Camy's Writing Diary

I was simply way too busy last week to get my work done, and so I broke my dictation streak. :( I just had a lot of house chores to do, and then I had office hours and homework for the book launch course I’m taking. The course has been really useful so far, but taking a lot of time because I find myself wanting to attend all the office hours in order to learn from other students’ questions. I also made a mistake and kind of? broke my website. That whole thing was really stressful and ate up a ton of time on Saturday. So rather than trying to stress myself out and try to squeeze in my dictation, I decided to just do some of the cleanup editing I never got around to doing, and then called it a day. Even though I know that skipping dictation makes it slower the next time I do dictation, it’s just a bit too difficult to try to find something to dictate every single day. It’s easier because I’m working on two projects at once, but not when one of those projects is imply editing an o...

I really thought I’d have more time to write today, but it seemed like it was just one thing after another this morning. I had a lot of technical difficulties today—an app I use daily on my phone suddenly stopped working, and I wasted a lot of time trying to figure out what happened. Then I had issues with an alarm coming from our external hard drive, and I had to see what the problem was and figure out how to turn off the alarm. And finally I had issues booting up my dictation software, Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Granted, it’s version 13 and my ancient Mac Mini is coughing and sputtering, but it had worked fine the last time I did dictation a month ago. I was shocked to realize that I last dictated on March 1st and it’s now April 12th, so it’s been 6 weeks since I did dictation. No wonder it felt so rusty. But I’m very glad that I managed to get about 30 minutes of dictation done today on my Regency book. Unfortunately, because of the technical problems, it took over an hour to get i...

I completely admit I haven’t blogged lately because I’ve been lazy. I also haven’t gotten much actual writing done, but I had a good excuse for that—I was visiting my parents for a month, and when I returned home, after a couple days unpacking and cleaning up the house, I had a bad IBS flare-up. But now that I’m feeling better, I haven’t blogged because I haven’t gotten much done, but I realized today that I really need to keep up my blogging in order to keep myself accountable. I wrote one scene in my new book (book 7 in my Regency series) before I left to visit my folks, but I haven’t written any other new scenes. Part of the reason is that the next scene—which ended up becoming two scenes—were not blocked well. My notes about the scene were a mess of ideas thrown together, and I didn’t have a cohesive structure for the scene at all. If I tried to dictate based off of my notes, it would end up being a bunch of prose thrown messily together, and I’d need to spend a lot of time ...

The good news is that my IBS hasn’t been bothering me as much lately. The bad news is that I ended up having a lot of family/personal/house business the past week(s) that kept me from doing more than just the bare minimum on my writing. New priorities In light of the fact that I’ve had other non-writing things to do, I decided to cut back on my work time and reprioritize my projects. In a sense, it’s like when I was working full time and I only had 2-3 hours each day to do my writing. At the moment, I have to try to cram in all my work in the time I have available each day, which is usually only a few hours, and I don’t have many uninterrupted hours. The time I have to write is usually only available here and there in small chunks throughout the day. However, it’s actually been really good because I’ve been able to focus since I only have a limited amount of time to get my work done. Something about the time deadline really does make me resist distractions. Anyway, since I have...

I finished book 6 in my Regency series! I actually took a nap in the middle of the day and then I felt a lot more refreshed afterward and got the last two chapters dictated. I finished doing the cleanup editing in the early hours of March 2nd, but I’m going to count it towards my writing for March 1st. This book took a lot less time to write than the others, and I think it’s because of the dictation. I dictate into a digital voice recorder and then have Dragon transcribe it, and I am able to focus much more intently when I dictate because I can’t see what I wrote so I’m not distracted or trying to edit it. If I forget what I just dictated (which unfortunately happens a lot) I just repeat it and keep going. Often I’ll pause or repeat myself until a sentence comes out the way I want, but I think I’ve been doing that less often lately because the cleanup has taken a little less time lately, too (but the cleanup still takes, in general, the same amount of time it took me to do the dictat...

I’ve been working harder to increase the number of hours I write each day now that my IBS has been getting better lately and I have more energy. I know that it takes time and effort to build up the stamina to concentrate for long hours, so I’m trying to work up to it. My workday has been consisting of: 1) 30-60 minutes of Japanese language study, since I hope to one day translate my books into Japanese with the help of an AI translator and a human Japanese language editor 2) 30-60 minutes doing one marketing task 3) 15-30 minutes doing research reading for one of my current series 4) writing prose in my Regency manuscript 5) editing or revising my Hawaii manuscript I decided to try to make a graphic that I could post since I like making graphics in Canva. I was really surprised how long I worked today, but that also includes numbers 1, 2, and 3 above and not just writing in my two series. Still, I did about 5 hours of work directly in my manuscripts, which is more than I’...

Yesterday, I was listening to some podcasts and thinking about my writing system. I know that many prolific authors write in multiple projects at the same time. Sometimes they work on another project while waiting for edits on the book they just finished, or else they work on two books at the same time, working a few minutes on each of them every day. So I was thinking would it be better for my career to release books in both pen names more slowly but at the same time, or to release books quickly in one pen name and then nothing while I write in the other? I honestly think it would be better to release books in both pen names rather than having a long stretch of no releases in one pen name while I’m working on the other. But I don’t know if I could work on two projects at the same time. Do I really want to do two projects in a day? Is that the most efficient use of my time? Or, on the other hand, would it be better to work on two projects so that I can give my brain a rest fr...

I had yet another bad morning because of my IBS, but once it calmed down in the afternoon (helped by a lavish dosing of medication), I managed to get about 3 hours of marketing done. I’m really behind on my marketing tasks. I have to stop skipping my daily 1 hour of marketing during my other writing days. It’s piling up so much that I’m going to need to cut short my writing time in order to make sure I keep on top of the marketing. I feel most sluggish in the morning—partly because I’m still sleepy and I’m not a morning person, but also partly when my IBS is acting up. I usually do my Japanese study first, but what I should do is do some marketing during that time since that’s easiest for me to do when I’m not feeling 100%. I didn’t do any dictation exercises today, but I managed to write another short chapter in Year of the Dog , the Christian Humorous Romantic Suspense I’m posting chapter-by-chapter as a serial novel on my blog. I’m moving pretty quickly through the manuscript ...

I had a bad start to today because I woke up in the middle of the night with a sinus headache. This morning, I got my frogs done but it’s been hard to focus since I’m still feeling the aftereffects of the headache. I finally decided to switch things up. Normally I’d do my Hawaii book on Saturdays, and I had decided to do some extra marketing work on Saturdays too, but I decided to instead do marketing and my Hawaii book today, and then do my Regency book tomorrow instead. One reason was because while I was doing my frogs, it was easier for me to do my marketing. Since it would be better to be productive in my marketing than not very productive trying to work while feeling the effects of my headache, I decided to just focus on marketing for today. I had a lot of marketing tasks to do anyway, and got a lot done. I still have a lot more to do, but it was nice to get a huge chunk of my marketing work out of my way. Looking at all I got done today and how long it took me, I’m starti...

I’ve had several weeks where the IBS was rather bad. Even my medication didn’t work as well as before. The pain and discomfort weren’t constant, and it would stop every so often, but I would never know when that would happen. Usually when I get a bad IBS flare-up, I’ll only do the bare minimum of work on those days. But when it appeared this flare-up was lasting more than a week, I tried to figure out ways to work around the pain. During brief spurts during the day when I felt better, I would do a little bit of work until the pain came back. I didn’t get as much done as I would have wanted to, but I managed to get much more than just the bare minimum. I considered it a win if I got over an hour done, but some days I got two hours. It’s been hard to do more since I not only have to battle the IBS pain, but also increased fatigue. Since the number of hours each day that I can do my work have been reduced, I decided to look at other ways to rearrange my daily work schedule so that I c...

I’ve spent most of the last two weeks sick from the usual IBS issues, and I’m starting to wonder if a day will ever come when I’m not feeling pain from my IBS. This time, I honestly don’t know what I’ve been eating to cause the IBS, and I’ve had to simply make guesses. So I don’t know if I’ll start to feel better in a few days, I’ll just have to wait and see. I’ve been doing the bare minimum of work every day, although some days I do a bit more than that, but I’ve only been doing about 3 hours of work on the days I feel better. I’ve noticed a pattern in the IBS, where the most pain is between 6 am and 2 pm. I recently read a book, Change Your Schedule, Change Your Life , and apparently the intestines are most active at certain times of the day, based on the circadian rhythm, which would explain why my IBS is worst at certain times of the day. Because of that, I decided to try to brainstorm ways to work around the IBS and still get work done. The problem is that pretty much everything o...

I worked on the hero’s journey worksheet for my heroine today and finished it. I think that the majority of the work needed to be done for outlining my Hawaii book is now completed. Yay! I was going to do more work on my Regency book after that, but I got a late start, and my mouth and jaw have been really sore today after I bit my tongue really badly, plus I forgot we had Bible study tonight so I had to finish work by a certain time. So the combination of those three things made me decide to cut short my workday today. It’s partly a sick day, although it might also be a little bit of laziness because I didn’t want to have to push myself to work through the pain in my mouth. Regency series: Editing: Time spent: 4 minutes Writing: Time spent: 21 minutes Writing: Total number of words: 198 words Writing streak: 156 days Blocking: time spent: 30 minutes Blocking streak: 150 days Hawaii series: Outlining: time spent: 1 hour, 15 minutes Time spent doing other writing-related business: 29 mi...

I’m still working on outlining the Hawaii book. I remembered how it was useful for me to look at my Book Creation Process and figure out which steps had been done and yet still needed to be done for my Regency books, so I decided to do the same for this Hawaii book. Unlike for other books, this time I was rewriting an old book, Year of the Dog, so I had already done stage 1 in my Book Creation Process, which is developing the characters. I also had already done stage 2, which was doing the Snowflake steps for the original book, but since I was adjusting the plot, I spent the past few days altering my 1-paragraph summary (Snowflake step 2) and 1-page synopsis (Snowflake step 4). I also had already done stage 5 of my Book Creation Process, which was to create a scene spreadsheet (Snowflake step 8), and in working on the 1-page synopsis, I ended up revising the scene spreadsheet at the same time. I also already had done an expanded synopsis of the book (Snowflake step 6), and normally I’...

I’m going to change things up a bit today. I’ve been prioritizing my Regency books when I work each day, and doing work on outlining my Hawaii book only if I have time and energy at the end of the day. However, lately I’ve been tired and haven’t been able to consistently be able to get work done on the book. Once the outline is done, I only need to spend a few minutes each day on the Hawaii book and write 100 words a day. However, finishing the outline is taking a long time. So I think I’ll do only the bare minimum on my Regency books today, and then spend more time outlining the Hawaii book. Once it’s outlined, then I’ll only have to spend 10-15 minutes a day writing it, and can spend the rest of my work time on my Regency books. That way, I can more quickly have at least a little something for my contemporary readers to enjoy while I’m still mostly working on my Regency books. *** I pushed myself a bit harder today and ended up getting a lot of work done, and put in almost 6 hours! I...

Marketing is a necessary aspect of writing, whether you’re published traditionally or self-published. Unfortunately since I’ve published in two genres, I have two newsletters for marketing. While I can usually find something to write about in my Regency newsletter, recently I’ve had difficulty figuring out what to do about my contemporary romantic suspense newsletter when I’m not writing a contemporary novel at the moment, and I don’t have plans to release one until after I finish the Regency series. I’ve been trying to adhere to the “one a month” marketing strategy. It’s hard sometimes to have something of value to include in my contemporary newsletter. Actually, sometimes it’s hard to have something of value to include in my Regency newsletter too, but at least I can write about the book I’m working on. Mostly I’ve been blogging about “extra” tidbits that relate to my books. That includes recipes of food mentioned in the books, knitting patterns of knitted items mentioned in the ...

When listening to the audiobook for Deep Work , at first I kind of dismissed his suggestion to schedule out your entire day. But today I decided to try doing it because I realize that I don’t know where some of my day goes. I think I can do it with my iPhone journaling app, Day One , which I use as a bullet journal. For the past year, my bullet journal has been great at helping me to organize my daily life much better than before. I quickly figured out that whenever I’m curious about something, whether it’s something on the internet or just a question about one of my files,  I’ll automatically look it up on my phone or computer. This is what causes me to be distracted so easily, because then I’ll get sidetracked to something else. I suppose the internet is specifically set up that way. For example, I looked up the cost of a book today on my phone and got sucked into looking at other books that were listed alongside it, on similar topics. I spent probably 10 minutes distracted by that...

Yesterday, I distracted myself a LOT. So, to try to combat this distraction, I started off my day with a walk and listening to a new audiobook I got from the library, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World . I like it so far. The concepts are a bit theoretical and require a bit of effort to comprehend (at least for me). In comparison to writing books, I have to listen carefully to this one to fully understand what he’s saying. He talks a bit about things I’m not very familiar with, such as business concepts and also some things that might touch on sociology concepts, in order to explain his reasonings and how he came to his understanding of concentrated work. I’m not very far into the book yet, but one thing I noticed today was that pretty much all of the examples in the book were of people who worked in long chunks of uninterrupted time. It may be that he hasn’t addressed the issue of breaks, or that he won’t address it at all later in the book, but it seems that...

I woke up feeling relatively well and went walking, and listened to the audiobook of Several Short Sentences About Writing again. I’m still not thrilled with the literary nature of the language, but I do like that this book is different from other writing books I have. It’s talking about concepts that I haven’t heard before, or it talks in detail about concepts that have only been mentioned in passing before in other books I’ve read. The section today talked about releasing inhibitions or preconceived notions about what we should be observing as writers, and just to notice what we notice. Things specific to us will jump out at us. I liked how he essentially said to trust your instincts and your way of viewing the world, and use that in your writing rather than what other people tell you to be noticing around you. He also went into the concept of quality not quantity when it comes to what we notice around us, but also what we come up with when we write. He talked about thinking of ...