Day 575: Changing up my writing routine

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I had a bit of a flare-up yesterday, but I felt pretty good today and got a lot done.

Blocking/outlining and writing at the same time

I’m having a hard time because I’m blocking the rest of the scenes from book 4, but at the same time I’m writing chapter 5 of the same book, and whenever I start either writing or blocking, I have a moment of confusion about where I am in the story timeline. It’s very disorienting, and I end up needing to re-read things in order to remember what has already happened and what hasn’t happened yet.

I don’t have a great memory to begin with, and deliberately working on two different points in time in the same series is taxing my poor brain. Now I wish I’d done all the blocking first so that I only need to write the book.

So far, I’ve been working about 30 minutes a day on writing, which is 400-500 words. But because I’m having so much trouble in orienting myself in the story timeline, I think what I’m going to try to do is do only the minimum 100 words a day of writing and instead focus more time on the blocking. That way I can get the book done sooner, and if I work hard I could get the blocking for the rest of the books in the series done in a few weeks.

When the blocking is done, then I can increase my writing time each day. While I’m writing the Regency series, I can spend a little time each day blocking my next series, the contemporary romantic suspense series sent in Hawaii. I think that blocking an entirely different series will be okay since it won’t be the same story world, so I won’t get so disoriented and confused like I’m doing now.

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Editing: Time spent: 8 minutes

Writing: Time spent: 19 minutes

Writing: Total number of words: 143 words

Writing streak: 54 days

Blocking: time spent: 2 hours, 53 minutes

Blocking streak: 48 days

My takeaway for today: Finish the blocking as soon as possible so I don’t get so confused when switching between two points in the timeline of my series.

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