Day 252: Evaluation 5
It’s been a while since I’ve done an evaluation, so I figured I was overdue.
In no particular order:
I had some really bad health issues lately that kept me from writing entirely.
However, I found it strange that I’ve been feeling very creative and motivated yesterday and today, despite getting in a lot of work hours yesterday. I think it’s because I haven’t had any IBS issues for the first time in a couple weeks. Not even a little discomfort.
This is kind of duh! in hindsight, but I think I underestimated how much my IBS was affecting my energy levels. I’ve been careful about what I ate, but I was also trying to figure out exactly what I could and couldn’t eat, so it resulted in some bad IBS bouts.
So now I know I really need to be strict about what I’m putting in my mouth so that my health doesn’t adversely affect my energy for work!
Another sort of duh! moment in hindsight, but sprints have been helping me with my productivity.
At first they didn’t help all that much because I would get derailed during breaks. In fact, I still do—I’m too easily distracted and I’m still trying to figure out tricks to stop myself from doing that.
But once I realized that I need to stay put at my desk during my short breaks, it got better. Doing a 25-minute sprint is easier, mentally, than thinking I have to “start writing.” Doing 6 sprints is easier mentally than thinking I have to get 3000 words done today.
In terms of absolute writing speed, when I factor in my breaks, the sprints haven’t really been helping me write any faster. While I can write fast during the sprint, and I tend to write faster with shorter sprints of 15-20 minutes, that also means I have more breaks, and my overall words written per hour is about the same.
However, because they help me move forward in finishing the story (since I am mere likely to “do a sprint” as opposed to “start writing”), they improve my overall productivity and I’ve been able to finish books in fewer weeks than before.
I’m still experimenting with various writing routines to help me be more focused and productive. Elana Johnson’s books, Writing and Marketing Systems and Writing and Releasing Rapidly, talk about thinking outside the box and figuring out what works for you, which is what I’ve been doing to try to find out what writing routines work best for me.
As I found out a few days ago, I work better earlier in the day. When I had wasted time and then tried to get to work, it was hard for me to shift mindset to my writing so much later in the day, and my writing speed was truly abysmal. So I need to make sure I do my writing work earlier in the day, and I need to be more disciplined about not being distracted by other work before the writing gets done.
I had forgotten I had this idea, but I’m going to try setting an alarm on my Apple watch when I take a break so that it might snap me out of any distractions that take over me. I can snooze it if I'm still doing a house chore, but it might remind me to get back to work if I'm just wasting time.
I was reminded that I need to do certain things to clear the decks before I start writing, which includes house chores. I discovered that I won’t do them after work because I’ll be too tired. Most productivity books say to do the writing first, but I realized that it doesn’t apply to me because for me, writing is my day job. Assuming I’m not feeling sick, I will likely get at least some writing done that day, so doing it first isn’t absolutely necessary. So I have integrated house chores and exercise into the things I do before I start writing. Otherwise, I think I’ll do them later but then I don’t.
I attempted to write more on my new Freewrite Traveler by Astrohaus, in order to try get into creative flow state easier and faster, but I ended up being frustrated because of the limitations of the nature of e-Ink technology—I type relatively fast, and it takes a second before my typing shows up on the screen. Correcting typos is a pain since I’ve usually typed a line or two before it shows up on the screen and I have to tab back to correct it, which disrupts my writing flow. And whenever I tried to ignore the typo, it BUGGED me so much I eventually went back to fix it.
I also tried using the Alphasmart, whose screen does not have the lag after typing, and while it worked well, I found that typing for long hours on the keyboard wasn’t as nice as my gaming keyboard. I probably do write faster on the Alphasmart, but since I’m typing for so long, I decided to forego the Alphasmart in favor of a nicer keyboard that’s easier on my hands.
I also discovered I prefer the dark theme in Scrivener and on my computer, so lately I’ve been typing in Scrivener.
I also spent a lot of time trying to figure out if I want to edit as I write or not. Editing as I go makes for cleaner final copy, especially when my self-editing was at it’s most reluctant, but I also wanted to get more into flow state when writing, which is disrupted if I do any editing. Flow state usually results in better prose, as well as faster writing speed.
Eventually when I started doing the cycling (see below under Book creation process), that helped reduce the need/desire for cleaner copy, and so I stopped editing as I go. When I have a research question or I can’t think of the word I want and need to search a thesaurus, I’ll leave a note for myself in [brackets] to search for and take care of later.
I was thinking that it might be good for me to do some fiction writing every day (although I’m not doing this right at this moment since I’m writing book 3 in my series). The problem is that I will usually do outlining or blocking for a book all in one burst, in which case I can’t write prose for the book I’m working on (see below under time tracking). So while I was doing the blocking for book 3, I started writing prose on another book in the series, just 500 words a day. I think it helped keep me from feeling rusty when I started writing book 3.
I’ve been trying to figure out reward systems that put me in a happy mood for work. Elana Johnson uses candy, but I’ve been making my own homemade sodas using sweetened extra-strength fruit tea mixed with sparkling water (I absolutely love soda but haven’t had it much in recent years). I also discovered that even though I am a tactile creator, certain visual stimuli can put me in a happy mood for work, so I bought some really pretty quartz bracelets that I can look at occasionally when I’m working. And as I mentioned before, using the writing game website 4thewords.com also puts me in a good mood for work since I love defeating monsters! Lately I’ve been writing in Scrivener and copying and pasting the words into 4thewords because the dark theme of Scrivener seems to be easier on my eyes.
Stress derailed me completely a few times, especially because my IBS was giving me issues.
As a result, I decided to de-stress my To Do list, especially the things I’m not very good at in self-publishing. I figured out that I do better when I do related things all at once in a burst, so I adjusted my schedule and the deadlines for certain things (like making sure I contact my cover designer earlier than before) so that I can do all my marketing and self-publishing stuff in the week after I finish a rough draft. This includes writing emails for my newsletter and Street Team (I simplified that, also, and eliminated some of the emails I was going to send), getting ISBNs, updating my website, etc. That way I can get done everything that can be done ahead of time, and all at once. Then when I release the book, I only have a few things to do on certain days, but the rest is already completed.
I’m still experimenting with this but I’m only writing 5 days a week and I’m keeping Saturdays (and Sundays if necessary) for doing marketing and self-publishing work. It’s easier for me to have marketing on a certain day rather than during my writing weekdays, because it’s hard for me to shift mental gears from marketing to writing, or vice versa. Also, since marketing isn’t my favorite thing to do, consolidating it all on Saturdays makes my weekdays much less stressful. I also have discovered that doing the various self-publishing and marketing items gets easier the more I do it.
I realized that I was stressing about my writing speed, and I’ve since decided not to focus on that. Instead, I’m focusing on the number of hours I work each day (see below) and on keeping moving forward with the writing, rather than words per hour speed.
Also, I limited my social media again, even though all the writing books say that you need a social media presence in order to sell books. The fact is that I’m terrible at social media and it was causing me stress. My only strength in social media is probably blogging (which is essentially writing). So I’m focusing on my strengths, which is writing, and not worrying about social media anymore except the bare minimum I need to do for the multi-author box set I’m involved in, and that will end at the end of the year.
I tried doing dictation to try to increase my writing speed. I know from reading online articles from real people who have made dictation work for them that success in dictation involves really committing to it, so I tried doing that. But the reality was that dictation was really stressful and I ended up not wanting to write, and so in order to keep working and reduce my stress, I quit the dictation experiment (yet again). Maybe someday I’ll be more motivated to commit to the dictation and I’ll be able to learn how to make it work for me.
My writing stalled one day when I inadvertently (from a Street Team member) got negative feedback on my book. I’m still really sensitive to negative feedback, but this time I found other authors on one of my Facebook groups who are similar to myself, so now I don’t feel so bad about this weakness of mine. After this negative feedback derailed my writing, I decided that I just can’t afford to be unproductive for a few days every time I read how someone didn’t like my book, so I am continuing my tendency to avoid reading any reviews.
I’m still being strict about tracking my writing time. I log in the time for each sprint, words written, and writing speed.
The problem is that I don’t write prose every day, depending on where I am in the book creation process. I tend to do outlining and characterization first, then blocking, then writing, with self-editing at the same time as the writing.
So the normal convention of writing a certain number of words every day doesn’t work for me at all.
I also have been logging the time it takes for me to do the blocking and self-editing for each book, as well as the time I had taken to outline it. I was surprised at how much time self-editing takes, but now I know and can plan for it. As a result, I’m getting a better view of how many hours it takes me to write a book, from outline to editing.
And since I know those numbers, I’ve been instead making daily goals of how many hours a day I write, rather than daily word count goals. For this current series, since I already outlined all the books ahead of time, I figured out that if I do about 5 hours of blocking/writing/editing work for 5 days a week, I can finish a 100,000 word book in about 8 weeks. If I do only 3 hours a day, I can finish in 12 weeks.
8 or 12 weeks is great for me. It’s much faster than I was writing when I was under contract with my publishers (probably because I just wasn’t very disciplined then). It’s not as fast as some other authors who are releasing their books rapidly (some of them 1-2 books a month), but I think it’s about the speed I can handle at this point in my life, with my health issues and energy levels.
Also, 3-5 hours a day of work enables me to have 2-3 hours for reading and refilling the creative well, which I have learned the hard way is something I desperately need in order to not have mental burnout.
In writing only 5 days a week, I’m hoping that keeping Saturdays for marketing and Sunday as my rest day will also help keep my stress levels lower.
I mentioned above that I discovered that I tend to do better when I do tasks one at a time, all the same type of tasks in a burst. This is true for my marketing—I prefer when I do all my marketing in one day rather than trying to switch between a marketing mindset and a writing mindset on the same day.
I also realized that I prefer doing the bulk of my blocking work at once, before I start the writing. So I ended up quitting NaNoWriMo because I wanted to do the blocking for my book first before I continued writing it, and since blocking is more like outlining than writing, I didn’t finish my manuscript in November. To be honest, I had a mental meltdown after Thanksgiving and didn’t work much on my book throughout December and much of January.
However, because I hate self-editing and have found that I procrastinate doing it, I found that instead of doing the self-editing all in a burst, it’s easier to get myself to do it when I do the self-editing at the same time as the writing. I’ve heard it called cycling. I’ll write a scene, then self-edit it the next day before I start writing for the day. Sometimes I let the self-editing pile up a little, but never very much because I don’t want to get to a place where I’ll procrastinate doing it.
I think I’ve learned a lot about myself in the past several months. Every writer is different, and I really needed this daily writing diary and all the messy stuff I blogged in order to be able to look back and see my habits and trends.
I think I am finally figuring out how to be most productive for where I am right now in terms of my health and mental well-being. I recently had enough data from tracking the time it takes me to do the blocking/writing/editing of a book to figure out how long it takes me and to develop a pace I can reasonably sustain (3 hours a day), as well as a stretch goal (5 hours a day) that’s a little difficult for me but not impossible, and which won’t hurt me if I can’t make it.
I am also figuring out methods for my writer’s routines that help me be most productive, like using sprinting, leaving notes for myself when writing, cycling, and doing marketing only on Saturdays. I have also recently figured out an optimal publishing schedule so that I can get done all the things about self-publishing and marketing that I’m not very good at.
Hopefully I can see if I can keep up this pace for the next several months.
In no particular order:
Good health = good work
I had some really bad health issues lately that kept me from writing entirely.
However, I found it strange that I’ve been feeling very creative and motivated yesterday and today, despite getting in a lot of work hours yesterday. I think it’s because I haven’t had any IBS issues for the first time in a couple weeks. Not even a little discomfort.
This is kind of duh! in hindsight, but I think I underestimated how much my IBS was affecting my energy levels. I’ve been careful about what I ate, but I was also trying to figure out exactly what I could and couldn’t eat, so it resulted in some bad IBS bouts.
So now I know I really need to be strict about what I’m putting in my mouth so that my health doesn’t adversely affect my energy for work!
Sprints
Another sort of duh! moment in hindsight, but sprints have been helping me with my productivity.
At first they didn’t help all that much because I would get derailed during breaks. In fact, I still do—I’m too easily distracted and I’m still trying to figure out tricks to stop myself from doing that.
But once I realized that I need to stay put at my desk during my short breaks, it got better. Doing a 25-minute sprint is easier, mentally, than thinking I have to “start writing.” Doing 6 sprints is easier mentally than thinking I have to get 3000 words done today.
In terms of absolute writing speed, when I factor in my breaks, the sprints haven’t really been helping me write any faster. While I can write fast during the sprint, and I tend to write faster with shorter sprints of 15-20 minutes, that also means I have more breaks, and my overall words written per hour is about the same.
However, because they help me move forward in finishing the story (since I am mere likely to “do a sprint” as opposed to “start writing”), they improve my overall productivity and I’ve been able to finish books in fewer weeks than before.
Writing routines
I’m still experimenting with various writing routines to help me be more focused and productive. Elana Johnson’s books, Writing and Marketing Systems and Writing and Releasing Rapidly, talk about thinking outside the box and figuring out what works for you, which is what I’ve been doing to try to find out what writing routines work best for me.
As I found out a few days ago, I work better earlier in the day. When I had wasted time and then tried to get to work, it was hard for me to shift mindset to my writing so much later in the day, and my writing speed was truly abysmal. So I need to make sure I do my writing work earlier in the day, and I need to be more disciplined about not being distracted by other work before the writing gets done.
I had forgotten I had this idea, but I’m going to try setting an alarm on my Apple watch when I take a break so that it might snap me out of any distractions that take over me. I can snooze it if I'm still doing a house chore, but it might remind me to get back to work if I'm just wasting time.
I was reminded that I need to do certain things to clear the decks before I start writing, which includes house chores. I discovered that I won’t do them after work because I’ll be too tired. Most productivity books say to do the writing first, but I realized that it doesn’t apply to me because for me, writing is my day job. Assuming I’m not feeling sick, I will likely get at least some writing done that day, so doing it first isn’t absolutely necessary. So I have integrated house chores and exercise into the things I do before I start writing. Otherwise, I think I’ll do them later but then I don’t.
I attempted to write more on my new Freewrite Traveler by Astrohaus, in order to try get into creative flow state easier and faster, but I ended up being frustrated because of the limitations of the nature of e-Ink technology—I type relatively fast, and it takes a second before my typing shows up on the screen. Correcting typos is a pain since I’ve usually typed a line or two before it shows up on the screen and I have to tab back to correct it, which disrupts my writing flow. And whenever I tried to ignore the typo, it BUGGED me so much I eventually went back to fix it.
I also tried using the Alphasmart, whose screen does not have the lag after typing, and while it worked well, I found that typing for long hours on the keyboard wasn’t as nice as my gaming keyboard. I probably do write faster on the Alphasmart, but since I’m typing for so long, I decided to forego the Alphasmart in favor of a nicer keyboard that’s easier on my hands.
I also discovered I prefer the dark theme in Scrivener and on my computer, so lately I’ve been typing in Scrivener.
I also spent a lot of time trying to figure out if I want to edit as I write or not. Editing as I go makes for cleaner final copy, especially when my self-editing was at it’s most reluctant, but I also wanted to get more into flow state when writing, which is disrupted if I do any editing. Flow state usually results in better prose, as well as faster writing speed.
Eventually when I started doing the cycling (see below under Book creation process), that helped reduce the need/desire for cleaner copy, and so I stopped editing as I go. When I have a research question or I can’t think of the word I want and need to search a thesaurus, I’ll leave a note for myself in [brackets] to search for and take care of later.
I was thinking that it might be good for me to do some fiction writing every day (although I’m not doing this right at this moment since I’m writing book 3 in my series). The problem is that I will usually do outlining or blocking for a book all in one burst, in which case I can’t write prose for the book I’m working on (see below under time tracking). So while I was doing the blocking for book 3, I started writing prose on another book in the series, just 500 words a day. I think it helped keep me from feeling rusty when I started writing book 3.
I’ve been trying to figure out reward systems that put me in a happy mood for work. Elana Johnson uses candy, but I’ve been making my own homemade sodas using sweetened extra-strength fruit tea mixed with sparkling water (I absolutely love soda but haven’t had it much in recent years). I also discovered that even though I am a tactile creator, certain visual stimuli can put me in a happy mood for work, so I bought some really pretty quartz bracelets that I can look at occasionally when I’m working. And as I mentioned before, using the writing game website 4thewords.com also puts me in a good mood for work since I love defeating monsters! Lately I’ve been writing in Scrivener and copying and pasting the words into 4thewords because the dark theme of Scrivener seems to be easier on my eyes.
Managing stress
Stress derailed me completely a few times, especially because my IBS was giving me issues.
As a result, I decided to de-stress my To Do list, especially the things I’m not very good at in self-publishing. I figured out that I do better when I do related things all at once in a burst, so I adjusted my schedule and the deadlines for certain things (like making sure I contact my cover designer earlier than before) so that I can do all my marketing and self-publishing stuff in the week after I finish a rough draft. This includes writing emails for my newsletter and Street Team (I simplified that, also, and eliminated some of the emails I was going to send), getting ISBNs, updating my website, etc. That way I can get done everything that can be done ahead of time, and all at once. Then when I release the book, I only have a few things to do on certain days, but the rest is already completed.
I’m still experimenting with this but I’m only writing 5 days a week and I’m keeping Saturdays (and Sundays if necessary) for doing marketing and self-publishing work. It’s easier for me to have marketing on a certain day rather than during my writing weekdays, because it’s hard for me to shift mental gears from marketing to writing, or vice versa. Also, since marketing isn’t my favorite thing to do, consolidating it all on Saturdays makes my weekdays much less stressful. I also have discovered that doing the various self-publishing and marketing items gets easier the more I do it.
I realized that I was stressing about my writing speed, and I’ve since decided not to focus on that. Instead, I’m focusing on the number of hours I work each day (see below) and on keeping moving forward with the writing, rather than words per hour speed.
Also, I limited my social media again, even though all the writing books say that you need a social media presence in order to sell books. The fact is that I’m terrible at social media and it was causing me stress. My only strength in social media is probably blogging (which is essentially writing). So I’m focusing on my strengths, which is writing, and not worrying about social media anymore except the bare minimum I need to do for the multi-author box set I’m involved in, and that will end at the end of the year.
I tried doing dictation to try to increase my writing speed. I know from reading online articles from real people who have made dictation work for them that success in dictation involves really committing to it, so I tried doing that. But the reality was that dictation was really stressful and I ended up not wanting to write, and so in order to keep working and reduce my stress, I quit the dictation experiment (yet again). Maybe someday I’ll be more motivated to commit to the dictation and I’ll be able to learn how to make it work for me.
My writing stalled one day when I inadvertently (from a Street Team member) got negative feedback on my book. I’m still really sensitive to negative feedback, but this time I found other authors on one of my Facebook groups who are similar to myself, so now I don’t feel so bad about this weakness of mine. After this negative feedback derailed my writing, I decided that I just can’t afford to be unproductive for a few days every time I read how someone didn’t like my book, so I am continuing my tendency to avoid reading any reviews.
Time tracking
I’m still being strict about tracking my writing time. I log in the time for each sprint, words written, and writing speed.
The problem is that I don’t write prose every day, depending on where I am in the book creation process. I tend to do outlining and characterization first, then blocking, then writing, with self-editing at the same time as the writing.
So the normal convention of writing a certain number of words every day doesn’t work for me at all.
I also have been logging the time it takes for me to do the blocking and self-editing for each book, as well as the time I had taken to outline it. I was surprised at how much time self-editing takes, but now I know and can plan for it. As a result, I’m getting a better view of how many hours it takes me to write a book, from outline to editing.
And since I know those numbers, I’ve been instead making daily goals of how many hours a day I write, rather than daily word count goals. For this current series, since I already outlined all the books ahead of time, I figured out that if I do about 5 hours of blocking/writing/editing work for 5 days a week, I can finish a 100,000 word book in about 8 weeks. If I do only 3 hours a day, I can finish in 12 weeks.
8 or 12 weeks is great for me. It’s much faster than I was writing when I was under contract with my publishers (probably because I just wasn’t very disciplined then). It’s not as fast as some other authors who are releasing their books rapidly (some of them 1-2 books a month), but I think it’s about the speed I can handle at this point in my life, with my health issues and energy levels.
Also, 3-5 hours a day of work enables me to have 2-3 hours for reading and refilling the creative well, which I have learned the hard way is something I desperately need in order to not have mental burnout.
In writing only 5 days a week, I’m hoping that keeping Saturdays for marketing and Sunday as my rest day will also help keep my stress levels lower.
Book creation process
I mentioned above that I discovered that I tend to do better when I do tasks one at a time, all the same type of tasks in a burst. This is true for my marketing—I prefer when I do all my marketing in one day rather than trying to switch between a marketing mindset and a writing mindset on the same day.
I also realized that I prefer doing the bulk of my blocking work at once, before I start the writing. So I ended up quitting NaNoWriMo because I wanted to do the blocking for my book first before I continued writing it, and since blocking is more like outlining than writing, I didn’t finish my manuscript in November. To be honest, I had a mental meltdown after Thanksgiving and didn’t work much on my book throughout December and much of January.
However, because I hate self-editing and have found that I procrastinate doing it, I found that instead of doing the self-editing all in a burst, it’s easier to get myself to do it when I do the self-editing at the same time as the writing. I’ve heard it called cycling. I’ll write a scene, then self-edit it the next day before I start writing for the day. Sometimes I let the self-editing pile up a little, but never very much because I don’t want to get to a place where I’ll procrastinate doing it.
In conclusion
I think I’ve learned a lot about myself in the past several months. Every writer is different, and I really needed this daily writing diary and all the messy stuff I blogged in order to be able to look back and see my habits and trends.
I think I am finally figuring out how to be most productive for where I am right now in terms of my health and mental well-being. I recently had enough data from tracking the time it takes me to do the blocking/writing/editing of a book to figure out how long it takes me and to develop a pace I can reasonably sustain (3 hours a day), as well as a stretch goal (5 hours a day) that’s a little difficult for me but not impossible, and which won’t hurt me if I can’t make it.
I am also figuring out methods for my writer’s routines that help me be most productive, like using sprinting, leaving notes for myself when writing, cycling, and doing marketing only on Saturdays. I have also recently figured out an optimal publishing schedule so that I can get done all the things about self-publishing and marketing that I’m not very good at.
Hopefully I can see if I can keep up this pace for the next several months.
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