, tension/conflict, and specifics (which might be for miscellaneous stuff that doesn't fit under the other things). Having those specific things listed at the top of the list of blocking for my scene might help keep me on point w

I normally don’t write on Sundays, but I woke up early and maybe since I didn’t get much done yesterday—or all last week, really—I decided to do a little work. I got some editing/writing done on The Spinster Spy . It’s almost entirely rewriting since the original was very rough, and so I tried dictating the scene rather than typing. However, after about 15 minutes of dictation, I found I had forgotten a lot of stuff and had to redo it almost completely, so I just typed it instead. I know that dictation is mostly just to get stuff down, and from what I’ve read on a dictation Facebook group, many writers will go through it again later to add things like description, etc. However, this is supposed to be editing a scene I’d already laid down, so I think dictation isn’t going to work here, since I don’t want to have to do yet another round of intensive editing on a scene that’s supposed to be revised. I fully realize my resistance is partly because of my loathing for more self-editing

Because I’d gone back to bed with a sinus headache yesterday, I woke up early today. I ended up doing some writing-related work that needed to be done, but which I’d been putting off—cleaning up my email inbox, and my computer desktop. However, now that’s done, my brain feels a little less cluttered. It’s time for lunch now, so I’ll continue my plan to read more and I’ll take a long-ish lunch break in order to read a book. Then I’ll get started on writing work, starting with some writing/editing of The Spinster Spy (just to get some writing prose done) and then continuing my blocking of volume 3. Using an audiobook during my break yesterday seemed to work well to help me not get distracted by social media or retail procrastination, so I’ll try that again today. *** I got some writing/editing and some blocking done, but not very much—around the time my allergy medicine was wearing off, I got another sinus headache, and so I went to bed early again. Blocking: time spent: 1 h

Since I had so many non-working days, I decided to switch up how I'm tracking my writing. Instead of tracking how many days it takes me to work on a book, I'm going to track number of hours, since days can change depending on how many hours I work per day on my book. So I went to my trusty Toggl report to figure out how many hours I've been working on volume 3. The time doesn't include the time I spent working on the entire series premise, but I'll post that also at a later date.  Lady Wynwood's Spies, volume 3 totals (so far, 2020): Outlining: 8 hours, 40 minutes Blocking: 29 hours, 33 minutes Writing: 25 hours, 13 minutes Editing: 10 hours, 39 minutes For reference, I also looked up the total amount of time I spent on Lady Wynwood's Spies, volume 2, which is (mostly) completed. I started writing this book around the tail end of my bad bouts of writer’s block , so my writing speed wasn't all that fast. Also, while I did some work on the book l

I had a sort of mental meltdown for the past 2 weeks. I think I was really overwhelmed by all the things I had piled up for me to do—almost all of them marketing things and stuff to do for my book launch—and my brain shut down. This actually happens to me once every few months. I really beat myself up the last time this happened, but I think I need to instead figure out why it happened and try to fix it. I know that my creative well was pretty dry because I spent a lot of time reading and watching Netflix. So maybe I’m not spending enough time reading? Maybe? I also know that I had put a lot of things on my To Do list, and the past few days made me realize I just can’t fill up the list like that. I might feel okay now, but all last week, I was mentally pretty drained. So I went through my To Do list and just deleted a bunch of stuff. Luckily, the hardest parts for my book launch were already done, so I didn’t have to worry about that. But some of the other stuff—mostly marketi