Day 813: Procrastination again

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 with editing. Why can’t I just sit down and get to work? I was listening to a podcast interview with Andy Weir, and apparently he actually procrastinates a bit before sitting down to write, so I don’t think I’m alone in this. But I need to figure out a way to overcome this.

It might have been easier if I hadn’t had such a bad night last night and this morning with my IBS. I think that I’m more likely to get to work when I’ve had plenty of sleep.

Also, the cycle edits are still a lot of work, because I’ve been writing rather fast because of the dictation. And large jobs tend to make me procrastinate more. However, I’ll have to get used to it, because if I keep writing about 5000 words each time I dictate, I’ll have an entire chapter to cycle edit the next day.

I also haven’t been giving myself rewards when I do sit down to work, so maybe I need to start that up again. I used to treat myself to a (gluten-free) pastry or something special when I would sit down to start writing (back when I was typing instead of dictating). I haven’t treated myself since I’ve been walking and dictating instead. So maybe I need to reimplement that when I sit down to do the cycle edits.

I did some of the cycle edits and intended to still go walking and get some dictation done, but it turned out that I had some house chores to do today that took up a lot of time. They were things I absolutely had to do, so there was no helping it.

I ended up not having time for more work. I didn’t do more than half an hour of cycle edits, and I also still didn’t get to doing the cleanup editing from the dictation I did yesterday (8/22).

I’ll have to really knuckle down and get to the cycle edits tomorrow, as well as the cleanup edits. If I don’t have time to walk and dictate, so be it—my priority has to be getting the cycle edits done, and then making sure I do them everyday after that so they don’t pile up again. It’s like when I cleaned my email Inbox—now, I make sure to clear it out every single day so that emails don’t pile up again.

However, I did some writing in my book, via typing, just to keep up my streak.

I feel kind of bad about not dictating today, especially because I think it’ll be harder to dictate tomorrow (or the next day) since I had skipped today. I’m not sure why the dictation gets so difficult just from skipping. Maybe it’s because it’s still very new for me and I’m not used to it.

Writing streak: 292 days

My takeaway for today: Reimplement treats when I sit down to do edits.

My second takeaway for today: Make sure you do your cycle edits in a timely fashion so they don’t pile up again.