Day 955 - The slow grind of building writing stamina

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My headache is gone today, but I began having more IBS issues after I woke up. The IBS made me change up my morning routine a little bit—I opted for a lower intensity exercise today—and it took a little while, but I finally got myself to start my dictation for the day. I'm really glad, because this is earlier in the day than I have been able to start writing for the past several days. I want to develop more discipline to start my writing earlier in the day, because I find that I write for longer and I have a bit more energy when I do the cleanup editing.

Conversely, it felt strange to be starting writing early today, which is a bad thing. I want it to be part of my daily routine, so that I will immediately move into writing as soon as my “frogs" are completed. Hopefully if I can discipline myself to start writing earlier in the day for a few more weeks, I will become more used to it and it won't feel so strange. And hopefully it will be easier for me to do, because it took a little while before I was able to start today.

My intention for today is to finish this next scene. I would like to dictate for about an hour and a half today. Editing will take another hour and a half, and I should be able to write about 3000 words today.

I have been trying to increase my writing stamina so that I can work for longer hours a day. If I can work for five or six hours a day, I might be able to double my word count.

My writing speed isn’t very fast, but as long as I put in the hours, I can get my books written. And increasing my writing stamina—and the number of hours I write each day—is simply a matter of putting in the work. It’s a slow grind, but if I put in the effort, I can build up to six hours of writing a day.

Because my goal is more hours of writing each day, what I will try to do today is another hour or two of writing after I finish the dictation, although I am undecided if I want to dictate or type. I might simply type, since I walk when I dictate and I might as well give my feet a rest.

Well, that's what I hope to do, anyway. It will also have to depend upon how I feel after I get back from my walk and dictation, and after I have completed the cleanup editing.

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Dare I hope I’m getting better at writing with dictation? My cleanup editing only took 45 minutes rather than 90. However, this is after I wasted a bit of time surfing iTunes (aargh!) so I didn’t have as much time as I had hoped in order to write more today.

I still managed to get another hour of writing done via typing, and ironically, my writing speed was faster while typing, about 1300 words per hour. That isn’t always the case—my average writing speed via typing was about 1000 words per hour according to my time sheet records for my last book, while my speed with dictation was about 1200 words per hour (not much difference, true). Today, my writing speed via dictation (and including cleanup editing time) was a little faster than 1200 words per hour. I wrote a total of 4250 words, though, in a little more than 3 hours, which is great. I had also spent about 45 minutes in addition doing editing and some preliminary blocking for the scene before I started writing it today, so I worked for almost 4 hours.

I will try to go to bed early today and get up earlier tomorrow so that I can hopefully do another 4 hours of work. Gradually I hope to build that up. Even if my writing speed isn’t phenomenally fast (at least, not yet—here’s hoping it’ll improve), if I can write for more hours each day (and still get everything else done, such as my frogs and my social media commitments), then I can increase my book production schedule. I would love to be able to release 6 books this year, if I can manage it.

Writing streak: 434 days

Dictation streak: 10 days

My takeaway for today: If I can build up my writing stamina to write more hours each day and still get my other marketing and home obligations done, I can hopefully put out more books this year, even if my writing speed isn’t phenomenally fast.

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