Day 809: Dictation, day 22
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 editing of the scene in my Regency side novel to fix what had happened already in the scene. Otherwise the exercise will be aimless without any direction.
***
I got a lot of editing done today. However, I had forgotten how long periods using my mouse causes my shoulder and wrist to hurt. I wonder if I should have broken it up into one to two hours of editing each day rather than trying to edit the entire book as quickly as possible? It would have been less work for my wrist and shoulder at least.
However I am almost done editing the book and I'm really glad. As soon as it's done, I'll send it off to my editor and then I can start work on book 5 again. I'm really looking forward to having longer walks and being able to dictate for a longer period of time, because it seems like my dictation speed increases the longer I dictate.
I dictated two exercises, a freewrite and some fiction, using my Regency side novel. I still need to edit it, but I picked a place later in the scene and dictated about 5 minutes.
The dictation today was really terrible again, but not quite as bad as yesterday. I still did a lot of pausing and mistakes. I had wanted to do the dictation earlier in the day because I get too tired later, but I didn’t want to ruin my momentum earlier in the afternoon since I was getting so much editing done. And so I ended up dictating after dinner again. My brain was tired, but I tried my best to just keep dictating and not stop.
I did a lot of pausing during the freewrite, but I had less of it during the fiction dictation exercise, so that was good. And by the time I go to the fiction, the pausing was a little bit less. I think that the sentence dictation exercise helps a lot to prep my brain to think more in sentences than word by word. However, the dictation still felt very stilted and I made a lot of mistakes.
My raw dictation speed was faster, at least, at around 3600 words per hour. However, I still need to do cleanup, which might delete a bunch of words since I made a lot of mistakes. I was too tired to do the cleanup today, and will do it tomorrow.
I didn't get any frogs done except the two I did before I started editing. I had forgotten that sometimes there are time sensitive things that I need to get done, and that skipping my marketing and email can be detrimental.
At least today I limited my social media time to only 20 minutes, even though I forgot to set the timer again. I'm going to have to figure out if I'll be able to keep this up and do only 15 minutes of social media day. I think it might be possible, because it isn't as if I'm hosting a large group, nor do I have to participate in every conversation. It just sometimes seems like a lot of work when I would rather spend that time doing other things. But I suppose social media is important for my business, and so I need to make time and effort for it. I'm not entirely sure how much benefit it has though. Am I just fooling myself into thinking that social media has any impact on my writing career at all? I think I'll pray about it and see what I should do.
Writing streak: 288 days
My takeaway for today: Writing the book faster may make the editing go faster with fewer continuity errors.
My second takeaway for today: I need to edit my Regency side novel so that it will be easier to use it as a dictation exercise prompt.
My third takeaway for today: Next time consider doing only 2 hours of editing per day to prevent injury to my shoulder and wrist.
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 editing of the scene in my Regency side novel to fix what had happened already in the scene. Otherwise the exercise will be aimless without any direction.
***
I got a lot of editing done today. However, I had forgotten how long periods using my mouse causes my shoulder and wrist to hurt. I wonder if I should have broken it up into one to two hours of editing each day rather than trying to edit the entire book as quickly as possible? It would have been less work for my wrist and shoulder at least.
However I am almost done editing the book and I'm really glad. As soon as it's done, I'll send it off to my editor and then I can start work on book 5 again. I'm really looking forward to having longer walks and being able to dictate for a longer period of time, because it seems like my dictation speed increases the longer I dictate.
I dictated two exercises, a freewrite and some fiction, using my Regency side novel. I still need to edit it, but I picked a place later in the scene and dictated about 5 minutes.
The dictation today was really terrible again, but not quite as bad as yesterday. I still did a lot of pausing and mistakes. I had wanted to do the dictation earlier in the day because I get too tired later, but I didn’t want to ruin my momentum earlier in the afternoon since I was getting so much editing done. And so I ended up dictating after dinner again. My brain was tired, but I tried my best to just keep dictating and not stop.
I did a lot of pausing during the freewrite, but I had less of it during the fiction dictation exercise, so that was good. And by the time I go to the fiction, the pausing was a little bit less. I think that the sentence dictation exercise helps a lot to prep my brain to think more in sentences than word by word. However, the dictation still felt very stilted and I made a lot of mistakes.
My raw dictation speed was faster, at least, at around 3600 words per hour. However, I still need to do cleanup, which might delete a bunch of words since I made a lot of mistakes. I was too tired to do the cleanup today, and will do it tomorrow.
I didn't get any frogs done except the two I did before I started editing. I had forgotten that sometimes there are time sensitive things that I need to get done, and that skipping my marketing and email can be detrimental.
At least today I limited my social media time to only 20 minutes, even though I forgot to set the timer again. I'm going to have to figure out if I'll be able to keep this up and do only 15 minutes of social media day. I think it might be possible, because it isn't as if I'm hosting a large group, nor do I have to participate in every conversation. It just sometimes seems like a lot of work when I would rather spend that time doing other things. But I suppose social media is important for my business, and so I need to make time and effort for it. I'm not entirely sure how much benefit it has though. Am I just fooling myself into thinking that social media has any impact on my writing career at all? I think I'll pray about it and see what I should do.
Writing streak: 288 days
My takeaway for today: Writing the book faster may make the editing go faster with fewer continuity errors.
My second takeaway for today: I need to edit my Regency side novel so that it will be easier to use it as a dictation exercise prompt.
My third takeaway for today: Next time consider doing only 2 hours of editing per day to prevent injury to my shoulder and wrist.
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