Day 921 - 400 day writing streak

Today is 400 consecutive days where I’ve done at least the bare minimum of writing every single day! It helps that my bare minimum is only 100 words in my manuscript, but I think it’s been really good for training my self-discipline and motivating me to sit at my computer or even just type away on my phone no matter how sick I might be feeling.

I haven’t blogged for a while because not much has happened. I finished self-editing my book, but it took longer than I wanted because I had some nausea from my IBS, which made it hard to concentrate sometimes. I sent the book to my editor, who got it back to me lickety-split. I put the ebook up on Amazon for preorder. I had problems with publishing my paperback on Amazon and now I’m just waiting on an email I sent to their help desk.

On a whole, my IBS is better than it’s been, so I’ve been trying to increase the number of hours I work each day. It’s easier to do when I’m editing or doing marketing, which doesn’t require as much intense concentration as writing. Now that I’ve started writing book 6, I have to see how many hours each day that I can write prose. I’d like to increase my hours assuming my energy levels keep improving.

I don’t know if I’ll ever completely control my IBS symptoms, but at least I’m now able to restrict my diet and only have a few bouts of nausea or pain during the day. I’ve been trying to learn how to work around it. I know from my bullet journal that my symptoms tend to get a bit better in the afternoon, but I don’t want to do nothing in the morning when I’m feeling sick. Sometimes I can do some writing, but often the nausea makes it hard to concentrate and I keep getting distracted, and then have to refocus myself.

I decided to try doing marketing when I’m not feeling well. I changed my schedule a little (once again) and now try to do my “frogs” first thing (exercise, Bible reading, Japanese, house chores), then writing, then my email and one task from my marketing to do list. I still reserve Thursdays and Saturdays for a few hours of marketing, especially since a lot of the tasks on my book launch to do list need to be done on Thursdays or Saturdays. But I’m also trying to do one marketing task a day to try to whittle down a huge list of non-urgent but important marketing tasks.

I’ve only tried this two days so far, but when my IBS is distracting in the morning and I’m having difficulty writing, I switch to doing my one marketing task of the day at that time. It’s usually easier for me to do marketing even if I’m not feeling well. Then I’ll usually go have lunch, and then after lunch I can try to do some writing again. Sometimes it’s still hard, but sometimes my medicine kicks in and I’m feeling fine.

I’ve been realizing that while other people might be able to write through a headache or intestinal cramps or nausea, I’m not the type of person who can do that. I was reading that people with IBS tend to be more sensitive to pain, so it might be that I notice the discomfort more and it is more distracting for me. But I also don’t want to use the pain as an excuse to slack off, and I’ve been trying to figure out how to work around my pain and still get work done.

I also noticed that on days when I have an appointment or something non-writing to do, it’s hard to get enough hours in. I think it’s hard for me to switch mental gears from whatever I was doing and get my brain in a writing mode. I could do it when I was working in biology work, so theoretically I should be able to do the same with writing, even though writing is more creative and a bit more mentally taxing for me than biology research ever was.

I think I need to work on my self-discipline to just collect my thoughts and focus on writing when I finally have time to write, even if my schedule was messed up earlier in the day. I found that helps when I do a particular series of rituals before I start writing—I make tea for myself, I get a snack (when I start writing in the morning, it’s usually a slice of oatmeal coffee cake, which is my breakfast), I pray my “Surrender statement,” and I start my music soundtrack. Sometimes for some visual and tactile stimulation, I’ll put on some colorful bracelets. Today it was hard to just dive right into writing, but I think that starting tomorrow, I’ll be able to ease into the writing by first doing “cycling,” which is self-editing of what I wrote the day before (I didn’t have any editing to do today since I’m starting writing on book 6 today).

As you might have guessed, today was one of those messed up schedule days. I had some important marketing tasks to do in the morning that had to do with self-publishing my new book, then a medical appointment right after that. Getting started on my work after lunch was HARD. I’m still not great at getting to work after a break.

I ended up doing more marketing work instead of writing—it was important and needed to be done today, but at the same time, I wonder if I should have prioritized the writing? I only wrote about 1500 words today when I’d been hoping for at least 3000. But it’s dinnertime and I’m starting to get that heavy-head-tired feeling, so I decided to stop for the day rather than trying to push through another 1500 words. Hopefully I can get more work done tomorrow.

Writing streak: 400 days

My takeaway for today: Do my one marketing task in the morning if the IBS is distracting since it’s easier to do marketing than writing.

My second takeaway for today: If my schedule has been messed up or I just need to get started on work again after lunch, it might help to again do the series of rituals I do in the morning in order to get myself in the right mindset.