Day 731: 210 day writing streak!

Today marks 210 consecutive days where I’ve written at least the bare minimum on my Regency series every single day!

When I first started this writing streak, it was really hard. I was suffering from some bad IBS flare-ups and some days I felt so sick that I actually resented the fact that I had to write a little bit. The streak didn’t cause a feeling of achievement at that point, because I was forcing myself to work through some terrible pain. When I first started, I both loved and hated my writing streak.

I think the key to my keeping up the streak was the fact that I deliberately made my bare minimum extremely doable—100 words or 5 minutes. Even if I’m feeling like roadkill, I can do at least 100 words. I might suffer through it, but it’s such a small amount that it makes it a lot easier for me to make sure I do it and keep up my streak.

Also, a small amount like 100 words is something I can do on my phone if I don’t want to (or can’t) sit down at my computer. I have a friend who has a chronic illness, and she mentioned how she would write on her phone more than on her computer, because she’d write a little bit at snatches of time during the day. My IBS pain flows in waves, and during a few minutes of less pain, I can crank out 100 words on my phone. Now that I’m doing the majority of my writing on 4thewords.com, it’s easy to write on my phone if I have to, because I only have to pull up the browser and my work has been saved online. I still do my editing in Scrivener, but I can certainly do my rough draft and even my blocking on 4thewords on my phone if I don’t want to sit down at my desk.

Also, forcing myself to do the bare minimum will often get me to write more than just 100 words. So I’m getting more work done on days I otherwise would feel too sick to want to do much of anything. It’s just a few more words done, but those few words eventually add up.

In January this year, I was feeling absolutely TERRIBLE for most of the month, but I averaged about 150 words a day and completed a 5700 word scene. I can't release books very quickly when writing at that pace, but it’s still an entire scene I chugged out when I wasn’t feeling well. It’s the equivalent of 2 or 3 really productive writing days.

The obvious value of a writing streak is that I do at least a little work every day, and a little bit always adds up. Now that my IBS is more under control, most days I do several hours of work, but the weeks when I only did the bare minimum still managed to add up to a large percentage of a scene.

But another useful side effect of the writing streak is that it forces me to get my head into the Regency series every single day, even when I only do 100 words and then forget about it the rest of the day. Since I’m constantly, consistently in my manuscript, I don’t forget where I am in the scene, or where I wanted the scene to go.

As a result, when I do feel well enough to get more writing done, I can dive right into the manuscript and know exactly what I need to do next. When I didn’t write for days at a time, I would forget where I was in the scene and I would have to spend time re-reading what I’d written as well as re-reading my blocking notes. But after I started the writing streak, I didn’t have to waste that time re-reading because I had refreshed my memory about the story every single day.

Since I didn’t have to waste time re-reading stuff, it was a more efficient use of my time when I did feel better and could write more.

Another unexpected benefit of the writing streak was that if I hadn’t done writing in a few days, for some reason I would procrastinate a bit before diving back into work. I’m not sure why I felt like I had to overcome this inertial hurdle, but there you go. However, since I started doing a little bit of writing every day, I haven’t had that inertial hump when I started writing. I’m able to just start writing, no resistance or procrastination.

The streak also forces me to continue to work hard simply because I don’t want to break the streak. This is probably because of my achievement-based personality, so someone with a different personality type might not be particularly motivated by a desire not to break a streak. But for me, it works. On days when I’m feeling only kind of bad (and not so sick that I want to crawl back into bed), I’m not tempted to give in to laziness and not work entirely, simply because I don’t want to break my streak.

After I crossed the 30 day mark, the streak started motivating me to keep it up because I wanted to see how high I could make it. It especially became motivating when I hit triple digits.

When I first started the streaks, I discovered that I needed to do my writing first thing to make sure I did it, because I was often tired when I did it later in the afternoon. I’ve never been a morning person, so I didn’t think doing writing in the morning would work for me, but since I was trying to manage my energy while dealing with a chronic illness, I found that I was able to think better and get more done when I did the writing when my brain was freshest and before the IBS got too bad.

As a result, I was more easily able to keep up the streak since I did it first thing. Unfortunately, a bunch of other non-urgent but important tasks got shunted to the wayside (such as my Japanese study, email checking, marketing work, and reading Regency research books), but I had so little energy at all due to the IBS that I barely had enough for the writing.

After the IBS got better, I moved the writing back to the afternoon (or at least later in the morning) because I started doing my “frogs” first to make sure they got done. Since the IBS was better, I now have the energy to do my work in the afternoon. Also, I’m more motivated to keep up the streak, so I don’t worry as much about giving in to laziness or not wanting to do my writing work.

However, I still haven’t figured out a good reward system for when I reach streak milestones. For now, I just create a badge that I post on my blog and put on my sidebar to mark each 30 days of my streak. I’d like to come up with a really good reward I give to myself to help motivate me on my streak, but unfortunately I’m very food-oriented. Normally I’d reward myself with something yummy to eat, but at the moment there’s very little I can eat which I enjoy. And the few things which I can eat which I enjoy, I just eat them when I want to in order to remain sane on this horrendous diet for my IBS.

So I can honestly say that I heartily endorse writing streaks. It’s not a magic pill, and I had to adjust my work and schedule to make it work, and some days it was really hard to get my bare minimum done to keep the streak going. But in general, I’ve had more positives than negatives with my writing streak.

***

Unfortunately, I didn’t get as much done today as I wanted because Thursdays always tend to be busy days for house chores. I ended up taking a long time in the afternoon for cooking prep and started work on my Regency series late in the day.

All I could do was do my best and try to practice intense focus and concentration during the time I had to work. If I can sustain that for longer periods of time, I can hopefully become more efficient with my work time.

However, I still had back problems which were really distracting me. I needed to take time to readjust my workspace, and then acquaint myself with the new setup. It took time and I only managed to get about half an hour each for writing and blocking before I had to go cook dinner. It’s not the 3-4 hours of work on my Regency series that I’ve been trying to aim for lately, but it’s better than nothing.

Hopefully I’ll get more done tomorrow when I don’t have as many house chores to do.

Regency series:

Editing: Time spent: 8 minutes

Writing: Time spent: 27 minutes

Writing: Total number of words: 370 words

Writing streak: 210 days

Blocking: time spent: 27 minutes

Blocking: Total number of words: 366 words

Blocking streak: 204 days

Hawaii series:

Editing: Time spent: 3 minutes

Writing: time spent: 25 minutes (I had to block the next scene before I could write it, so I did that instead)

Writing: Total number of words: n/a

Writing-related business:

Regency research reading: time spent: 37 minutes

Email: time spent: 16 minutes

Marketing: time spent: 36 minutes