Camy's Writing Diary

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 happened to have the cover for book 5 ready, so here it is! I usually don’t write on Sundays, but I was almost done with the book and wanted to finish it, plus I wanted to get the book to my editor ASAP because I was behind on the time frame I told her it would be ready. I only had one short scene to write, so I just decided to push through and get it done. I haven’t blogged for a few days mostly because not much has happened in terms of writing productivity. I’ve had some IBS issues (as usual), but I managed to get about 3 hours of writing done each day. I even did writing on Thanksgiving by getting up extra early, but to be honest, we didn’t have a big gathering so there wasn’t much cooking do to for just my family, and my husband did the turkey, which was probably the most labor intensive. I had been hoping to develop more writing stamina and write for more hours each day, but I haven’t been able to get more than about 3 hours every day before I start feeling tired. Part of ...

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 finished blocking book 4! Woot! Now I will go on to blocking book 5. I hope it will be easier than blocking book 4 was. I’ve spent much more time blocking book 4 than I have any other book, although to be honest the blocking was more detailed than in any other book, too, which will hopefully make the writing a bit easier. I am really, really hoping that I’ll stop having so much trouble with the writing once I’m blocking a different book. It was so hard to figure out where I was in the series timeline when I was switching between writing one scene and blocking another. But I have a feeling it won’t really get better until the series is entirely blocked. I’m honestly not sure how long it’ll take to block each book. This one took MONTHS. Some of that was because I wasn’t working that many hours a day on it since I was sick for much of the last six months, but I also spent a whopping 148 hours blocking this book, compared to less than 50 hours for books 2 and 3. So I’ll have to jus...

Maybe because of the heat wave going through California, but I’ve had a recurring headache for the past week, as well as IBS issues. It was too difficult to focus and work when I was so uncomfortable, so I just took several sick days while trying to get my body back under control. I read a lot, which also refilled the creative well , which was honestly feeling a bit dry. I’m easing back into work today. Not sure how much I’ll get done, but I’m not intending to push myself too much since I still have lingering IBS issues. After going through all the Snowflake step 6 (extended synopses) for the rest of the books in the series, I’m a bit impatient to write these books. I want to write these stories, but I also have to admit that a part of me just likes the idea of having the series done sooner rather than later. I think it’s what James Scott Bell (I think it was him) referred to as, “I don’t want to write, I want to have written.” I fully admit I love the feeling of satisfaction when...

Today is another day to try out my reorganized daily schedule. I did two of my “frogs” this morning—chores and my Daily Bible reading (I really shouldn’t call my Bible reading a “frog,” because it’s important and I’m glad I do it, it’s just that it’s one of those things that would slide to the wayside if I didn’t do it first thing in the morning)—and now I’m about to start writing work. Later this afternoon, I’ll do my two other “frogs,” exercise and my Japanese language study. The whole point of this is so that I can do some work early in the day when I’m mentally the freshest, but quite honestly, I don’t feel very mentally fresh right now. I guess I’ll just have to try it and see. I have two plot problems to solve, so I’ll see how easy or hard they might be for me to concentrate on. *** Maybe it’s just because today’s hot and uncomfortable, but I had a hard time focusing when I started work. Or maybe it just naturally takes me a little while to get into the work and really be a...

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...

I actually spent most of yesterday doing editing for the Japanese version of The Spinster's Christmas . After the experience working on the Japanese version of Sushi for One of working with a proofreader who's more knowledgable about standard Japanese publications, I decided to revise The Spinster's Christmas in the same way. Previously, I asked my translator to include the furigana for all the kanji in the manuscript, but now I'm removing all furigana below grade 7. I'm also redoing the formatting of the print version. It's taking a long time to remove the furigana since I don't read Japanese very well, and so I have to go through each kanji one by one to search for each occurrence in the manuscript. Unfortunately I can't just do a Find and Replace All because that won't work to remove the furigana, and I have to check each word manually since some words that are a combination of lower grade and higher grade kanji retain their furigana. I only d...

Praise God I feel better today. Yesterday, I had slight discomfort all through my writing session--not enough to make me to stop, but enough to distract me every once in a while. However, it was bearable, so I worked through it, plus I wanted to finish the scene I was writing. I also feel pressure to finish the book as soon as possible since it's already late to my editor. For my Regency series, I don't have a deadline for my editor, since my release dates are flexible and I can just start plans to release the book as soon as my editor gets it back to me, whenever that is. But this book is for the multi-author box set, and the editor is one of the authors, so I signed up for a date and then missed it completely (hear it whooshing as it goes by). So I wanted to work longer on it even though my IBS was being a butthead. I only have three more scenes to the book, and hopefully they won't take much time since none of them are very long in length. *** I did something a lit...

I had a really good quiet time this morning. I like using the devotional book My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers. It seems to always remind me to put God first, and to give up all of myself to God. I'm not actually following it according to the dates listed. I always skip dates because I'm not very consistent with my Bible reading, and I got tired of the fact that there were lots of the devotional readings that I hadn't yet read. So I started reading it straight through rather than adhering to the dates for the readings. The past few days have been in the month of December in the book. They were all really good reminders to me of how my focus needs to be completely on Christ and the crucifixion, but I also realized today that if that should be my own personal focus, then my characters should also follow the same advice. My hero's spiritual conflict, especially, was kind of lackluster and mimicked the heroine's spiritual conflict, maybe because I hadn...

I'm still not feeling great, but I'm doing better than I did yesterday. I started off my writing today doing something different, and it was solely because I wanted to finish some monsters on 4thewords.com . I had to write about 700 words in an hour, and I didn't think I'd be able to do that while working on the Hawaii book, so I instead did some brainstorming on the fantasy novel that I had been considering doing as a serial novel a week or so ago. At this point it's still just plotting and character development, but I had a world backstory that had been drifting in my head which I wanted to get down. I also had two story ideas for the fantasy world, one which was more vague while another which was more thought-out, and I also wanted to write those down rather than let them be locked in my head. Actually, whenever I had to finish a monster quickly on 4thewords, I would write a little on the fantasy brainstorming in order to finish off the monster, since I'm j...

I'm not sure if it's good or bad, but instead of reading last night, I brainstormed a new fantasy series. I had actually come up with the story idea a long time ago, and I had also come up with a separate fantasy world, and so last night I merged the two. The reason is because I had heard about the new Kindle Vella coming out, and it inspired me because I actually really like serial novels (well duh, considering I'm writing one). I don't really have time to be writing a new story, but at the same time I couldn't help thinking of new ideas. I suppose it's that whole thing about being attracted to whatever's new and shiny. The fun thing is that this fantasy story idea perfectly lends itself to a serial novel, because it's actually quite episodic, although there is also an overarching plot. I wish I could write faster! I think I'm crazy. I'm actually considering writing the story in small pieces, 300-500 words a day, and see how it goes. I cou...