Day 728: Streak power, marketing work

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I had a couple sick days because I caught a cold, but I managed to do the bare minimum of work on my Regency novel every day to keep my streak going.

It’s amazing, the power of this streak. It’s over 200 days now, so I feel anxious if I don’t get writing done because I don’t want to break it. Since my bare minimum is so low (only 100 words or 5 minutes), it’s easy to do even when I’m feeling sick.

I admit, the first couple weeks of the streak were probably the hardest, especially because I was in the midst of a pretty bad IBS flare-up and didn’t want to get to work. This was before I found medication to relieve the symptoms so that I could get at least a few hours of work done.

I felt absolutely terrible on Saturday because of my cold, but I managed to get words written anyway since it was only 100 words. Keeping my streak keeps me invested in my manuscript so that I don’t have long stretches of time where I don’t work on it because of illness. It helps me be more efficient when I am finally able to spend more time on it, since I don’t have to spend time to re-read large sections to try to figure out where I am in the story.

Since I didn’t work on Saturday or Sunday, I wanted to get some work done today even though it was Memorial Day. However, I almost didn’t get any work done today because my morning was completely shot by another IBS flare-up. This was my mistake, I forgot to look up an ingredient in my baking and it ended up aggravating my IBS.

I’m rather frustrated with myself because I’ve been pretty good lately about remembering to check everything I put in my mouth. I’ve been trying to adhere to my strict diet so that I don’t have days like this, where my IBS prevents me from working for several hours.

I did some marketing work instead of writing because it was easier for me to stop when the nausea and pain got bad. However, my symptoms got better later in the afternoon and I decided to try to get some work done. I have to remember to try this again when I have an IBS flare-up—an hour or two of marketing work is better than no writing at all.

I managed to get work done on my Hawaii book as well as my Regency series, although I didn’t have as much time to work on my Regency as I would have without the health issues. I also didn’t get any Regency research reading done today.

Still, I got some work done despite feeling terrible this morning. I think it’s been a good day.



Regency series:

Editing: Time spent: 26 minutes

Writing: Time spent: 1 hour, 6 minutes

Writing: Total number of words: 587 words

Writing streak: 207 days

Blocking: time spent: 46 minutes

Blocking: Total number of words: 408 words

Blocking streak: 201 days

Hawaii series:

Editing: Time spent: 3 minutes

Writing: time spent: 16 minutes

Writing: Total number of words: 228 words

Writing-related business:

Regency research reading: time spent: 0

Email: time spent: 10 minutes

Marketing: time spent: 1 hour, 28 minutes

My takeaway for today: The next time I have an IBS flare-up, do some marketing work so that I get something done besides just the bare minimum.

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