Camy's Writing Diary

I had a really awful IBS flare-up for the last several weeks, and I’m only now starting to feel better. It was a combination of a couple factors, one of which was “Well, that’s an honest mistake,” and the other that was “Well, that’s just complete stupidity.” (One food was supposed to be okay for me to eat but ended up not, and then I misread “teaspoon” as “tablespoon.”) I managed to keep up my writing streak in the meantime, doing just the bare minimum for both writing prose and also blocking/outlining. Some days I felt a little better and got a whole hour of blocking done, other days I only did a few minutes. For the writing, my bare minimum is 100 words or 5 minutes, whichever’s faster. Some days I went about 300 words, and other days I did between 50-100. However, I recently finished writing a scene that was about 5700 words, all through doing just the bare minimum of writing each day. That’s actually kind of neat! It took me all of January, but still, that’s a lot better tha...

I had an IBS flareup starting from Thursday last week (I had been feeling better, too!). So I only did the bare minimum, but I started feeling better today and managed to get some blocking done on book 5. I did some writing on book 4 also, but I’m still getting kind of confused about what’s been revealed in the book yet or not. I’m more and more convinced that I need to get the blocking done as soon as possible for the entire series. Until that’s done, I’m going to have to really work hard to keep my timelines straight and not make continuity errors when I’m writing. Then while I write the rest of the books in the Regency series, I’ll do the outlining and blocking for the entirety of my next series, Contemporary Romantic Suspense set in Hawaii. That way, when I start writing the Hawaii series, it’ll be completely blocked. I really, really don’t think I can write and block books in the same series at the same time. It’s just too confusing and I’m constantly worried about making errors...

I finished blocking book 4! Woot! Now I will go on to blocking book 5. I hope it will be easier than blocking book 4 was. I’ve spent much more time blocking book 4 than I have any other book, although to be honest the blocking was more detailed than in any other book, too, which will hopefully make the writing a bit easier. I am really, really hoping that I’ll stop having so much trouble with the writing once I’m blocking a different book. It was so hard to figure out where I was in the series timeline when I was switching between writing one scene and blocking another. But I have a feeling it won’t really get better until the series is entirely blocked. I’m honestly not sure how long it’ll take to block each book. This one took MONTHS. Some of that was because I wasn’t working that many hours a day on it since I was sick for much of the last six months, but I also spent a whopping 148 hours blocking this book, compared to less than 50 hours for books 2 and 3. So I’ll have to jus...

I had a bad IBS flare up yesterday and I was worried I wouldn’t have the energy to work today, but I ended up feeling okay-ish. The pressure of needing to post on my blog how much work I got done made me push myself to work a little bit more, even when I wanted to be lazy and quit after only a half hour of blocking. So the public accountability thing worked for me today, as usual. I also found a Japanese snack that doesn’t have anything my IBS reacts to, and so I bought a bunch (even though it’s pretty expensive). Luckily, it comes in one-serving bags. I treat myself to one bag each day when I do work, and I don’t get any if I’m only doing the bare minimum for the day. So my being food-motivated does help sometimes, since the thought of a treat when I get work done will prevent me from being lazy and only doing the bare minimum. Unfortunately, I haven’t found any others of those yummy Japanese snacks that are IBS-friendly. :( I’ve experimented with using music while working. Some...

Today marks 60 days that I’ve written prose in my book every single day! Recently I’ve only been writing the bare minimum because I’m try to finish blocking this book (and maybe/hopefully the entire rest of the series) as quickly as possible. Once the book/series is blocked, then I won't get so confused flipping between points in the series timeline when I go from writing in one scene and then blocking another. I still haven’t come up with a good reward system for reaching streak milestones. I guess if I make it to a year, I’ll give myself permission to spend money on something. Also, after the 60 day badge, my Japanese grammar website only does badges for 100, 200, and 365 days, but I like having badges more often. It’s more motivating for me. So I think I’ll make a badge for myself for every 30 days. It’s actually pretty easy with Canva.com. I had high hopes to get a lot of work done today, and I was feeling okay up until I finished my writing for the day. I accidentally...

I haven’t done an evaluation in a while, so I thought I’d do another summary of what I’ve learned from this blog about improving my productivity. Health issues I’m still dealing with IBS problems. Some of my issues were experiments in figuring out what I could or couldn’t eat, and I ate things that apparently I shouldn’t. There are so many things which I don’t know if I can eat or not, so all I can do is try them and see. Things are slowly starting to get better, but my eating choices are severely limited. The upside is that I’ve lost weight. I am clinging to the few foods I actually can eat—like french fries and potato chips—and also trying to exercise when I have the energy. The exercise tends to make me feel better when I work, so I’m trying to make that a priority. Eating my frogs I’m still finding that there are important things which, if I don’t do them first thing when I get up, they won’t get done. Right now, those things are: 1) exercise, 2) daily Bible reading, 3)...

Happy New Year! I wanted to make sure I got writing done today because tomorrow is Sunday and I’ll only do the bare minimum. I’m starting to feel much better, but I’m also realizing that I need to take more breaks when I’m doing the blocking. I was trying to go for 2-3 hours all in one session, but I’m finding my mind wandering after about 90 minutes. So hopefully I’ll still be feeling fine on Monday, and I’ll try splitting the blocking into 90 minute sessions. I might get 2 sessions done, which would be 3 hours of blocking. I’m hoping I can slowly start to build up the amount of time I spend working each day as I start to feel better and have more energy. Editing: Time spent: 4 minutes Writing: Time spent: 23 minutes Writing: Total number of words: 336 words Writing streak: 58 days Blocking: time spent: 1 hour, 57 minutes Blocking streak: 52 days