Day 792: Dictation, day 9 - need better time management
I finally managed to wake up earlier today and get started on my work earlier, but I ended up taking too long when doing my marketing work, which cut into my writing time. What happened was that I did one marketing task, which only took me 11 minutes, and I thought I might as well do a second one. Except that marketing task took way longer than expected, so I ended up spending over an hour doing marketing, when I was supposed to cap it at 45 minutes (so that I would have enough time to do my writing for today).
I keep forgetting to set a timer when I do my writing-related work! I have to remember to do that so I’ll remember to stop and not take too long to do this stuff! I’m disappointed that I’m not more disciplined in my time management.
I thought I would have 30 minutes for dictation exercises, then 1.5 hours to dictate, and an hour to do editing. But there always seems to be small things I need to do around the house before I can go walking, even though my dictation equipment is ready to go.
I did 30 minutes of dictation exercises. One exercise was just reading in my genre, which ended up being 319 words in 4 minutes, 33 seconds. My reading pace was 4207 words per hour, which was a little slow. I’m trying to get close to 5000 words per hour every time.
The other exercise was to try to dictate at 9000 words per hour. I dictated my blocking notes for my Regency side story. I dictated 1155 words in 20 minutes, but that was only 3465 words per hour.
I think it’s because I still have too much silence when I dictate. I simply cannot dictate smoothly and seamlessly. I still have to stop and think too often, which slows down my dictation pace despite my trying to dictate faster.
Because I didn’t get out of the house quickly enough, I only had 1 hour to dictate before I had to be home to cook dinner. Right when I got back home, I started cooking rather than doing the transcription and editing. I did the transcription after dinner.
Also, it it always takes longer than I expect for transcription. I’m pretty frustrated because I can’t do anything on my computer while it’s transcribing since my computer is so old and Dragon uses up so much memory, so I just hang around and wait.
I dictated for 1 hour, 6 minutes, and dictated 2472 words. The dictation pace was 2247 words per hour. I didn’t really expect a fast dictation speed today because I ran into a logic problem near the end of the scene. I had a lot of silence as I tried to figure out a solution. It took me almost 20 minutes of mostly silence before I remembered that I should try to dictate to brainstorm a solution. After I did, I figured something out rather quickly. Because of the logic problem, I know that much of what I dictated today will need to be cut, since it’s just brainstorming and not prose.
By the time the transcription finished, it was pretty late and I was feeling tired. The editing takes as much mental energy as writing, and I still hadn’t done my cycling edit for the past several days.
I decided to do the editing tomorrow, but I really hate this. I much prefer to do the dictating, transcribing, cycle editing, and then clean-up editing on the dictation all on the same day. As it stands, I’m way behind on the cycle editing. But since I was so tired, I didn’t want to force myself to edit while my brain was mush, because then the editing would be even WORSE than normal.
I will have to prioritize the editing tomorrow and hope I still have time for writing, too.
I’m rather disappointed that I spent so long on marketing and that it cut into my writing time. On the one hand, it was all marketing stuff that did eventually need to be done. But I would rather spend only 45 minutes on that stuff so that I have more time to write. In this case, I would have had time to do some editing before needing to cook dinner.
I absolutely need better time management. Maybe I will have to read up on it. I know I’m just not very good at doing things at specific times of the day—I think I get too distracted when I’m in the midst of doing something. It’s the reason I have alarms on my phone, to remind me when I have to do certain things. However, I’m also good at ignoring them. I’m going to need to be more disciplined at listening to the alarms on my phone.
Writing streak: 271 days
Regency series:
Editing: Time spent: 0
Writing: Time spent: 1 hour, 31 minutes (but did not yet do cleanup editing on the dictation)
Writing: Total number of words: 2472 words (raw dictation words that have not yet been cleaned up)
Blocking: time spent: 20 minutes (Regency side story) (does not include transcription time because I forgot to start the timer, and I did not yet do cleanup editing on the dictation)
Blocking: Total number of words: 1155 words (raw dictation words that have not yet been cleaned up)
Writing-related business:
Regency research reading: time spent: 20 minutes
Email: time spent: 35 minutes
Marketing: time spent: 1 hour, 23 minutes
My takeaway for today: Remember to set your timer when you do marketing stuff so that you don’t spend too long doing it.
My second takeaway for today: Be more disciplined in time management so you have time to write and edit every day!
I keep forgetting to set a timer when I do my writing-related work! I have to remember to do that so I’ll remember to stop and not take too long to do this stuff! I’m disappointed that I’m not more disciplined in my time management.
I thought I would have 30 minutes for dictation exercises, then 1.5 hours to dictate, and an hour to do editing. But there always seems to be small things I need to do around the house before I can go walking, even though my dictation equipment is ready to go.
I did 30 minutes of dictation exercises. One exercise was just reading in my genre, which ended up being 319 words in 4 minutes, 33 seconds. My reading pace was 4207 words per hour, which was a little slow. I’m trying to get close to 5000 words per hour every time.
The other exercise was to try to dictate at 9000 words per hour. I dictated my blocking notes for my Regency side story. I dictated 1155 words in 20 minutes, but that was only 3465 words per hour.
I think it’s because I still have too much silence when I dictate. I simply cannot dictate smoothly and seamlessly. I still have to stop and think too often, which slows down my dictation pace despite my trying to dictate faster.
Because I didn’t get out of the house quickly enough, I only had 1 hour to dictate before I had to be home to cook dinner. Right when I got back home, I started cooking rather than doing the transcription and editing. I did the transcription after dinner.
Also, it it always takes longer than I expect for transcription. I’m pretty frustrated because I can’t do anything on my computer while it’s transcribing since my computer is so old and Dragon uses up so much memory, so I just hang around and wait.
I dictated for 1 hour, 6 minutes, and dictated 2472 words. The dictation pace was 2247 words per hour. I didn’t really expect a fast dictation speed today because I ran into a logic problem near the end of the scene. I had a lot of silence as I tried to figure out a solution. It took me almost 20 minutes of mostly silence before I remembered that I should try to dictate to brainstorm a solution. After I did, I figured something out rather quickly. Because of the logic problem, I know that much of what I dictated today will need to be cut, since it’s just brainstorming and not prose.
By the time the transcription finished, it was pretty late and I was feeling tired. The editing takes as much mental energy as writing, and I still hadn’t done my cycling edit for the past several days.
I decided to do the editing tomorrow, but I really hate this. I much prefer to do the dictating, transcribing, cycle editing, and then clean-up editing on the dictation all on the same day. As it stands, I’m way behind on the cycle editing. But since I was so tired, I didn’t want to force myself to edit while my brain was mush, because then the editing would be even WORSE than normal.
I will have to prioritize the editing tomorrow and hope I still have time for writing, too.
I’m rather disappointed that I spent so long on marketing and that it cut into my writing time. On the one hand, it was all marketing stuff that did eventually need to be done. But I would rather spend only 45 minutes on that stuff so that I have more time to write. In this case, I would have had time to do some editing before needing to cook dinner.
I absolutely need better time management. Maybe I will have to read up on it. I know I’m just not very good at doing things at specific times of the day—I think I get too distracted when I’m in the midst of doing something. It’s the reason I have alarms on my phone, to remind me when I have to do certain things. However, I’m also good at ignoring them. I’m going to need to be more disciplined at listening to the alarms on my phone.
Writing streak: 271 days
Regency series:
Editing: Time spent: 0
Writing: Time spent: 1 hour, 31 minutes (but did not yet do cleanup editing on the dictation)
Writing: Total number of words: 2472 words (raw dictation words that have not yet been cleaned up)
Blocking: time spent: 20 minutes (Regency side story) (does not include transcription time because I forgot to start the timer, and I did not yet do cleanup editing on the dictation)
Blocking: Total number of words: 1155 words (raw dictation words that have not yet been cleaned up)
Writing-related business:
Regency research reading: time spent: 20 minutes
Email: time spent: 35 minutes
Marketing: time spent: 1 hour, 23 minutes
My takeaway for today: Remember to set your timer when you do marketing stuff so that you don’t spend too long doing it.
My second takeaway for today: Be more disciplined in time management so you have time to write and edit every day!
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