Day 241: Research in the middle of writing
My back feels a little better right now than it did yesterday, so hopefully it’ll stay that way throughout the day.
I checked my email earlier today before starting work, but I forgot to start my Toggl timer so I don’t know how long that took. I also managed to get my house chores out of the way, so I’ve cleared the decks, and can now focus on my work for the rest of the day.
I’ve got two scenes that need to be self-edited since I didn’t do editing yesterday, so I’ll set a timer and do a couple editing sprints. If I don’t finish the scenes in an hour, I’ll stop anyway and get to writing. That way I’ll get both editing and writing done, without the editing piling up too much.
***
I ran into an interesting problem while writing a scene. I had a fight to write, and originally I just left a note for myself to do research and watch a fight to write the scene. I then tried to move on to continue writing the scene, but when I checked my blocking notes, I realized that the point of view character had a significant emotional shift during the fight. The movement of the fight itself would impact the character's emotions.
It was kind of like that dance in the BBC Pride and Prejudice when Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle are verbally sparring during the steps of the dance. The scriptwriter couldn't write the dance later because the dialogue during the dance was significant.
I thought about the emotional shift that needed to happen, and wondered if I could just write that around the movements of the fight, but then realized that it would be easier to pick the motions of the fight first, then let that determine how the emotional shift happens, as opposed to writing the emotional shift and then trying to find motions to a fight that would match.
So I had to stop and do some fight research--basically I just watched a couple of Conor McGregor's fights on Youtube in slow motion, which was actually quite fascinating. A fight is so quick that I don't see the clever technical aspects of an exchange except in slow motion.
I wrote the fight, and I think it's actually quite good, although I'll look at it again when I self-edit to see if it's too detailed or not. And my character underwent his emotional shift. But my writing speed was a bit slow because I had done the research. I think it was necessary for me to do it this way, because I think the scene turned out better than if I'd left a big gaping hole in the scene and tried to write around it.
***
I got three 25-minute sprints done and then got some bad IBS issues. I was going to call it a day, but the IBS lessened a bit and I decided to do just one more monster in 4thewords.com, which ended up being a great motivator. After one monster, I continued to do another, and ended up doing a total of 6 sprints, which was what I had hoped to do today. I finished the scene I was writing and started another.
Four hours of work still seems rather pathetic compared to a full workday when I was a biologist, but I'm starting to realize that the writing is a lot harder mentally than it was to feed cells and write reports. I also need to spend time refilling the creative well so I don't have another two weeks of burnout like I did after Thanksgiving last year, so after I finish writing, I will spend some time reading or watching Netflix, or perhaps doing some fun brainstorming for my Christian Contemporary Romance series that I'll hopefully start after I finish this Regency series.
If I'm lucky, this schedule of 4 hours of writing/editing every day will enable me to finish a 100k word book every 2 months, without feeling burned out. I feel like I have so many books in me and I just want to get them all out as fast as possible. But I also want to keep a steady working pace that will enable me to still be able to do some reading and my house chores everyday.
Blocking: time spent: 0
Editing: Time spent: 61 minutes
Writing: Time spent: 2 hours, 58 minutes
Writing: Total number of words: 3773 words
Writing: Average speed: 1501 words per hour
Time spent doing other writing-related business: 13 minutes (I forgot to start my Toggl timer when checking email)
My takeaway for today: Sometimes doing research to write a section of a scene can be necessary.
I checked my email earlier today before starting work, but I forgot to start my Toggl timer so I don’t know how long that took. I also managed to get my house chores out of the way, so I’ve cleared the decks, and can now focus on my work for the rest of the day.
I’ve got two scenes that need to be self-edited since I didn’t do editing yesterday, so I’ll set a timer and do a couple editing sprints. If I don’t finish the scenes in an hour, I’ll stop anyway and get to writing. That way I’ll get both editing and writing done, without the editing piling up too much.
***
I ran into an interesting problem while writing a scene. I had a fight to write, and originally I just left a note for myself to do research and watch a fight to write the scene. I then tried to move on to continue writing the scene, but when I checked my blocking notes, I realized that the point of view character had a significant emotional shift during the fight. The movement of the fight itself would impact the character's emotions.
It was kind of like that dance in the BBC Pride and Prejudice when Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle are verbally sparring during the steps of the dance. The scriptwriter couldn't write the dance later because the dialogue during the dance was significant.
I thought about the emotional shift that needed to happen, and wondered if I could just write that around the movements of the fight, but then realized that it would be easier to pick the motions of the fight first, then let that determine how the emotional shift happens, as opposed to writing the emotional shift and then trying to find motions to a fight that would match.
So I had to stop and do some fight research--basically I just watched a couple of Conor McGregor's fights on Youtube in slow motion, which was actually quite fascinating. A fight is so quick that I don't see the clever technical aspects of an exchange except in slow motion.
I wrote the fight, and I think it's actually quite good, although I'll look at it again when I self-edit to see if it's too detailed or not. And my character underwent his emotional shift. But my writing speed was a bit slow because I had done the research. I think it was necessary for me to do it this way, because I think the scene turned out better than if I'd left a big gaping hole in the scene and tried to write around it.
***
I got three 25-minute sprints done and then got some bad IBS issues. I was going to call it a day, but the IBS lessened a bit and I decided to do just one more monster in 4thewords.com, which ended up being a great motivator. After one monster, I continued to do another, and ended up doing a total of 6 sprints, which was what I had hoped to do today. I finished the scene I was writing and started another.
Four hours of work still seems rather pathetic compared to a full workday when I was a biologist, but I'm starting to realize that the writing is a lot harder mentally than it was to feed cells and write reports. I also need to spend time refilling the creative well so I don't have another two weeks of burnout like I did after Thanksgiving last year, so after I finish writing, I will spend some time reading or watching Netflix, or perhaps doing some fun brainstorming for my Christian Contemporary Romance series that I'll hopefully start after I finish this Regency series.
If I'm lucky, this schedule of 4 hours of writing/editing every day will enable me to finish a 100k word book every 2 months, without feeling burned out. I feel like I have so many books in me and I just want to get them all out as fast as possible. But I also want to keep a steady working pace that will enable me to still be able to do some reading and my house chores everyday.
Blocking: time spent: 0
Editing: Time spent: 61 minutes
Writing: Time spent: 2 hours, 58 minutes
Writing: Total number of words: 3773 words
Writing: Average speed: 1501 words per hour
Time spent doing other writing-related business: 13 minutes (I forgot to start my Toggl timer when checking email)
My takeaway for today: Sometimes doing research to write a section of a scene can be necessary.
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