Camy's Writing Diary

I had an appointment today, but I got up early and managed to get a lot of work done before I had to leave. I did my “frogs” beforehand so they got done, and then got some work done on my Regency book. After the appointment, I wanted to get a couple more hours of blocking done, but I suddenly had a bad IBS flare-up. I’ve taken medicine and I’m waiting for it to kick in, but it’s pretty bad. I may have to take another dose. I think I’ll go have lunch and see how I feel afterward. *** I feel better now so I’ll try to get in another hour of blocking. When I checked my word count for the blocking, I was disappointed that the total wasn’t very high because I had been doing some extensive revision of what I’d written before, to fix some plot holes. However, that entailed deleting as many words as I’d written. So my blocking word count for today will probably not be very high again. While I’m disappointed that I won’t be able to make the 2500 word goal for blocking that I had set for myself,

I slept very poorly and was so exhausted on Saturday that I ended up taking another sick day, since my brain was too tired to concentrate. I tried getting more rest, but ended up not sleeping well last night. Unfortunately I got a late start this morning because I had a bunch of house chores to do, and then I got distracted by an audiobook sale! Why do I do this??? It didn’t help that I had a bit of IBS discomfort and had to take some medication and then wait for it to kick in. The distraction/retail procrastination happened while I was waiting. Why was I so distracted even though I took a sick day on Saturday and had Sunday off??? I should be focused and raring to go! Well, putting myself down isn’t going to help me, but I do wish I knew why I was so easily distracted today. Is it just laziness and I just don’t want to get to work? If that’s the case, how can I motivate myself to be more diligent in my work? Actually, I’ve been trying to eat more healthy lately and I haven’t been snac

I don’t remember why, but I had stopped doing my Japanese study time before my writing time each day—probably so that I would prioritize the writing and get more done each day. Unfortunately, that also caused me to stop doing all but the bare minimum of my Japanese study each day. I know by now that if I don’t do these kinds of things first, I won’t get to doing them at all at the end of the day. So I decided to once again spend a couple hours doing my other work before starting on my writing each day. Aside from my Japanese study, I also want to spend more time doing research reading, so I’m going to try to do about 30-45 minutes of that each day. I prefer diving straight into my writing work each day, but I’ve realized that my Japanese and my Regency research are too important for me to slack off on anymore. So I’ll just have to knuckle down and force myself to get this done before I start writing. Yesterday, I also had a hard time getting to my Hawaii book and also checking my email

I decided to take a few sick days because I was in so much pain. I felt a bit silly for needing sick days, but I honestly haven’t ever bitten my tongue so badly or had it hurt so much. It also made it hard for me to sleep well since I woke up every hour or so whenever I happened to move my mouth and the pain from my tongue woke me up very sharply. So the past several days have been pretty rough for me, despite how stupid it sounds when I say I only bit my tongue. On a more positive note, my IBS has not been giving me many problems at all, except for yesterday and today when I started feeling some cramping. And while I was sick, I got a ton of laundry done. As for my writing, I’m going to continue what I’ve been doing for the past week or so, which is to write the bare minimum of prose in order to have more time for blocking and get that done as soon as possible. I was really torn about whether I should do this or not, because I want to get books 4 and 5 of the series released so that I

I started off wanting to work more today, but the pain in my mouth was simply too distracting, and I ended up not doing as much as I wanted. I intended to only do the bare minimum of writing, but I had been hoping to get more blocking done than I did. Before I started work on the Regency book, I spent some time working on the Hawaii book. It took a bit longer than I had expected because I had to set up a new Scrivener project and a new time sheet spreadsheet for the book, and I also had to reformat the original scene index to a darker background that would be easier on my eyes. I feel a bit guilty that I didn’t get that much done today, but the pain is pretty bad today. I’ll try to go to bed early and hopefully feel better tomorrow. Regency series: Editing: Time spent: 4 minutes Writing: Time spent: 8 minutes Writing: Total number of words: 87 words Writing streak: 159 days Blocking: time spent: 18 minutes Blocking streak: 153 days Hawaii series: Writing: time spent: 29 minutes Writing

I admit that today I was really tempted to just make it a sick day, because the sore in my mouth where I bit my tongue is really painful. I haven’t bitten my tongue this badly in a long time. But my husband smoked ribs yesterday so I don’t have to cook tonight, so I thought I’d use the time to get some work done. However, I’m not aiming for as many hours as a normal day and I’m going at a more relaxed pace, since I feel a little bit like an invalid recovering from a wound. Today I’m going to devote the majority of my work time on blocking the next book. I decided this because in working on the outline of my Hawaii book, I was reminded how I do my outlining/blocking much better when I have larger chunks of time to devote to it. Also, I had been vaguely aware of it earlier, but when I start blocking each day, I usually have to spend some time reminding myself where I am in the story and where in the scene I last stopped. I think I have to re-immerse myself because I have to reorient my m

I worked on the hero’s journey worksheet for my heroine today and finished it. I think that the majority of the work needed to be done for outlining my Hawaii book is now completed. Yay! I was going to do more work on my Regency book after that, but I got a late start, and my mouth and jaw have been really sore today after I bit my tongue really badly, plus I forgot we had Bible study tonight so I had to finish work by a certain time. So the combination of those three things made me decide to cut short my workday today. It’s partly a sick day, although it might also be a little bit of laziness because I didn’t want to have to push myself to work through the pain in my mouth. Regency series: Editing: Time spent: 4 minutes Writing: Time spent: 21 minutes Writing: Total number of words: 198 words Writing streak: 156 days Blocking: time spent: 30 minutes Blocking streak: 150 days Hawaii series: Outlining: time spent: 1 hour, 15 minutes Time spent doing other writing-related business: 29 mi

I’m still working on outlining the Hawaii book. I remembered how it was useful for me to look at my Book Creation Process and figure out which steps had been done and yet still needed to be done for my Regency books, so I decided to do the same for this Hawaii book. Unlike for other books, this time I was rewriting an old book, Year of the Dog, so I had already done stage 1 in my Book Creation Process, which is developing the characters. I also had already done stage 2, which was doing the Snowflake steps for the original book, but since I was adjusting the plot, I spent the past few days altering my 1-paragraph summary (Snowflake step 2) and 1-page synopsis (Snowflake step 4). I also had already done stage 5 of my Book Creation Process, which was to create a scene spreadsheet (Snowflake step 8), and in working on the 1-page synopsis, I ended up revising the scene spreadsheet at the same time. I also already had done an expanded synopsis of the book (Snowflake step 6), and normally I’

In thinking about my blocking yesterday, I’m really glad I had such a large chunk of time to devote to it. I’m not entirely positive, but I think I was able to come up with a solution to my problem because I had a long stretch of uninterrupted time to devote to it. Even though my mind got distracted several times, mostly because the problem was so tricky, eventually I figured out what to do because I had so long to ponder it. I think if I’d broken up the blocking over several days, with only 30 or 60 minutes a day, it would have taken longer than what it took me yesterday (about 4.5 hours). I think that because the time would have been broken up, it would have taken me some time each day to reorient my mind on the problem and try to think of solutions aside from the obvious ones I’d tried that didn’t work. So while writing a little each day has been helping me immensely, I think that maybe when I do blocking or outlining, it might be best to have longer hours during the day so that I c

I’m still working on my Hawaii book outline today. I didn’t get as much done yesterday, but I woke up a bit earlier today, so I hope to get more done today. As yesterday, I did only the bare minimum of writing and blocking on my Regency book, just to keep up my streak. *** I had a long stretch of uninterrupted time, but for some reason I had to keep pulling my attention back to my work. I wasn’t distracted for more than a couple minutes at a time, I wasn’t completely focused on my work. However, I don’t feel like I wasted time or anything like that, I was always able to get back on track quickly. Part of the reason might be because I was wrestling with a particularly difficult story problem today. I could practically feel steam coming out of my ears as I tried to think and figure out a solution to the problem. Since I was having so much trouble figuring out how to solve my problem, I did a lot of free-writing to brainstorm solutions. In many ways, 4thewords is perfect for this because

I’m still working on outlining the Hawaii book. I got a lot done yesterday and made some key decisions on how I wanted the plot to unfold, so today I hope to get even more done and maybe finish the outline entirely. However I’m not sure since I got a late start to work today. Since I’m working on the Hawaii book for most of today, I’ll only do the bare minimum of writing and blocking, just to keep up my streak. *** When I was working on my Hawaii outlining, I had to interrupt my work a couple times in order to do food prep for cooking dinner. I’m not sure if that made it hard for me to concentrate or not, but I did feel a bit annoyed that I had to stop. Unfortunately, house chores like that are unavoidable unless I want to force my husband to eat take-out every night. And cooking always takes me so much longer than I expect it to. I had been hoping to get a total of 6 hours of work today like yesterday, but I only got about 4.5. :( We even had a late dinner, and yet I still couldn’t ge

I’m going to change things up a bit today. I’ve been prioritizing my Regency books when I work each day, and doing work on outlining my Hawaii book only if I have time and energy at the end of the day. However, lately I’ve been tired and haven’t been able to consistently be able to get work done on the book. Once the outline is done, I only need to spend a few minutes each day on the Hawaii book and write 100 words a day. However, finishing the outline is taking a long time. So I think I’ll do only the bare minimum on my Regency books today, and then spend more time outlining the Hawaii book. Once it’s outlined, then I’ll only have to spend 10-15 minutes a day writing it, and can spend the rest of my work time on my Regency books. That way, I can more quickly have at least a little something for my contemporary readers to enjoy while I’m still mostly working on my Regency books. *** I pushed myself a bit harder today and ended up getting a lot of work done, and put in almost 6 hours! I

I don’t usually blog on Sundays, but today marks 150 consecutive days where I’ve written at least the bare minimum on my manuscript every day! I usually only write the bare minimum (100 words or 5 minutes) on Sundays, and lately I’ve only done the bare minimum on days I was working on our taxes. I will also do the bare minimum even if I feel sick that day, although lately I’ve been getting a better handle on my IBS and so I’ve been able to take medication and wait out the pain until it’s manageable, and then do a regular amount of work. Doing only 100 words a day doesn’t really do all that much to increase my word count and help me finish the book, especially since I want to release several books a year. But keeping the story at the forefront of my mind has been very helpful for me to dive right back into the story the next day I feel better. Before, when I didn’t write on days I felt sick, I had to waste too much time re-reading what I’d written before to get my head back into th

Surprisingly, it was a little hard to get back to work after taking a sick day yesterday. I felt kind of sluggish today, but I think it’s mostly that inertia I feel when I’ve been taking it easy—I want to just keep doing nothing because it’s the easiest thing to do (or in this case, not do). I’m not normally a very active person, I think I’m rather like my dad in that I’m slow-moving and more likely to take things easy. It’s probably one of the reasons why my productivity isn’t as high as other authors—my natural, everyday energy level just really isn’t all that high. However I really want to change that. I don’t intend to spur myself to work faster, but I do want to train myself to concentrate better and not be distracted so that I can get more done in less time. I think that short bursts of intense focus will enable me to be productive in my writing, and still get all my house chores and Japanese language learning done each day. Lately, since I wasn’t feeling well, the Japanese learn

I forgot to post yesterday, but I finished my taxes! Yesterday I wasn’t feeling very well (not only IBS but also womanly stuff), so I had to power through the discomfort. I also managed to do the bare minimum of writing and blocking in order to keep up my streak. I’m still not feeling great today (I hate my womanly stuff) and since the discomfort is not like IBS (where I can usually wait an hour and the symptoms will go away), I think I’ll take today off as a sick day. I also want to celebrate since I finished the taxes yesterday. However, I made sure to do the bare minimum today so I keep my streak. I also set a reminder on my phone to remind me to start working a little on my taxes every day starting in January. That way I’ll have plenty of time and do just a little each day so the work isn’t so overwhelming. Regency series: Editing: Time spent: 4 minutes Writing: Time spent: 14 minutes Writing: Total number of words: 300 words Writing streak: 148 days Blocking: time spent: 7 minutes