Day 344: Finished the Hawaii book!
When listening to the audiobook for Deep Work, at first I kind of dismissed his suggestion to schedule out your entire day. But today I decided to try doing it because I realize that I don’t know where some of my day goes. I think I can do it with my iPhone journaling app, Day One, which I use as a bullet journal. For the past year, my bullet journal has been great at helping me to organize my daily life much better than before.
I quickly figured out that whenever I’m curious about something, whether it’s something on the internet or just a question about one of my files, I’ll automatically look it up on my phone or computer. This is what causes me to be distracted so easily, because then I’ll get sidetracked to something else. I suppose the internet is specifically set up that way. For example, I looked up the cost of a book today on my phone and got sucked into looking at other books that were listed alongside it, on similar topics. I spent probably 10 minutes distracted by that.
I’m almost done cutting the book, and hope to finish that today. Yay!
***
I finished cutting the book! It finished at 24,700 words! I’m so glad it’s finally done!
I emailed the editor to see if she could squeeze me in and she said she’d try.
I also finished all the self-publishing/marketing stuff I needed to do for this book for the multi-author box set, such as back cover blurbs, author bio, etc. I also did something I haven’t done before, which is an exhaustive list of keywords. (I just realized I forgot to add a list of ways my name could be misspelled, so I’ll have to do that later.) I also just realized I don’t actually know how the publisher will use the keywords. They’re supposed to be anything a reader might use in an Amazon or Google search, so maybe they’re for advertising? I don’t know how you’d use that many keywords for the publishing process.
I was able to do a preliminary total of my time spent on this project.
On the series, I spent 47 hours, 11 minutes (in 2020 and 2021) doing general brainstorming and characterization.
For the Wedding Kimono:
Plotting (includes characterization): 10 hours, 5 minutes
Blocking: 16 hours, 6 minutes
Writing: 72 hours, 47 minutes
Editing: 16 hours, 45 minutes
Total words before cutting: 35,000 words
Cutting down to 25k words: 6 hours, 10 minutes
Time not cutting the time cutting the novel down: 115 hours, 43 minutes
Time including the cutting: 121 hours, 53 minutes
So the time was 50% longer than The Gentleman Thief (80 hours, 49 minutes), which was about the same number of words (36,000 words). I wonder if that was because of the slower writing style? Or was it because I had such a hard time writing the first 2 scenes? The first scene took 7 days to write, and the second scene took 5 days (although the second scene was also rather long, 5,400 words). I also noticed that writing the contemporary was harder since I wanted to get the humor right.
I hope writing the next Regency book won’t take quite as long as it took to write this book. If I extrapolate, that means a 90,000 word book would take 15 weeks (if I wrote for 4 hours a day, 5 days a week). But if I practice more focused, concentrated work sessions, I think I’ll be able to write more per hour than I did on this book (I was super distracted for a lot of it).
I think I’ll take a break before diving into the next Regency, but not too long a break, maybe two or three days. I think after I finished the last Regency book, I took a week break. I guess I’ll see how I feel tomorrow. I want to get started on the next book sooner rather than later since I had put off work on it to write this book for the multi-author box set. If I’m lucky, I can get right back into the series and I won’t have too many sick days to derail my writing.
Outlining: time spent: 0
Blocking: time spent: 0
Editing: Time spent: 1 hour, 48 minutes (cutting 10k words)
Writing: Time spent: 0
Writing: Total number of words: n/a
Writing: Overall writing speed: n/a
Time spent doing other writing-related business: 4 hours, 27 minutes
My takeaway for today: Try scheduling my day with my electronic bullet journal to try to minimize distractions.
I quickly figured out that whenever I’m curious about something, whether it’s something on the internet or just a question about one of my files, I’ll automatically look it up on my phone or computer. This is what causes me to be distracted so easily, because then I’ll get sidetracked to something else. I suppose the internet is specifically set up that way. For example, I looked up the cost of a book today on my phone and got sucked into looking at other books that were listed alongside it, on similar topics. I spent probably 10 minutes distracted by that.
I’m almost done cutting the book, and hope to finish that today. Yay!
***
I finished cutting the book! It finished at 24,700 words! I’m so glad it’s finally done!
I emailed the editor to see if she could squeeze me in and she said she’d try.
I also finished all the self-publishing/marketing stuff I needed to do for this book for the multi-author box set, such as back cover blurbs, author bio, etc. I also did something I haven’t done before, which is an exhaustive list of keywords. (I just realized I forgot to add a list of ways my name could be misspelled, so I’ll have to do that later.) I also just realized I don’t actually know how the publisher will use the keywords. They’re supposed to be anything a reader might use in an Amazon or Google search, so maybe they’re for advertising? I don’t know how you’d use that many keywords for the publishing process.
I was able to do a preliminary total of my time spent on this project.
On the series, I spent 47 hours, 11 minutes (in 2020 and 2021) doing general brainstorming and characterization.
For the Wedding Kimono:
Plotting (includes characterization): 10 hours, 5 minutes
Blocking: 16 hours, 6 minutes
Writing: 72 hours, 47 minutes
Editing: 16 hours, 45 minutes
Total words before cutting: 35,000 words
Cutting down to 25k words: 6 hours, 10 minutes
Time not cutting the time cutting the novel down: 115 hours, 43 minutes
Time including the cutting: 121 hours, 53 minutes
So the time was 50% longer than The Gentleman Thief (80 hours, 49 minutes), which was about the same number of words (36,000 words). I wonder if that was because of the slower writing style? Or was it because I had such a hard time writing the first 2 scenes? The first scene took 7 days to write, and the second scene took 5 days (although the second scene was also rather long, 5,400 words). I also noticed that writing the contemporary was harder since I wanted to get the humor right.
I hope writing the next Regency book won’t take quite as long as it took to write this book. If I extrapolate, that means a 90,000 word book would take 15 weeks (if I wrote for 4 hours a day, 5 days a week). But if I practice more focused, concentrated work sessions, I think I’ll be able to write more per hour than I did on this book (I was super distracted for a lot of it).
I think I’ll take a break before diving into the next Regency, but not too long a break, maybe two or three days. I think after I finished the last Regency book, I took a week break. I guess I’ll see how I feel tomorrow. I want to get started on the next book sooner rather than later since I had put off work on it to write this book for the multi-author box set. If I’m lucky, I can get right back into the series and I won’t have too many sick days to derail my writing.
Outlining: time spent: 0
Blocking: time spent: 0
Editing: Time spent: 1 hour, 48 minutes (cutting 10k words)
Writing: Time spent: 0
Writing: Total number of words: n/a
Writing: Overall writing speed: n/a
Time spent doing other writing-related business: 4 hours, 27 minutes
My takeaway for today: Try scheduling my day with my electronic bullet journal to try to minimize distractions.
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