Day 550: Streaks; Writing Fast (ad nauseam)
Streaks despite sickness
I had an IBS flare up the past couple days, but it wasn’t too bad and while I only did the bare minimum of work those days, I’m feeling better today despite still feeling a bit of discomfort. (There was also one day where I actually did feel better, but I had a lot of marketing work to do, so I only did the bare minimum of writing and spent a couple hours doing the marketing.)
Keeping up my streak during the flare up wasn’t as hard as before. Maybe it’s because I’m getting close to 30 days and I would feel terrible to break the streak at this point. So that motivates me to do some work every day to keep up my streak.
It occurred to me today that if I ever did break my streak, I think I would be so disheartened that I wouldn’t start it up again (I’d just work and not record days in a row that I did some writing). I guess, for my personality, that’s the problem with streaks. I know I’m very achievement-oriented, so failing something I was really working hard at hits me pretty hard. I guess I have to work really hard not to break it.
Also, an interesting fact: I looked at the days I only did a minimum of work in order to keep up my streak, both during this streak and during the last time I did a streak and broke it after day 25. Out of a total of 53 working days, there were 24 minimum work days, when I was feeling too sick to do a lot of work and only did about 100 words of writing (sometimes less, but I at least did about 5 minutes of work).
During those minimum work days, I wrote a total of about 2150 words. Granted, most of those words weren’t very good and I probably deleted about half of them, but I still did some work on my book and increased my word count.
Also, I mentioned it in a past blog post that I’ve realized that the value of keeping up my streaks is not in the work I do during my minimum work days, but in the fact that it’s easier to get back into work on the days I’m feeling better. So I suspect that on the days I was feeling better, I probably got more words done than I would have otherwise. And that’s probably more valuable to me even than those 2150 words.
I can’t seem to let this go
For the past few weeks, I’ve been reading writing books, which help keep my mind focused on work even if I haven’t gotten a lot done, and it might motivate me to get more work done than I might have otherwise—I found myself pushing harder to work through discomfort several times.
I’m especially interested in books that talk about writing productivity and writing routines and processes. The most recent book I’m reading is Telling Lies for Fun and Profit by Lawrence Block (it’s a rather expensive ebook but I read it for free from the library, and it’s available to read for free from Archive.org). He has such a breezy, no-nonsense way of writing, and I find I really like it. The most recent chapters I read were talking about daily writing habits and processes.
Unlike many other writing books I’ve read, the author doesn’t believe in rewriting very much. He doesn’t have an absolute stance on it, but he does recommend not doing a sloppy first draft like other writing books recommend, simply because it’s hard to edit garbage.
That had never occurred to me before. Other writing books and articles talk about how fast, messy first drafts help a writer get into creative flow state, and when that happens the writing is usually more creative. They also talk about ways to trigger flow state in a writer.
I’ve read articles that cite psychology studies about flow state, so I know it’s a true phenomenon. But in terms of writing, I personally can’t pinpoint times when I’ve been in creative flow state, and I have never been able to deliberately trigger flow state in myself. It may be that I simply haven’t tried hard enough, but I came to the realization that the process of making myself get into flow state has never happened to me.
I remember thinking about how I hate revising my dictation because it’s so incredibly messy. And I know for a fact that when my first draft is messy, whether it’s dictation or not, the revision is not as deep and thorough because I have to spend so much time correcting obvious errors like typos, wrong word choices, or story continuity. I just don’t have the mental space to do other types of revisions to refine my prose (like eliminating adverbs, editing out redundancies, etc.) since I have so many obvious errors to correct.
So the part where the author talked about revising messy first drafts as “washing garbage” kind of resonated with me.
I do think that stopping to do research—look up a word or a fact—while I’m writing the first draft might knock me out of whatever creative flow state I might have achieved, and I do seem to write faster when I simply leave a note for myself. I know that my mental state is different when I’m writing prose versus when I’m doing research, and I know that I don’t multi-task or switch my brain from one state to another very quickly, so it would make sense that for me, leaving notes for certain things is probably the best way to go.
Also, even when I’m trying to write fast, I haven’t been able to really let go and write a truly messy first draft. Something inside me prevents that. Some writing books would say that I’m hampering my creativity, but even as a child I could never enjoy getting messy and dirty when playing. I think it’s just part of my personality.
So once again I’m thinking about fast and messy first drafts and revisions. I can’t seem to stop myself from considering what I should do about this. I think I’m just trying to find the right way to write for me, sifting through all the advice I’ve been reading and trying to figure out what will work best for me. I’ve been doing a lot of experiments and trying to figure out what doesn’t work, but I’m still not sure what does work.
I’m not giving up on dictation—I do believe that if I practice enough, the dictation will be cleaner, as clean as typing. But so far, I haven’t had the physical and mental energy to devote to dictation, so I’ve been writing using typing instead. I think that until my health is consistently good enough that I could devote a few weeks to doing this, maybe I should hold off on practicing dictation.
In fact, I was wondering if I should not do dictation until I’ve finished blocking this Regency series. Right now, each day I’m doing a little bit of writing but spending more time blocking so that I can finish blocking the series sooner. After blocking the Regency series, I’ll start blocking my next series, which is a contemporary romantic suspense, and at the same time I’ll be writing the Regency series I just blocked. However, I’ll be increasing the amount of time I spend writing so that I can finish writing the Regency series sooner. I think that trying out the dictation then will be a good experiment because I’ll be able to devote more time to the dictation/prose writing than I’m doing now.
So I’m typing my writing right now, but even when typing, I’ve been trying to write faster and messier, and maybe I need to just stop that. Yes, I know I’ve said this exact same thing countless times before, and I don’t really know why I keep revisiting this and saying this again, and then later going back to trying to write faster and messier.
But maybe after trying so many things to figure out what doesn’t work, I’m finally slowly starting to figure out what does work for me. What seems to work is (a) leaving notes for myself when I need to look something up, but otherwise just writing, and (b) trying to write relatively cleanly so that my revision process isn’t washing garbage, but will be as thorough as it can be.
Cycling
The book also recommends cycling, which I’ve been doing (sort of), but I don’t always do the editing just before I start writing. I stopped that because when I was writing a lot, I ended up taking a long time to do the editing before starting my writing for the day, and it was problematic when I started feeling too tired to do writing after a long editing session.
But recently I’ve been writing less each day so that I can spend more time doing blocking, so I think I’ll start doing the cycling again. Before I start writing new prose for the day, I'll edit what I wrote the day before. The writing lately has been pretty clean since I’m typing rather than using dictation, and I haven’t written for much time each day—usually 30 to 60 minutes—so I don’t think the editing will take very long each day. I’ll try it and see.
***
I was rather pleased that I got so many words written today. It was very easy to get into the writing since I’ve been doing a little each day, thanks to my streaks.
I have a Facebook marketing event tomorrow afternoon, but I hope I can still get some writing done. Tomorrow will be day 30 of my writing streak!
***
Editing: Time spent: 4 minutes
Writing: Time spent: 34 minutes
Writing: Total number of words: 666 words
Writing: Overall writing speed: 1183 words/hour
Writing streak: 29 days
Blocking: time spent: 1 hour, 33 minutes
Blocking streak: 23 days
Time spent doing other writing-related business: 0
My takeaway for today: Even though I’m revisiting this yet again, I think I’m finally slowly starting to figure out what does work for me. Basically, leaving notes for myself when I need to look something up, but otherwise trying to write cleanly so that my revision process isn’t washing garbage, so that the revision will be as thorough as it can be.
I had an IBS flare up the past couple days, but it wasn’t too bad and while I only did the bare minimum of work those days, I’m feeling better today despite still feeling a bit of discomfort. (There was also one day where I actually did feel better, but I had a lot of marketing work to do, so I only did the bare minimum of writing and spent a couple hours doing the marketing.)
Keeping up my streak during the flare up wasn’t as hard as before. Maybe it’s because I’m getting close to 30 days and I would feel terrible to break the streak at this point. So that motivates me to do some work every day to keep up my streak.
It occurred to me today that if I ever did break my streak, I think I would be so disheartened that I wouldn’t start it up again (I’d just work and not record days in a row that I did some writing). I guess, for my personality, that’s the problem with streaks. I know I’m very achievement-oriented, so failing something I was really working hard at hits me pretty hard. I guess I have to work really hard not to break it.
Also, an interesting fact: I looked at the days I only did a minimum of work in order to keep up my streak, both during this streak and during the last time I did a streak and broke it after day 25. Out of a total of 53 working days, there were 24 minimum work days, when I was feeling too sick to do a lot of work and only did about 100 words of writing (sometimes less, but I at least did about 5 minutes of work).
During those minimum work days, I wrote a total of about 2150 words. Granted, most of those words weren’t very good and I probably deleted about half of them, but I still did some work on my book and increased my word count.
Also, I mentioned it in a past blog post that I’ve realized that the value of keeping up my streaks is not in the work I do during my minimum work days, but in the fact that it’s easier to get back into work on the days I’m feeling better. So I suspect that on the days I was feeling better, I probably got more words done than I would have otherwise. And that’s probably more valuable to me even than those 2150 words.
I can’t seem to let this go
For the past few weeks, I’ve been reading writing books, which help keep my mind focused on work even if I haven’t gotten a lot done, and it might motivate me to get more work done than I might have otherwise—I found myself pushing harder to work through discomfort several times.
I’m especially interested in books that talk about writing productivity and writing routines and processes. The most recent book I’m reading is Telling Lies for Fun and Profit by Lawrence Block (it’s a rather expensive ebook but I read it for free from the library, and it’s available to read for free from Archive.org). He has such a breezy, no-nonsense way of writing, and I find I really like it. The most recent chapters I read were talking about daily writing habits and processes.
Unlike many other writing books I’ve read, the author doesn’t believe in rewriting very much. He doesn’t have an absolute stance on it, but he does recommend not doing a sloppy first draft like other writing books recommend, simply because it’s hard to edit garbage.
That had never occurred to me before. Other writing books and articles talk about how fast, messy first drafts help a writer get into creative flow state, and when that happens the writing is usually more creative. They also talk about ways to trigger flow state in a writer.
I’ve read articles that cite psychology studies about flow state, so I know it’s a true phenomenon. But in terms of writing, I personally can’t pinpoint times when I’ve been in creative flow state, and I have never been able to deliberately trigger flow state in myself. It may be that I simply haven’t tried hard enough, but I came to the realization that the process of making myself get into flow state has never happened to me.
I remember thinking about how I hate revising my dictation because it’s so incredibly messy. And I know for a fact that when my first draft is messy, whether it’s dictation or not, the revision is not as deep and thorough because I have to spend so much time correcting obvious errors like typos, wrong word choices, or story continuity. I just don’t have the mental space to do other types of revisions to refine my prose (like eliminating adverbs, editing out redundancies, etc.) since I have so many obvious errors to correct.
So the part where the author talked about revising messy first drafts as “washing garbage” kind of resonated with me.
I do think that stopping to do research—look up a word or a fact—while I’m writing the first draft might knock me out of whatever creative flow state I might have achieved, and I do seem to write faster when I simply leave a note for myself. I know that my mental state is different when I’m writing prose versus when I’m doing research, and I know that I don’t multi-task or switch my brain from one state to another very quickly, so it would make sense that for me, leaving notes for certain things is probably the best way to go.
Also, even when I’m trying to write fast, I haven’t been able to really let go and write a truly messy first draft. Something inside me prevents that. Some writing books would say that I’m hampering my creativity, but even as a child I could never enjoy getting messy and dirty when playing. I think it’s just part of my personality.
So once again I’m thinking about fast and messy first drafts and revisions. I can’t seem to stop myself from considering what I should do about this. I think I’m just trying to find the right way to write for me, sifting through all the advice I’ve been reading and trying to figure out what will work best for me. I’ve been doing a lot of experiments and trying to figure out what doesn’t work, but I’m still not sure what does work.
I’m not giving up on dictation—I do believe that if I practice enough, the dictation will be cleaner, as clean as typing. But so far, I haven’t had the physical and mental energy to devote to dictation, so I’ve been writing using typing instead. I think that until my health is consistently good enough that I could devote a few weeks to doing this, maybe I should hold off on practicing dictation.
In fact, I was wondering if I should not do dictation until I’ve finished blocking this Regency series. Right now, each day I’m doing a little bit of writing but spending more time blocking so that I can finish blocking the series sooner. After blocking the Regency series, I’ll start blocking my next series, which is a contemporary romantic suspense, and at the same time I’ll be writing the Regency series I just blocked. However, I’ll be increasing the amount of time I spend writing so that I can finish writing the Regency series sooner. I think that trying out the dictation then will be a good experiment because I’ll be able to devote more time to the dictation/prose writing than I’m doing now.
So I’m typing my writing right now, but even when typing, I’ve been trying to write faster and messier, and maybe I need to just stop that. Yes, I know I’ve said this exact same thing countless times before, and I don’t really know why I keep revisiting this and saying this again, and then later going back to trying to write faster and messier.
But maybe after trying so many things to figure out what doesn’t work, I’m finally slowly starting to figure out what does work for me. What seems to work is (a) leaving notes for myself when I need to look something up, but otherwise just writing, and (b) trying to write relatively cleanly so that my revision process isn’t washing garbage, but will be as thorough as it can be.
Cycling
The book also recommends cycling, which I’ve been doing (sort of), but I don’t always do the editing just before I start writing. I stopped that because when I was writing a lot, I ended up taking a long time to do the editing before starting my writing for the day, and it was problematic when I started feeling too tired to do writing after a long editing session.
But recently I’ve been writing less each day so that I can spend more time doing blocking, so I think I’ll start doing the cycling again. Before I start writing new prose for the day, I'll edit what I wrote the day before. The writing lately has been pretty clean since I’m typing rather than using dictation, and I haven’t written for much time each day—usually 30 to 60 minutes—so I don’t think the editing will take very long each day. I’ll try it and see.
***
I was rather pleased that I got so many words written today. It was very easy to get into the writing since I’ve been doing a little each day, thanks to my streaks.
I have a Facebook marketing event tomorrow afternoon, but I hope I can still get some writing done. Tomorrow will be day 30 of my writing streak!
***
Editing: Time spent: 4 minutes
Writing: Time spent: 34 minutes
Writing: Total number of words: 666 words
Writing: Overall writing speed: 1183 words/hour
Writing streak: 29 days
Blocking: time spent: 1 hour, 33 minutes
Blocking streak: 23 days
Time spent doing other writing-related business: 0
My takeaway for today: Even though I’m revisiting this yet again, I think I’m finally slowly starting to figure out what does work for me. Basically, leaving notes for myself when I need to look something up, but otherwise trying to write cleanly so that my revision process isn’t washing garbage, so that the revision will be as thorough as it can be.
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