Camy's Writing Diary

I only did the bare minimum today, partly because it’s New Year’s Eve, but also partly because I got a terrible headache. It was a battle just to get the bare minimum done, but I’m glad I didn’t break my streak. Editing: Time spent: 4 minutes Writing: Time spent: 12 minutes Writing: Total number of words: 225 words Writing streak: 57 days Blocking: time spent: 6 minutes Blocking streak: 51 days

My IBS is feeling better, but I had a bad sinus headache yesterday. And while I can sometimes work through IBS discomfort, I absolutely can’t work with a headache. Every time I try, the headache only gets worse and can sometimes turn into a full-blown migraine. So I did only a little work yesterday, just to keep my streak. Streak versus public accountability I know I talked a few days ago about how my writing streak took the place of the public accountability of my blog, but I realized something yesterday that made me realize that maybe I was wrong. The writing streak does ensure I do some writing every day and keep my thoughts in my story world, which makes me much more efficient on the days when I feel well and can get a lot done. It forces me to work when I’m not feeling 100%, and I thought that was all I needed to combat laziness. But I realized that while there are a lot of days where I feel like I’m microwaved poop, there are some days when I’m feeling okay-ish and I coul...

I had a bit of a flare-up yesterday, but I felt pretty good today and got a lot done. Blocking/outlining and writing at the same time I’m having a hard time because I’m blocking the rest of the scenes from book 4, but at the same time I’m writing chapter 5 of the same book, and whenever I start either writing or blocking, I have a moment of confusion about where I am in the story timeline. It’s very disorienting, and I end up needing to re-read things in order to remember what has already happened and what hasn’t happened yet. I don’t have a great memory to begin with, and deliberately working on two different points in time in the same series is taxing my poor brain. Now I wish I’d done all the blocking first so that I only need to write the book. So far, I’ve been working about 30 minutes a day on writing, which is 400-500 words. But because I’m having so much trouble in orienting myself in the story timeline, I think what I’m going to try to do is do only the minimum 100 wor...

Merry Christmas! I kept up my writing streak and worked a little even today. It helped that Christmas this year was quiet. I originally started this daily writing blog to be a sort of lab notebook to record my experiments to improve my productivity—what I tried, what happened, and an evaluation of the experiment. But a second reason for starting this daily writing blog was for public accountability for my writing. It worked to make sure that I did some writing every day and didn’t slack off, because I had to blog about how much writing I’d gotten done. It was harder to admit when I’d only worked for a short amount of time, or only written a few words. This was before my health really derailed me. Now I’m kind of lucky when I feel well enough to get an hour of work done. But I’ve also noticed that since starting my writing streak, the streak has taken the place of public accountability. Instead of needing to blog about how much work I did (or didn’t) get done each day, I am alwa...

Need to do more exercise to improve energy levels I’ve been slowly feeling better, but still not enough to get 5 hours of work a day (the other 3 hours, I do my Japanese study and reading to make a full 8 hour workday). There were a few days I worked more than one hour, but most days I’m working only the bare minimum. I’m feeling a bit disappointed in myself that I can’t get more done, but lately I just haven’t had the energy to try to push myself when I’m feeling like fly-meets-windshield. I think it’s because I’ve been lazy about exercising—if I feel a bit uncomfortable, I just don’t go exercise. For a while I wasn’t able to exercise at all because my IBS was so bad, but now that it’s getting better, I can go out walking without discomfort, so I should just do it, as Nike would say. Keeping up my writing streak has improved my productivity I’ve still kept up my writing streak and made sure to do at least the bare minimum of 100 words every day. I’m actually really grateful I ...

How I’ve been I haven’t posted in a few days since I didn’t really have much to post. I had marketing followup tasks to do after I had that Facebook event on Saturday, which took a few hours every day. I’m always surprised how much time marketing takes. Time always seems to fly by faster when I’m doing it, but I can’t say I’m really enjoying myself as much as when I’m writing. Yet when I’m writing, the time passes so slowly. I guess when I do marketing, there’s just so much to do that I just focus and get it done, even when it takes several hours. I haven’t been feeling terrible, but I’ve been about at 60-70% of normal. Every so often I’ll get some IBS discomfort, and the distraction as well as the tiredness that follows often makes it hard to get work done, but I’ve been keeping up my writing streak and doing at least the minimum each day. Hours of work a day I still haven’t gotten back to a full 5 hour work day, but I’m doing 1-3 hours. I also read in Telling Lies for Fun and...

As of today, I’ve written every day for 30 days in a row! it was really hard on days when I wasn’t feeling well, but I set a low daily minimum of 100 words, which was easy to hit no matter how I was feeling. I don’t yet have a reward system for my streak milestones, which I know I really need. At the moment, I’m motivated to keep up my streak simply because I don’t want to break it, since I know it will probably depress me if I do. Since I don’t have a reward system yet, I just made a 30-day writing streak badge for myself. I’ll post this on my Daily Writing Blog sidebar. I had a marketing event today, a Facebook party thrown by an author friend of mine and the other authors in the box set she belongs to. These kinds of things are great because I get to meet new readers, but the party itself is really easy because I can write my posts in advance and then post one every 30 minutes. My biggest beef is how hard it is to respond to replies, because Facebook doesn’t make it easy to ...

Streaks despite sickness I had an IBS flare up the past couple days, but it wasn’t too bad and while I only did the bare minimum of work those days, I’m feeling better today despite still feeling a bit of discomfort. (There was also one day where I actually did feel better, but I had a lot of marketing work to do, so I only did the bare minimum of writing and spent a couple hours doing the marketing.) Keeping up my streak during the flare up wasn’t as hard as before. Maybe it’s because I’m getting close to 30 days and I would feel terrible to break the streak at this point. So that motivates me to do some work every day to keep up my streak. It occurred to me today that if I ever did break my streak, I think I would be so disheartened that I wouldn’t start it up again (I’d just work and not record days in a row that I did some writing). I guess, for my personality, that’s the problem with streaks. I know I’m very achievement-oriented, so failing something I was really working har...

Sorry I’ve been AWOL For the past couple weeks (except for a few days for Thanksgiving), I’ve been working about 1-3 hours every day, with the time split between writing, editing what I wrote, and blocking. However, I didn’t have anything of note happen, so I didn’t post on my blog. I suppose that defeats the purpose of a daily writing blog , but I felt a bit stupid to keep posting the same thing: I was sick, I did a little work, rinse and repeat. Slightly improved health I’m glad I at least did a bit of work every day, and I kept my writing and blocking streaks alive. It helped that I wasn’t quite as sick as I was earlier this month, and so I was able to spend at least an hour or two every day to work, even if I was rather tired and/or in a little pain for the rest of the day. When my IBS or my headaches were really bad, it was hard to make myself do a little bit of writing or editing or blocking, and I found myself resenting my decision to start a streak. But I’m finally star...

I both like and hate streaks I managed to keep up my writing and blocking streaks for the past few days with at least 100 words added to each. The problem was that I almost didn’t do my writing and blocking yesterday. It was mostly my own fault—I had more energy in the morning, but I wasn’t feeling all that great and I thought I might get more done if I waited until I felt better. The problem was that later I was really tired and had almost no energy. I pretty much had to force myself to get those 100 words done—I did them on my phone rather than going to my computer—and I almost decided just to break the streaks because I wasn’t feeling well. I fully realize how streaks can help with keeping up the writing. I think that keeping up my writing and blocking streaks for the past few days helped me get into the writing today more seamlessly. I had done a little bit of work in the book every day, so I didn’t need to reread what I’d written before to refresh my memory. It was almost like...

Different work in different places I’ve heard this advice before, but I never really thought how I could put it into practice, and then I did it by accident today. While I can do my Japanese flashcards on my phone most of the time, when I have to figure out mnemonics for new kanji, I usually like to do this on my computer since I’m searching for mnemonics on the Wanikani and Kanji Koohi websites and then copying or typing them into Anki. I also tend to like doing my grammar SRS on my computer since I have to type in the answers for the cloze flashcards on the Bunpro website. However today I happened to bring my iPad and bluetooth keyboard to the dining room table while I was eating breakfast. I did my flashcards on my phone, but I also have Anki on my iPad, and my flashcards sync between the two. I opened up my iPad to add some new mnemonics to Anki using a cheap bluetooth keyboard that I just bought. Then it occurred to me that I could do my grammar SRS using my bluetooth keyboa...

Working around my health On Tuesday I had to take a sick day, but for the other days this past week, I’ve woken up feeling better—but that only lasts for the morning. After getting some work done, I get a bout of IBS and have to stop work, so I haven’t been feeling well enough to post my blog at the end of my writing day. I’ve been writing a little every day, but I haven’t gotten a lot of blocking done. At first I felt bad about not getting a lot of work done, but I looked at my Toggl timer, and I’ve gotten 1-2 hours of work done everyday, and this is despite not feeling well. It made me realize that I should be happy with what I can get done despite my health. I need to focus on being satisfied with the work I get done rather than focusing on the work I don’t get done. I also need to remember to be grateful for the time that I do have each day when I’m feeling well enough to get work done at all. There were so many days in the past couple months where I was so sick or exhauste...

Unmotivated to maintain streak I woke up with a bad headache yesterday, but I still managed to get a lot of work done. But ironically, I almost broke my writing streak. I did some blogging and wrote my monthly newsletters, and I finished up some things I had to do in relation to the marketing last month from the release of the multi-author anthology. It actually took a long time, nearly 7 hours, and by the end of the day, I was pretty tired. I almost forgot to do some work on my book to keep up my streak, and when I did remember, I was rather unmotivated to actually do it. I thought about why that was. I think it’s because I don’t have any sort of reward set up for if I do hit streak milestones. In doing my Japanese study, there’s a built-in streak record for the grammar SRS website I use, Bunpro.jp. You don’t get anything except a badge for each streak milestone (10 days, 30 days, etc.), but I still feel more motivated to try to keep up that streak than my writing streak. Maybe ...

So I was sick again, what else is new Last week Wednesday, I should have clued in to the fact something was wrong when I sat down in front of the computer and my brain felt fried even though I hadn’t gotten any work done yet. I thought it was just tiredness, and maybe half-laziness, but I decided to just get my 100 words done and then take the rest of the day off. I felt a bit guilty, because if I’d been doing biology work, a fried brain wasn’t reason enough to take a sick day. But then again, I can do biology work with a tired brain—running an assay only requires a bit of concentration and isn’t very mentally taxing. Writing, on the other hand, requires full focus and brainpower or else it’ll turn into just an hour of me staring at the computer screen and getting nothing done. But I had forgotten that I have to manage my low energy levels, even when I don’t necessarily feel pain from my IBS and headaches. In hindsight, I’m glad I took the day off because another sinus headache t...

Dictating directly into Dragon is a bit slow It took a little longer before I got started on work today since I had house chores to do. I decided to try doing the dictation directly in Dragon so that I could see the words as they appeared. The problem was that I had to spend some of the time setting up Dragon and my blocking notes, and I also wanted to train Dragon with some words it kept missing. I expected today’s dictation to be slow because of all that, and I also was trying to get used to speaking and then seeing my words on the screen. I also noticed that I wasn’t trying to vomit-write—instead, I was writing like I normally do, when I’m writing slowly and editing as I go. In fact, I did a bit of editing within Dragon—instead of just repeating the sentence like I do when recording my dictation, I would instead delete what I just wrote and then repeat the sentence. So maybe that also contributed to my slow writing speed. I also noticed that Dragon takes a while before my wo...

For once I didn’t wake up with health issues! Praise God! I even got a chance to go for a walk today. I already did my Japanese study and am ready to dive into work. Path of least resistance I did my 100 words of writing yesterday on my computer, and in thinking about it today, I realized that one of the reasons dictation has been difficult for me is because typing is so much easier to do. I’ve made it easy by keeping the microphone plugged in, but it takes time and (a little bit of frustration) to fire up Dragon in order to transpose the recording, and then taking the time to edit it.  With typing, on the other hand, I eliminate the Dragon transpose step, and the editing step is much faster because my typing has less errors, so it’s easier to edit what I’ve typed. However, if I get much better at dictation, I’ll be able to write more in a shorter time period, and if I can dictate more cleanly, the editing won’t be quite as bad as it is now. So eventually, words per hour will (...

I am roadkill It’s been extremely frustrating to wake up so many mornings feeling like a dump truck ran me over. My sinus headaches have not let up, and even now I still have a throbbing pain behind my right eye that won’t go away no matter how many drugs I throw at it. However, I’m grateful that the drugs took the worst edge off the pain and let me get some work done today. I think I’ve been getting better at managing my health issues, knowing when to take more medicine and when to just back off and rest. Japanese I forgot to mention my Japanese studies, but on days that I have more energy, I’ve been doing it before I do any writing work. I find I definitely feel better when I do it first, before my writing. There were a couple days when I did it after I did my writing—I only did 100 words because I wasn’t feeling well, but then I felt better a little later and decided to do some Japanese. But maybe because I was tired by then because of my health issues, or just because it ...

Dealing with more health issues Today started off very badly because I woke up with a sinus headache. I can usually get work done even if I have IBS issues unless they are very bad, but working with a headache is almost impossible. Whenever I have tried, every single time the headache only gets worse and turns into a full-blown migraine. Ironically, my energy levels are rather good today, probably because my IBS has been better for a few days and so it doesn’t make me tired. Which made it doubly frustrating that I couldn’t spend much time at my computer. So I brought out the big guns (strong drugs). Once they kicked in, I decided to try dictating my fiction. Dictation: reduce resistance What I’ve discovered with dictation (and which really should have been obvious to me) is that I need to set up my equipment so that it’s very easy for me to just get started. If I have to bother to do something even as small as plug in my microphone or open a recording app, it’s just that litt...

Kept up my writing streak Even though I’ve been sick the past week, I still managed to keep up my writing streak. I only did 100 words a day, and most of the time they were absolutely terrible words, but I still managed to do a little bit of writing every day. I felt absolutely horrible and there were a couple times when I just wanted to not do my writing for the day. After all, what was the point when it wasn’t feeling well? The reason I wasn’t writing was because of my health, not because of laziness or neglect. But I still did my 100 words a day, grumbling and complaining. However, I have to admit that when I did some writing today, it wasn’t all that difficult since I’ve been writing a little bit in my novel every day. When I have taken a break from writing before, getting back into it is a little mentally painful because it had become a bit unfamiliar, and also getting back into the momentum of writing is difficult. But this time, since I’d been reading the scene a littl...

Taking a sick day today I always take one or two sick days a month for "regularly recurring womanly issues” (is that a polite and politically correct way to say it?). The problem is that sometimes those one or two days extends to three or four or five days, not because I’m in a lot of pain, but just because I’m uncomfortable and tired and perhaps a little lazy. But this time I’m in the middle of my writing streak and email streak. In doing a little work each day, I won’t be completely relaxing, so I’m hoping that it will prevent me from feeling lazy about returning to work, and will motivate me to get back to work sooner. Progress on my Japanese study: I’ll be doing my Japanese study first again. I really enjoyed doing it first yesterday—I felt a feeling of accomplishment and relief that it was done early, and I felt like it freed me up to focus on my writing. Sometimes I would have a nagging feeling about still needing to do my Japanese after my writing work was done. W...