Listening to myself

I don't know if this is me just wanting to give up, or being lazy or something like that. But I'm starting to think that I need to listen to my instincts more.

I've been trying to get a more efficient system in place for my writing so that I can be more productive. I do think it was good for me to try different things, but a lot of the things I was trying to do were very difficult for me. I kept pushing on, hoping that it would get easier but it hasn't.

For example, I've been trying to get my writing done first thing after I wake up. For some people, that's the best time to write their minds are fresh and they are full of energy. I do admit that I am less tired than I am in the afternoon, but it was really hard for me to focus and get the writing done. I was easily distracted, and it was difficult to focus.

It has always taken me a little bit of time to get going in the morning. I'm not entirely sure why that is, because it's not like my brain is foggy and I need caffeine to wake up or anything like that. It simply takes a while for me to get into a work mindset.

I think that is one of the reasons why it's easiest for me to exercise first thing in the morning, because my mind is not ready for work, and it is easy for me to force myself out the door to go running or walking.

I wanted to be stubborn and keep trying to make it work, but I'm starting to realize that maybe I'm just not built that way. It takes me a while to get started in the morning. If my mind is unfocused, it's going to be difficult to force myself to focus. It would be a more efficient use of my time to do other things in the meantime.

So I've gone back to a schedule that I used before, where I did my exercise and some house chores after I woke up, and then got started on work after I cleared those tasks away. I still consider the writing more important than chores, but it's almost as if doing those things is part of my writer's rituals before I can get started writing. I would never have considered cleaning the toilet as part of a ritual, but there it is.

Another example of listening to my instincts happened today. I've been doing pretty well and dictating into the Dragon Anywhere app on my phone. I noticed that half the time, I don't even look at my screen.

When I did dictation before, I would go walking and I would dictate into my digital voice recorder. I've been wanting to get back into walking and dictating, so I went out walking today and decided to try my voice recorder again, since it seemed I was hardly looking at the screen when I used the Dragon Anywhere app.

Maybe because I was using a different piece of technology, the dictation was terrible today. But what was worse was the knowledge that the editing was going to be absolutely horrible because I made so many mistakes in the dictation in my voice recorder. And I was right, because it took me two hours to edit an hour and a half of dictation in my voice recorder.

As I was dictating, and getting more frustrated with myself, and dreading the editing I was going to have to do later, I realized that I should have listened to my instincts and used the Dragon Anywhere app on my phone instead. I actually think I was dictating more cleanly when I could see my words on the screen after dictating them. I think that seeing the words enabled me to organize my thoughts better.

This might be why my prose was a little better when I typed rather than dictated. When I can see my words on the screen, I can organize my thoughts better and maybe write a little bit more cleanly. With the voice recorder, I can't see my words and the dictation is a mess.

I know that I used the voice recorder because I have been trying to improve my system, and so many people mentioned that dictating into a voice recorder and transcribing it is much more efficient. It's true that my writing speed was faster when I dictated into the voice recorder, but I had to get rid of so many words that a huge chunk of that was deleted.

But I need to listen to my instincts about what gives me the best prose. Dictating and seeing my words on the screen may be the best compromise that I can come up with.

Also, I don't need only one method of dictation. I could go walking for a shorter amount of time and dictate only 30 minutes. The editing wouldn't be quite as bad. And I could do the rest of my dictation either on my phone or at my computer, watching the screen.

However, I'm still a bit undecided about if I should still try to use a voice recorder. I think it will depend on how messy the dictation is when I use it. Today might have simply been a bad day, and I might do better another time.

I think the lesson that I learned is that I need to listen to my instincts about the way that I work, even if it's not how other people do things. The system that I come up with might be a bit unusual, but if it works for me, that will be most efficient for me.

***

I'm still considering a subscription model for my writing, to help diversify my income. When I emailed Patreon, I discovered that I can't change my account from per-creation to subscription. But it turned out to be a good thing, because it caused me to look into Ream instead, and I think I like the website software better.

I'm considering my tiers and also what I will be able to promise to my subscribers. I want to say that I'll be able to write two chapters a week, but because of my health, I'm always leery of setting a goal like that. When I get an IBS flareup, it completely messes up my schedule, and my writing is not very efficient even during the pockets of time when I'm feeling a little better.

But I do think that a subscription model might really work, especially for my Regency Series. Since it's a serial novel format, I think that readers would be more likely to subscribe in order to read ahead.

But before launching my subscription, I need to do several things first. I want to build up several chapters so that I have a cushion. I also want to launch the subscription in a purposeful way, getting the word out to my readers over the course of a month rather than simply launching it and seeing what happens.

I'm also experimenting with doing work on two different books a day. Usually, I work on one book at a time, and then switch to a book in the other pen name. But if I try a subscription service, I would want to consistently release chapters even if I have a book in the other pen name due.

If I wrote, say, Camille Elliot book A and then released it to my subscription, I would need to write Camy Tang book A AND also Camille Elliot book B before all the Camille Elliot book A chapters have been released to the subscription, so that I could start releasing the chapters of book B when book A was completed.

That sounds complicated, doesn't it? It's easier to simply try to write one to two chapters in each pen name every week so that I consistently have something to release to my subscription whether I have a subscription for only one pen name or for both.

I'm not entirely sure if I can do that, since I've never tried it before. So, since I need to build up extra chapters as a buffer before I launch my subscription, I'm going to try to do that. I figured the easiest way would be to try to work on both books a little bit every day.

Theoretically, it shouldn't be too difficult. I would dictate 30 to 60 minutes on a contemporary book, and 30 to 60 minutes on a Regency book. That would give me time to do the editing on my dictation on the same day. 

If I could do that 5 to 6 days a week, I'm pretty sure I could write one to two chapters a week in each name, but ideally I would write more chapters than that. That way, if I were ahead of my subscription posting schedule, I would have a bit of time to plot the next book after I finish writing the one before without interrupting the release of my chapters to my subscription.

I'm still not entirely sure if I will do a subscription for both pen names, but at the very least, I want to do a subscription for my Regency pen name. I also think that having the subscription will be the external pressure I need to push myself to be a little more productive than I would be without a weekly obligation.

So, I'll be using the next few weeks to try to work on two different books every day.

I've been keeping up my dictation streak, doing at least five minutes of dictation every day except for Sundays. The time I spent writing today included editing the dictation I did yesterday, because I didn't do the editing yesterday, and also about an hour and 40 minutes doing work to train my dictation software to improve accuracy. I still need to do another hour of work on training the software, but it’s for my Regency profile, so it can wait a little while.