Day 333: Character spiritual conflicts
I had a really good quiet time this morning. I like using the devotional book My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers. It seems to always remind me to put God first, and to give up all of myself to God.
I'm not actually following it according to the dates listed. I always skip dates because I'm not very consistent with my Bible reading, and I got tired of the fact that there were lots of the devotional readings that I hadn't yet read. So I started reading it straight through rather than adhering to the dates for the readings.
The past few days have been in the month of December in the book. They were all really good reminders to me of how my focus needs to be completely on Christ and the crucifixion, but I also realized today that if that should be my own personal focus, then my characters should also follow the same advice. My hero's spiritual conflict, especially, was kind of lackluster and mimicked the heroine's spiritual conflict, maybe because I hadn't known the character as well when I started writing the book.
So I spent some time this morning doing some characterization work on the hero, trying to better understand the spiritual struggles he's going through. Then I spent some time editing the last scene I wrote to reflect his revised spiritual state. I still have to edit one scene to add more about his backstory and how he views God, but I think I can do that later.
(On a geeky gamer side note, I could probably do the editing in 4thewords (I did it for the last scene I wrote) but I would need to start a long time duration monster since editing tends to be slow going and I don't always add a lot of words when I do it.)
I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel for this book. I have 4 more scenes, all of which are a bit shorter than the previous scenes I've written so far. One scene is a strongly emotional scene with the heroine that might take longer to write, since I've discovered I write emotional scenes much slower than most other scenes. --> But then again, I've also discovered, in writing this book, that the humorous scenes also take me much longer than I always expect, so the emotional scenes might even take less time than a humorous scene, who knows?
The only problem is my health. My IBS is still a little uncomfortable today, although not as bad as yesterday. It's been stressful to figure out what I can and can't tolerate, because some things I should be able to tolerate cause my IBS to flare up. And the stress, of course, is causing my IBS to flare up even more! Plus heightened stress makes it hard for me to write, so it's difficult for me to even concentrate.
So I'm focused on managing my stress. If my IBS gets too uncomfortable, I'll just quit work for the day, because the discomfort can be distracting. I'm usually better off relaxing to take my mind off the pain, which also decreases my stress and anxiety.
It very frustrating that my health and the stress involved in that is affecting my work so much. I also have to remind myself that because I have other house responsibilities, and I also need to manage my stress and replenish my energy, I'm not going to have as many hours to write as I always think I do. I think that might be why I've been so focused on my writing speed, because I want to write more in the little time that I have. I also need to work on not being distracted (although most of the time I get distracted by doing house chores, so I'm not usually wasting time).
Okay, maybe blogging is wasting time. But I honestly feel it's been helpful to get my thoughts and feelings down, and it's been helpful to record my confessions about when I procrastinate or get distracted, and also the things I do to try to fix it.
My shorter Pomodoro timer didn't work so well yesterday, but my longer Pomodoro timer seemed to work fine. I wasn't distracted while working even though I did have to leave the document to look things up a few times.
My biggest problem was spending too much time on breaks. I usually did things like washing the dishes. I will have to set an alarm on my phone so that it will remind me on my watch when my break is over. In an instance like this, Siri is really convenient because I can just tell Siri to set an alarm for a certain number of minutes, so I think I will try that today.
***
Wow! I spent a long time writing today. I originally only intended to do maybe 4 hours, but I was working on the emotional climax of the scene, and I didn't want to stop and have to pick up the threads again tomorrow, so I just kept going.
My writing speed today was really slow, and I wasn't even distracted (much) today. I noticed that it was taking me a long time to write because I was trying to figure out exactly how to word the spiritual parts. I ended up doing some freewriting to try to figure out exactly what my heroine's spiritual conflict was, because I somehow ended up with two different themes in this scene. I decided on only one theme and also changed the Bible verse I was going to use.
But even after figuring that out, I still spent a long time dithering over the sentences in the scene. I wanted them to flow well, for the ideas to naturally and logical progress. I guess I've been influenced by a few light novels I've read recently where the ideas were not well-written, and it was difficult for me to understand what the character was thinking. The content of the sentences was disjointed and confusing, which made me a bit frustrated while reading.
So I spent a lot of time figuring out exactly what I wanted to say and how to say it. I'm really glad I did, because I think some of the old sentences I had written sounded trite. I wanted to make sure only one spiritual theme was dominant and that it was expressed with emotion and the way I thought God would want it to be.
I knew emotional scenes take longer for me to write, in general. But I'd also been taking a long time to write normal scenes, because I was trying to write humor and it tends to take longer. I had thought that the longer time to write the humorous scenes would be about the same time it took me to write the emotional scenes, but I was way off. The emotional scenes took even longer for me to write, because this slower, more deliberate writing style and editing-as-I-go made me pay more attention to the sentences and the sentiments expressed.
I'm actually really happy about it, because I probably would have had to take this time during the self-editing to fix it (and I'd be hating every minute of it). This way, I didn't have the self-editing stigma attached so it seemed less burdensome? I guess? And I'm also very satisfied with the writing now that I'm done with the scene. In contrast, when I was vomit-writing, I'd just be glad the scene was done, but I knew there were things I needed to fix later.
This is also making me think maybe I should go back to my Lady Wynwood's Spies volumes and do a bit of revision, despite the fact that the thought of all that self-editing is giving me hives. Would it make that much of a difference? I suppose I won't know until I do the revision and see. Maybe I'll do just book 1 and see how that goes.
I have three more scenes to go. Unfortunately one of them is a bit emotional, so that might take me a while.
Outlining: time spent: 13 minutes
Blocking: time spent: 0
Editing: Time spent: 12 minutes
Writing: Time spent: 5 hours, 40 minutes
Writing: Total number of words: 1987 words
Writing: Overall writing speed: 326 words/hour
Time spent doing other writing-related business: 48 minutes
My takeaway for today: I need to account for the fact that emotional scenes will likely take longer for me to write than other types of scenes.
My second takeaway for today: It might be good to do revisions to Lady Wynwood's Spies volume 1 and see how much I actually edit.
I'm not actually following it according to the dates listed. I always skip dates because I'm not very consistent with my Bible reading, and I got tired of the fact that there were lots of the devotional readings that I hadn't yet read. So I started reading it straight through rather than adhering to the dates for the readings.
The past few days have been in the month of December in the book. They were all really good reminders to me of how my focus needs to be completely on Christ and the crucifixion, but I also realized today that if that should be my own personal focus, then my characters should also follow the same advice. My hero's spiritual conflict, especially, was kind of lackluster and mimicked the heroine's spiritual conflict, maybe because I hadn't known the character as well when I started writing the book.
So I spent some time this morning doing some characterization work on the hero, trying to better understand the spiritual struggles he's going through. Then I spent some time editing the last scene I wrote to reflect his revised spiritual state. I still have to edit one scene to add more about his backstory and how he views God, but I think I can do that later.
(On a geeky gamer side note, I could probably do the editing in 4thewords (I did it for the last scene I wrote) but I would need to start a long time duration monster since editing tends to be slow going and I don't always add a lot of words when I do it.)
I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel for this book. I have 4 more scenes, all of which are a bit shorter than the previous scenes I've written so far. One scene is a strongly emotional scene with the heroine that might take longer to write, since I've discovered I write emotional scenes much slower than most other scenes. --> But then again, I've also discovered, in writing this book, that the humorous scenes also take me much longer than I always expect, so the emotional scenes might even take less time than a humorous scene, who knows?
The only problem is my health. My IBS is still a little uncomfortable today, although not as bad as yesterday. It's been stressful to figure out what I can and can't tolerate, because some things I should be able to tolerate cause my IBS to flare up. And the stress, of course, is causing my IBS to flare up even more! Plus heightened stress makes it hard for me to write, so it's difficult for me to even concentrate.
So I'm focused on managing my stress. If my IBS gets too uncomfortable, I'll just quit work for the day, because the discomfort can be distracting. I'm usually better off relaxing to take my mind off the pain, which also decreases my stress and anxiety.
It very frustrating that my health and the stress involved in that is affecting my work so much. I also have to remind myself that because I have other house responsibilities, and I also need to manage my stress and replenish my energy, I'm not going to have as many hours to write as I always think I do. I think that might be why I've been so focused on my writing speed, because I want to write more in the little time that I have. I also need to work on not being distracted (although most of the time I get distracted by doing house chores, so I'm not usually wasting time).
Okay, maybe blogging is wasting time. But I honestly feel it's been helpful to get my thoughts and feelings down, and it's been helpful to record my confessions about when I procrastinate or get distracted, and also the things I do to try to fix it.
My shorter Pomodoro timer didn't work so well yesterday, but my longer Pomodoro timer seemed to work fine. I wasn't distracted while working even though I did have to leave the document to look things up a few times.
My biggest problem was spending too much time on breaks. I usually did things like washing the dishes. I will have to set an alarm on my phone so that it will remind me on my watch when my break is over. In an instance like this, Siri is really convenient because I can just tell Siri to set an alarm for a certain number of minutes, so I think I will try that today.
***
Wow! I spent a long time writing today. I originally only intended to do maybe 4 hours, but I was working on the emotional climax of the scene, and I didn't want to stop and have to pick up the threads again tomorrow, so I just kept going.
My writing speed today was really slow, and I wasn't even distracted (much) today. I noticed that it was taking me a long time to write because I was trying to figure out exactly how to word the spiritual parts. I ended up doing some freewriting to try to figure out exactly what my heroine's spiritual conflict was, because I somehow ended up with two different themes in this scene. I decided on only one theme and also changed the Bible verse I was going to use.
But even after figuring that out, I still spent a long time dithering over the sentences in the scene. I wanted them to flow well, for the ideas to naturally and logical progress. I guess I've been influenced by a few light novels I've read recently where the ideas were not well-written, and it was difficult for me to understand what the character was thinking. The content of the sentences was disjointed and confusing, which made me a bit frustrated while reading.
So I spent a lot of time figuring out exactly what I wanted to say and how to say it. I'm really glad I did, because I think some of the old sentences I had written sounded trite. I wanted to make sure only one spiritual theme was dominant and that it was expressed with emotion and the way I thought God would want it to be.
I knew emotional scenes take longer for me to write, in general. But I'd also been taking a long time to write normal scenes, because I was trying to write humor and it tends to take longer. I had thought that the longer time to write the humorous scenes would be about the same time it took me to write the emotional scenes, but I was way off. The emotional scenes took even longer for me to write, because this slower, more deliberate writing style and editing-as-I-go made me pay more attention to the sentences and the sentiments expressed.
I'm actually really happy about it, because I probably would have had to take this time during the self-editing to fix it (and I'd be hating every minute of it). This way, I didn't have the self-editing stigma attached so it seemed less burdensome? I guess? And I'm also very satisfied with the writing now that I'm done with the scene. In contrast, when I was vomit-writing, I'd just be glad the scene was done, but I knew there were things I needed to fix later.
This is also making me think maybe I should go back to my Lady Wynwood's Spies volumes and do a bit of revision, despite the fact that the thought of all that self-editing is giving me hives. Would it make that much of a difference? I suppose I won't know until I do the revision and see. Maybe I'll do just book 1 and see how that goes.
I have three more scenes to go. Unfortunately one of them is a bit emotional, so that might take me a while.
Outlining: time spent: 13 minutes
Blocking: time spent: 0
Editing: Time spent: 12 minutes
Writing: Time spent: 5 hours, 40 minutes
Writing: Total number of words: 1987 words
Writing: Overall writing speed: 326 words/hour
Time spent doing other writing-related business: 48 minutes
My takeaway for today: I need to account for the fact that emotional scenes will likely take longer for me to write than other types of scenes.
My second takeaway for today: It might be good to do revisions to Lady Wynwood's Spies volume 1 and see how much I actually edit.
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