Camy's Writing Diary

It’s my 300 day writing streak! I have written at least 100 words on my manuscript every single day for 300 consecutive days! I’ve blogged a lot about the value of a writing streak. I honestly never thought a writing streak would work for me since my health is so bad, and there were some days I didn’t want to get out of bed. But it helped that my bare minimum is so small (only 100 words), and the streak has really helped me a lot to keep up my writing momentum and keep pushing on in my writing, even when my IBS got really bad. I’m starting to realize that it takes a while for me to get started in the morning. I think it’s because I’m not a morning person. (But I was listening to a podcast, and two other authors who are not morning people find that they actually write the best in the morning, so I totally want to try that.) I did all my frogs before I started on work today. Later, I wondered if maybe I should've done the editing first, since I more likely to procrastinate st...

I was very bad about keeping to my schedule today. I let myself get distracted by various house chores. They were important, but 20 minutes here or there adds up, and I ended up starting my writing work later in the afternoon than I wanted. I should have expected this because I had skipped my frogs for several days, but my marketing and my email took longer than I wanted. I cut my marketing a little short also. I started off doing the cycling edit on the scene that I had finished a few days ago. Unfortunately, the editing took a lot longer than I had expected. That seems to be the common theme. All these things seem to take much longer than I expect. I am vastly underestimating how long these tasks should take. I don't know how long I thought the cycle edit would take. I probably thought it would only take a few minutes, like it used to when I did the cycle edit before starting writing (via typing) every day. But I had forgotten that when I do the cycle edits at those times...

My IBS is kind of bad today, but I took medication and decided to go out walking and dictating anyway. I have been wanting to try to walk and dictate earlier in the day, partly just to try it since most of the time I dictate in the afternoon, and I wanted to compare how my dictation goes in the morning versus the afternoon. But I also wanted to try dictating in the morning because walking in the afternoon is very hot, and I thought maybe the dictation might go better if I went walking in the morning when the weather is cooler. So I had planned to go walking not too long after I woke up, but I had forgotten that my IBS tends to be worst in the morning. I have been trying my best to control my diet, but I am also at a phase where I'm trying to figure out which foods I can and cannot eat. Sometimes I try something and it causes issues. The problem is that if I eat something and my IBS reacts to it, it will bother me for a full week after I've eaten it. So I ended up not bein...

I had a hard time sleeping last night, and so I overslept this morning. I also have a little bit of IBS discomfort. However, I wanted to try doing my walk and dictation earlier in the day, before I did my frogs. So after breakfast, I got my digital recorder and went out. Since I overslept, this isn't exactly early morning writing, and my brain feels pretty clear. When it's especially early in the morning, my mind is usually rather fuzzy. So I'm not sure if this could really qualify as an experiment in writing first thing in the morning. But it's the first thing I'm doing today, and I'll see how I feel, and how all my other tasks lineup throughout the rest of the day. I think that I will continue to do an hour of marketing a day. The productivity books I have read talk about batching your work, in which you do only one type of work each day. I can't quite do that, because I have to do certain things every day, such as Japanese and checking my email. I was...

I had a bad start to today because I woke up in the middle of the night with a sinus headache. This morning, I got my frogs done but it’s been hard to focus since I’m still feeling the aftereffects of the headache. I finally decided to switch things up. Normally I’d do my Hawaii book on Saturdays, and I had decided to do some extra marketing work on Saturdays too, but I decided to instead do marketing and my Hawaii book today, and then do my Regency book tomorrow instead. One reason was because while I was doing my frogs, it was easier for me to do my marketing. Since it would be better to be productive in my marketing than not very productive trying to work while feeling the effects of my headache, I decided to just focus on marketing for today. I had a lot of marketing tasks to do anyway, and got a lot done. I still have a lot more to do, but it was nice to get a huge chunk of my marketing work out of my way. Looking at all I got done today and how long it took me, I’m starti...

I got another late start this morning because of my IBS. I bet this was because I had blogged yesterday about my ideal day, and how I wanted to be able to get a full seven hours of work done. Even though I started late, I really tried to get everything done today. I set a timer for each of my tasks. I even listened to the timer when it went off. I got almost all of my frogs done except for my marketing. It's always the marketing that seems to get shunted out. I think it's because, while all of my frogs are important, the marketing probably has the least urgency. My Japanese has to be done every day, my email and social media have to be checked every day so that I don't miss anything time sensitive, I need to do some regency research every day mostly to get my brain back into Regency England. The marketing is still important, but unless I have some type of promotion, most of my marketing tasks are not time-dependent, and can be put off for a few days or a few weeks. I th...

I had a bad bout of IBS last night, but this morning I’m feeling pretty good (knock on wood) and I’m ready to get to work. Considering how hard it’s been to get myself to do my cycle edits, I decided to do them first, as one of my “frogs.” I also need to get to my cleanup edits from my dictation on 8/22. If I can get them done early, I might get to my other “frogs,” namely my marketing. There’s a time-sensitive marketing task I have to finish this week, and I’ve been doing it in smaller chunks. And then after that, I’ll hopefully have time to go walking and dictating a little. But even if I don’t, I’ll be glad to get the cycle edits finally off my plate. I don’t want them to pile up again like that. *** I managed to finish all my cycle edits! Yay! I also finished the cleanup editing on the dictation from 8/22. However I decided to stop early for the day—I didn’t even get to my marketing “frog”—because I started having upper back problems. It was my fault for changing the comp...

I had some bad IBS this morning, but it was mostly slain via judicious use of medication, and I was hopeful I’d be able to get more work done in the afternoon. I got my “frogs” done first, but I was tempted to skip the marketing because I had gotten started so late in the morning because of my IBS. But I have a time-dependent marketing task that needs to get done this week, and it’s a large project so I've been doing it piece by piece, so I ended up working on that. I was going to do more dictation today, but I realized I hadn’t done my cycle edits of book 5 since I started writing it, and I was terribly behind. I admit I did procrastinate a bit before getting to my cycle edits. I did some things which were important, but hardly urgent—I had to replace my monitor with a new one my husband got for me. I also decided to switch out my trackball to try a new one, because the old one is a glitchy model and it was getting on my nerves. I don’t understand why I’m always like this wi...

I have been listening to some podcasts about writing productivity. I am still going to try to get better at dictating until I can reach 5000 words per hour (raw dictation), but in the meantime, I am going to aim for about 2 hours of dictation and 2 hours of cleanup editing per day. At my current raw dictation speed, I think that I could write a total of 5000 words per day. If I can do that, I think I could finish book 5 in a few weeks. That would be amazing if I could do that! I had terrible IBS this morning, but I'm glad that I managed to get to work eventually. I tried to get all my frogs done this morning as quickly as possible, so that I could go walking and dictating. I admit I'm a little worried, because although I took medicine before leaving the house, if the IBS flares up during the walk, I'll have no choice but to return home early. I’m dictating today, first of all, a freewrite exercise, and then a fiction dictation exercise using my Regency side novel. I w...

Despite having terrible IBS last night and this morning, I managed to drag myself to the computer, saturated with drugs, to finish editing book 4 in my series, and I finished tonight! I’m so glad it’s done. (On a side note, I hope the drugs did not make the editing all wonky.) Unfortunately, I’m also having wrist and shoulder issues because I spent too long doing mouse work. This was the exact reason I stopped doing developmental editing for clients, because the mouse work was causing me pain. Next time, I’m going to have to separate the editing over several days. Now is the time when I usually have a lot of marketing tasks to do to prepare for the book launch. I’m really glad I made a checklist, even though it’s kind of scary long, but I know that I included everything so that I won’t forget something important. Also, most of the tasks on the checklist are very small ones that I could do in 15 minutes, so I can do a few each day. I will start to do some of those marketing task...

The problem with doing my editing first, before my frogs, is that my frogs don’t get done, and they’re still important. I missed some time-sensitive stuff a couple days ago, and then something else yesterday. So I did my email and marketing first, before my editing today. The editing itself is going much faster now that I’m in the last half of the book. It’s mostly because there are fewer continuity errors I have to correct and I noticed that the manuscript is cleaner overall. This was the prose I wrote when I was feeling better and was doing an hour or two of writing each day rather than just bare minimum of writing on book 4 and spending most of the time blocking book 5. The writing is definitely better when I can do more prose each day and get the story out faster. I think it’s because I better remember what happened earlier. I realized that another reason my dictation exercise yesterday was bad was because my prompt wasn’t very good. I realized that I need to do some extensive ...

I wanted to do my editing first again today, before I did my other frogs, but I found that I had to check social media today. I had sent a newsletter last night, and I wanted to respond to any comments I might have received. The problem with social media is ME. I had forgotten to set a timer, and I ended up spending almost an hour on social media. At the same time, I started feeling anxious because there were so many notifications I had to check. I know that many authors say that social media is essential for forming a connection with readers, but it's extremely stressful for me. Facebook especially seems to have so much going on, and I quickly feel overwhelmed. I began posting on Goodreads again, because I enjoy that much more and it’s much more slow-paced than Facebook. However, I still feel a bit overwhelmed because honestly, I haven't had much time for reading since I've been spending more time writing. I'm also anxious because I don't really know how to...

Today, because I wanted to make sure that I got some editing done, I did it before I did any of my other frogs. It worked very well, and I was able to sit down at the computer and start work right away. In fact, the momentum was going really well, and so I didn't do any of my other frogs today. Instead, I did editing work all the way up until dinner. I had some bad IBS symptoms at moments during the day. It wasn't constant, it was half an hour here or there where I had pain or discomfort. It caused me to have a late start for my day, which also might have been why I started the editing work quickly, because I knew that I was already starting late. The editing is going very slowly. It might simply be how I do my editing. I read very closely to make sure that the language is appropriate for the time, since I'm writing a historical novel. When I write the Hawaii book, I check to make sure that the dialogue sounds like it would come out of the mouth of someone who lived in ...

I had a bad IBS day today, and didn’t start work until later in the afternoon when the medication kicked in. I wasn’t feeling great, so I did my “frogs” instead of my work. However, I feel a bit guilty because I ended up spending a long time doing marketing work. It had to be done, but I admit that I was probably procrastinating doing the editing. AGAIN. A lot of today was spent trying to wait through the pain until the medication worked. So it wasn’t as if I could do my editing while I was so uncomfortable. And once the medication did start working, I still had bouts of nausea and cramping, which was why I decided to do my frogs rather than trying to jump into the editing, which takes quite a lot more energy and brainpower than the frogs. But once the cramping had decreased enough, I should have moved straight into the editing. However, I was in the middle of a marketing task and decided to finish it first before I forgot to do it. I only got a little bit of editing done today, ...

I dictated the following during my walk as my freewrite dictation exercise, so it might ramble a bit. But at least I didn’t stop dictating and there weren’t any long pauses. *** Promotions I ended up spending too long doing marketing today. I decided at the last minute to participate in some time sensitive promotions, and so I had to get them done. I really don't like doing promotions. It is outside of my comfort zone. It also causes me anxiety for some reason. I think it's because I have to make sure I do certain things by certain times, such as making sure to send out a newsletter, or post on my blog, or remember to lower a price on Amazon. I think because so many things need to be done beforehand, I get anxious that I've forgotten to do something. I'm not sure if this promotion will do anything. However, it was free, and I had to take advantage of it before the end of the month. I figured it wouldn't hurt to have a small promotion. The promo itself is...

Since today is Saturday, I worked on my Hawaii serial novel, Year of the Dog . Some scenes are just revising the original manuscript, while others involve almost complete rewrites, and there are a few scenes that are completely new. Today, the scene was only revision, so I actually finished the chapter in about an hour. I spent some extra time doing some marketing stuff, which today happened to be cooking. I was making a dish that I wrote into my book, and I had to make it today because I worried that the cream would go bad if I waited another day or two. I took photos and then wrote the blog post for the recipe, even though I probably won’t post it for a while, but I wanted to write it while it was still fresh in my mind. I decided to go for a walk and do some dictation exercises, but it ended up being only one exercise, which was a free write. I probably should have stopped the freewrite in order to do a dictation exercise on a piece of fiction, but the free write had turned into...