Day 270: Marketing distraction; more dictation
I wanted to get writing done before I checked email, but I got notices (on my phone) that I had a couple urgent emails to answer, so I ended up taking care of those first.
Getting phone notices about my email is my compromise, since I usually try not to do email or social media every day, because it distracts me from writing. If none of the emails are urgent, then I’ll skip checking email for the day. When I’m not doing a blog tour, I’ll only check social media on Saturdays. I’ve been doing this for a few weeks now, and so far, the system has worked well for me, and I’ve been able to focus on my writing much better than before.
I also discovered some things in my KDP dashboard that needed to be done, which is strange because those items were checked off on my To Do list! I don’t understand! So I decided to do them since I had already gotten into marketing mode by checking my email.
Unfortunately all those things took a long time, and so when I finally ate lunch, it had already eaten (haha) into some of my afternoon work time.
***
Ugh, I shouldn’t have spent so much time doing marketing stuff! It was all stuff that I absolutely needed to do, but now that I think about it, I suppose some of it could have been put off until Saturday. I need to be better about looking at the tasks before I do them and analyzing whether I should put them off or do them now. I think I’m kind of bad at that.
After lunch, I did some writing in Spinster Spy to make sure I did some prose writing today, and also to continue practicing dictation. I dictated into Dragon again, and it was rather slow going. I did 20 minutes and wrote only 354 words.
As far as sprint words per hour, it was 1062, which is slightly slow but not very unusual for a typing sprint, because sometimes I have problems with a scene and end up doing some editing to add things I might have forgotten. I did that today, too, but also, I wasn’t particularly interested in writing fast and so I was going at a rather slow, easy-going pace. So with the editing and my slower pace, the writing speed was slower.
Overall writing speed (words divided by total writing time) was 962 words per hour, which is actually not bad. When writing book 3, my overall writing times varied a lot, but the average was about 1100 words per hour.
It was easier to get started with the writing with dictation today than it was yesterday, so maybe I’ll eventually get more used to this and the writing speed will pick up.
As yesterday, I liked seeing the words appear on the screen, even though it was a few seconds after I spoke, because seeing the sentences I’d just written helped me figure out how to keep moving forward with the scene.
Next, I’ll be working on my Hawaii series. Yesterday, I was able to shoot down a series premise idea after doing my characters’ family tree, since it wouldn’t be possible for there to be a blood feud between my characters and the villain. Today I’ll continue working on my series premise to try to figure out an ongoing conflict for the series.
I think I’ve nailed the genre down, at least. I decided on humorous romantic suspense like my Protection for Hire series since that’s what I enjoy writing the most, and it’s similar enough to my Love Inspired Suspense books for those readers to like the books. I also feel better knowing the majority of my newsletter audience will like the genre.
***
I’m still running into a block with the overarching story premise. I think I’ll go to bed early tonight and maybe something will come to me tomorrow.
Outlining: time spent: 2 hours, 39 minutes (Hawaii series)
Blocking: time spent: 0
Editing: Time spent: 1 hour, 12 minutes (Japanese Spinster’s Christmas)
Writing: Time spent: 22 minutes (Spinster Spy)
Writing: Total number of words: 354 words (Spinster Spy)
Writing: Average speed (sprints): 1062 words per hour (Spinster Spy)
Writing: Overall writing speed: 962 words per hour (Spinster Spy)
Time spent doing other writing-related business: 3 hours, 1 minute
My takeaway for today: I need to be better about looking at the tasks before I do them and analyzing whether I should put them off or do them now.
Getting phone notices about my email is my compromise, since I usually try not to do email or social media every day, because it distracts me from writing. If none of the emails are urgent, then I’ll skip checking email for the day. When I’m not doing a blog tour, I’ll only check social media on Saturdays. I’ve been doing this for a few weeks now, and so far, the system has worked well for me, and I’ve been able to focus on my writing much better than before.
I also discovered some things in my KDP dashboard that needed to be done, which is strange because those items were checked off on my To Do list! I don’t understand! So I decided to do them since I had already gotten into marketing mode by checking my email.
Unfortunately all those things took a long time, and so when I finally ate lunch, it had already eaten (haha) into some of my afternoon work time.
***
Ugh, I shouldn’t have spent so much time doing marketing stuff! It was all stuff that I absolutely needed to do, but now that I think about it, I suppose some of it could have been put off until Saturday. I need to be better about looking at the tasks before I do them and analyzing whether I should put them off or do them now. I think I’m kind of bad at that.
After lunch, I did some writing in Spinster Spy to make sure I did some prose writing today, and also to continue practicing dictation. I dictated into Dragon again, and it was rather slow going. I did 20 minutes and wrote only 354 words.
As far as sprint words per hour, it was 1062, which is slightly slow but not very unusual for a typing sprint, because sometimes I have problems with a scene and end up doing some editing to add things I might have forgotten. I did that today, too, but also, I wasn’t particularly interested in writing fast and so I was going at a rather slow, easy-going pace. So with the editing and my slower pace, the writing speed was slower.
Overall writing speed (words divided by total writing time) was 962 words per hour, which is actually not bad. When writing book 3, my overall writing times varied a lot, but the average was about 1100 words per hour.
It was easier to get started with the writing with dictation today than it was yesterday, so maybe I’ll eventually get more used to this and the writing speed will pick up.
As yesterday, I liked seeing the words appear on the screen, even though it was a few seconds after I spoke, because seeing the sentences I’d just written helped me figure out how to keep moving forward with the scene.
Next, I’ll be working on my Hawaii series. Yesterday, I was able to shoot down a series premise idea after doing my characters’ family tree, since it wouldn’t be possible for there to be a blood feud between my characters and the villain. Today I’ll continue working on my series premise to try to figure out an ongoing conflict for the series.
I think I’ve nailed the genre down, at least. I decided on humorous romantic suspense like my Protection for Hire series since that’s what I enjoy writing the most, and it’s similar enough to my Love Inspired Suspense books for those readers to like the books. I also feel better knowing the majority of my newsletter audience will like the genre.
***
I’m still running into a block with the overarching story premise. I think I’ll go to bed early tonight and maybe something will come to me tomorrow.
Outlining: time spent: 2 hours, 39 minutes (Hawaii series)
Blocking: time spent: 0
Editing: Time spent: 1 hour, 12 minutes (Japanese Spinster’s Christmas)
Writing: Time spent: 22 minutes (Spinster Spy)
Writing: Total number of words: 354 words (Spinster Spy)
Writing: Average speed (sprints): 1062 words per hour (Spinster Spy)
Writing: Overall writing speed: 962 words per hour (Spinster Spy)
Time spent doing other writing-related business: 3 hours, 1 minute
My takeaway for today: I need to be better about looking at the tasks before I do them and analyzing whether I should put them off or do them now.
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