Day 928 - Blogging for accountability to prevent laziness

The problem with not blogging is that I got lazy and I don’t have the accountability of needing to confess on a blog post what I did or didn’t do that day. I fully admit I was lazy yesterday and after only about an hour of writing, I did some reading.

I do know that I haven’t been reading enough and so I probably needed to refill the creative well. I feel much less antsy today and more focused on work.

I had forgotten that I need the accountability of blogging in order to prevent myself from slacking off. I hadn’t been blogging because I haven’t learned anything new in regards to my productivity and efficiency. I’m doing my “frogs” each morning, then getting started on work. I first do my self-editing on what I wrote the day before, then I get started on writing the scene for the day.

My writing speed is a bit slower than before because I sometimes take the time to look up research. I know it’s not efficient, especially since I want to write faster, but I found during the self-editing pass on my last book that when my rough draft is too rough, the editing simply doesn’t catch everything. I’m just not good enough at self-editing to focus on details if there are too many other things I need to fix. So I’m going slower and trying to make the rough draft cleaner, in hopes that the self-editing pass will be more detailed and comprehensive if there aren’t as many things to fix. I don’t know if it’ll work, so this is an experiment to see how the book turns out.

Anyway, each day my schedule has been pretty much the same and I haven’t tried many experiments to improve my productivity, so I didn't blog because I thought that might give me more time for writing (since I tend to take too long when I blog). But it turns out that not blogging is a bad thing since I didn’t have the accountability I needed to keep myself from having a lazy day yesterday. And actually, the day before wasn’t all that productive, either. So I’m going to try to get back to blogging regularly.

I know I realized this before, this is not new to me. But I always forget and then have a few lazy days, and then remember that I need to blog for accountability. It doesn’t matter if absolutely no one reads this—I know that I have to confess what I did that day, which motivates me not to be a slacker.

I admit I’m a bit distracted today because Christmas is coming up and we have lots to do in preparation. I’ve made a list but I always worry I’ve forgotten to list something. So the list and that worry has distracted me a bit today.

I’m also distracted because my book just released on Wednesday and I’m running ads for the first time in order to try to increase sales. The entire thing is new to me and honestly reminds me a lot of gambling, so I’m a little excited and apprehensive at the same time. It takes me a while to look at my ads and try to figure out what’s going on, and that took up the majority of my time this morning.

So I’m a little late getting started on my writing. However, I’ve finished my “frogs” so I don’t have any tasks that might nag at me while I’m working, and because I did a lot of reading yesterday, I feel like my creative well is a bit more full today. Or at least, I feel more focused on my work today than I did yesterday, which usually means my creative well is topped off.

***

I finished the scene I was working on, writing for over 2.5 hours and 2700 words. There’s a weird kind of rush when I finish a scene. I suppose it’s endorphins, which encourages me to finish a scene the next day, and the next. I’m glad I got it done.

Writing streak: 407 days

My takeaway for today: When I don’t blog, I don’t have accountability and am more likely to get lazy since I don’t have to confess on a blog post what I did or didn’t do for work that day. Try to blog every day even if it seems like it’s not much different from the day before.