Day 891

I woke up a bit late this morning, and I wasn’t feeling 100%, but after doing a few of my “frogs”, I got started on work as soon as possible. I wanted to have as much time to get writing done as I could while I didn’t have too much IBS discomfort, just in case some flared up later in the day. That didn’t happen, thank the Lord, but I was still glad I was conservative with my energy today.

I haven’t been spending as much time on my “frogs” lately because of my health. I usually try to do exercise, email, my Japanese study, and house chores. I’ve been cutting short the time I spend on my email and Japanese (my exercise is already only 45 minutes of walking and I don’t want to go less than that). Eventually, I’d like to spend more time on my Japanese in the morning before I start work, but since I’m still in that stage where I’m not sure if my IBS will flare up later the day, I’ve been rushing my “frogs” to prioritize the writing.

Now that I’ve moved my marketing to Thursdays and Saturdays, that’s one fewer “frog” to do. One less task for my brain to work on in the morning helps me to be able to focus better on the writing. I’m also trying to streamline my marketing so that I can publish my books easily, just following a master checklist. Ideally, I’d like to balance my writing and marketing work time each week and each month so that I can write my books quickly and spend only the minimum amount of time needed to publish each one.

I’ve been feeling better the past few days, but I’m still taking it a bit easy with my work schedule as I slowly gain more energy each day. My highest priority has been to increase the amount of time I spend writing. Today I got almost 4.5 hours of writing done, and about 4000 words.

My writing speed was slow today, partly because I ended up doing some research in the midst of writing. It didn’t occur to me until later that I should have simply left a note for myself and kept going.

I also found myself editing some sentences because they didn’t say exactly what I wanted them to say, and it’s frustrating. In cases like that, I wanted to correct the sentence because if I left an incomplete sentence or sentence fragments and tried to fix it later, I might not remember what exactly I had been trying to say at the time.

Tomorrow I will have to try to remember not to do research and just leave a note for myself. I think I write more smoothly when I leave some of that research for later. A lot of times, the research is for a word or phrase I can’t remember at the time, and it’s gotten worse since I now have menopause brain, so it’s probably best to just leave it and figure it out later.

I think I’ve figured out a happy medium between editing-as-I-go and vomit writing. Things like research, I can just leave a note for myself. Things like confusing sentences, I need to fix. The latter doesn’t happen too often, so if I just skip past the things I need to research, I can write rather fast and get into the flow of things.

I also ended up adding some conflict to a scene because it was just a bit too boring, and it took some time to figure out what I wanted to have happen. This doesn’t occur too often, but I think I didn’t do a very good job on blocking this book, which might be why I’ve had so many instances where my blocking notes needed to be revised or rearranged. For the next book, I really have to spend more quality time making sure the blocking is done well.

I still don’t write as free-flowing as when I dictate, since I can fix things right there when I’m typing whereas with dictation I have to make a note for myself about what to fix. However, I also don’t have to do the massive cleanup editing I’ve had to do with my transcribed dictation, which is frankly a huge relief. Doing the cleanup editing was getting really stressful, especially because the blocking wasn’t as well done and I needed to change things when writing, so the dictation ended up more of a mess.

I still look at my writing speed for today and regret not being able to dictate instead. I could probably have written more words in the same amount of time, even if half of that time I would have been struggling with the cleanup editing. Maybe when I start to feel better more consistently and I have more energy, I’ll be able to revisit the dictation and try to learn how to do it better. Or at least practice it enough that it’s as easy for me to do as typing. I never really tried dictating into Dragon on my other computer, so that might be something I try out to see if I can dictate easier if I can see the words as I speak them.

I hope as my health gets better, ultimately, I can spend more time writing each day. I’ve minimized my “frogs” so that they take less time for now, at least. Even if I feel better soon, I still won’t want to spend more time on my email than I already do, and only increase my Japanese a little, so that I still have more time to spend on writing. I would love to write faster, too, but I’ve decided that I want to prioritize the amount of time I spend writing over my speed, so I can rebuild my stamina for long hours of writing.

Writing streak: 370 days

My takeaway for today: I think I’ve figured out a happy medium between editing-as-I-go and vomit writing. Things like research, I can just leave a note for myself. Things like confusing sentences, I need to fix.

My second takeaway for today: Because I didn’t do a good job blocking this book, the writing has taken longer because I need to change things on the fly. I have to do a better job blocking the next books or it will make the writing time take longer.