Day 904: Gamification for motivation

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I had a bad IBS flare-up this weekend, which really set me back on my writing. I had a bunch of marketing tasks to do on Saturday that didn’t get done, so I spent about 5 hours yesterday doing all of that. It was a lot more work than I had expected, but I’m glad it’s finally done. But since that was all I did (besides the bare minimum of writing on my manuscript, about 100 words), I didn’t bother to blog about it.

My self-publishing To Do list helps me to keep track of everything that needs to be done, but it’s been really tough to coordinate the scheduling of everything when a book releases a month after the other. If I ever wanted to release a book a month, I will have to readjust my self-publishing To Do list and schedule.

I simplified my To Do list a bit yesterday. It makes self-publishing easier because I can just copy and paste a lot of stuff that needs to be written, such as newsletters and messages to my Street Team. The only thing that took a lot of time yesterday was coming up with the description for the book.

Today, I’m ready to get started on writing again, now that my marketing is out of the way. I only have four more scenes to write to finish the book, but I had been hoping to have the book done last week. I’m fairly certain I can get the book completed in a few days, but I do feel a bit anxious to announce the book will be releasing when the manuscript isn’t done. However, I had promised that book 5 will be released a month after book 4, so I have to get the book out by then.

I have to admit, looking through my questbook in 4thewords is really motivating for me. I see all the quests I’m currently working on and think about the monsters I still need to fight, and it makes me more eager to jump into writing for the day. I think this is why I find that I have been going over my questbook everyday before I start my writing work. Even if I’m feeling a bit blah, I get excited to think about defeating monsters. It’s also fun to strategize about what monsters I’ll battle next and decide which quests I’ll focus on in order to finish them first.

I realize not everyone is motivated by gamification, but I never would have believed it would work so well for me and my writing. I don’t actually play a lot of games, although my husband likes to play his PS4 in his leisure time. However, I do enjoy Lit-RPG fiction, and I like Isekai anime and light novels with a game-like fantasy world. So I guess it’s not completely unexpected.

The gamification is like an added bonus on my writing time. Not only am I making progress on my manuscript, but I get to defeat monsters and finish quests and gain virtual loot.

It also helps that these days, with my health being so bad, sometimes I’m unmotivated to write because I’m so tired. I usually have to wait until my IBS symptoms have calmed down before I can start writing work, and by then, I’m feeling tired and unmotivated. But looking at my questbook helps me get myself more excited about writing, despite feeling tired.

I also like the fact that 4thewords has a lot of events that occur during the year, so there is always new content. The game world is already quite large, so in between events, there are lots of regular quests and different areas in the world map to travel to. Then for events like holidays and NaNoWriMo, there are special monsters and quests and sometimes special map areas available during the limited time of the event. For my personality type, it’s fun to challenge myself to finish all the quests of the events. And then in between, I have been working on completing the normal quests. I still have a long way to go, but it’s fun as I complete each one and eventually conquer each section of the map.

If anyone might be interested in trying out 4thewords.com, use the referral code WQCFL76961 and I’ll be able to send you a welcome gift.

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I got almost 3.5 hours of writing done today and about 3800 words, which is great. I finished the scene I was working on, which ended up being longer than I had anticipated. Now I only have 3 scenes left to finish the book.

Writing streak: 383 days

My takeaway for today: The gamification of my writing is motivating to help me get started on my writing, be just a little more excited about the work, and work a little harder.

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