Camy's Writing Diary

My IBS is better today, and as a result, I feel like I have a lot more energy. It’s been easier for me to spend more hours working since my energy levels are higher. I can’t always count on my IBS being better and my energy levels being correspondingly higher, but I want to take advantage and get as much work done as I can while my body is cooperating. I’m editing my book right now and it’s going smoothly. However, I have noticed something although I’m not entirely sure if it’s true or not. It seems as though my writing with dictation isn’t quite as good as when I’m typing. A big reason is because I didn’t see patterns of word choice when I was dictating, and so there’s a lot of repetition. The problem is that I don’t always catch it when I’m editing, and sometimes I catch it later when I’m almost done editing the scene. I don’t think my writing is bad, and there are moments of loveliness in the prose (I hope I can say that about my own writing). But I do think that my writing ...

Exercise before writing I FINALLY felt well enough today to not only exercise but also do some dictation writing on my book! I can’t believe how good that feels! I considered doing the writing before exercise, but in the end I chose exercise first since my brain is usually firing at half-speed right after I wake up. The exercise helped me feel a bit more alert when I got back. Microphone setup I also have to admit that I did procrastinate a little bit before I started work. Part of the reason was my dissatisfaction with the setup of my microphone at my desk, but after I fiddled around with that, I think I’ve got a good setup down. Plan to slowly increase writing stamina I did 1 hour, 43 minutes of dictation, which I think was really good considering I haven’t done much dictation in the past several weeks. Eventually I’d like to do as much as 3 hours of dictation, but I’m also trying to slowly build up my writing stamina since it’s been so long since I’ve had a day where I w...

I’m rather disappointed, I spent too long (an extra hour) doing some marketing work. It absolutely needed to be done, but it just took too long, partly because I always take so long to make decisions about things. I don’t know how to do anything about that, but there it is. I did the cycle edit of the chapters I wrote in book 4, but I hadn’t realized that I actually hadn’t done the cycle edit on two entire chapters. It took up a little over an hour. And then my familiar enemy reared its head, and I was procrastinating in starting the final edit. Because I hate self-editing. I know it needs to be done, since I only did a cycle edit as I was writing the rough draft. Reading through the entire book in a couple sittings really is the best way to gauge pacing and check for continuity errors. But I never got to the final edit today. I thought maybe I could do my dictation exercise for today and five minutes of dictation on my manuscript (book 5), but I ended up dictating almost half an...

I deliberately decided to make this a bare minimum workday because I have to do our taxes. I really should try to do a little every day starting in February, but I didn’t think of that until recently, and I figured I should just take a day and do it all. It’s just easier for me to compartmentalize it and do it all in one day. I have been feeling like I have more energy lately so today I went out for a walk, which I haven’t been able to do in a couple weeks because of the IBS pain. And I ended up getting some brainstorming done on the Hawaii book while I was out walking today, so that was great! I even came up with some good ideas to solve a couple problems I had come up against. *** I was too optimistic and I didn’t get my taxes finished today. I’ll have to work on it tomorrow, too.  Regency series: Editing: Time spent: 11 minutes Writing: Time spent: 5 minutes Writing: Total number of words: 126 words Writing streak: 140 days Blocking: time spent: 5 minutes Blocking streak: 134 da...

I haven’t done an evaluation in a while, so I thought I’d do another summary of what I’ve learned from this blog about improving my productivity. Health issues I’m still dealing with IBS problems. Some of my issues were experiments in figuring out what I could or couldn’t eat, and I ate things that apparently I shouldn’t. There are so many things which I don’t know if I can eat or not, so all I can do is try them and see. Things are slowly starting to get better, but my eating choices are severely limited. The upside is that I’ve lost weight. I am clinging to the few foods I actually can eat—like french fries and potato chips—and also trying to exercise when I have the energy. The exercise tends to make me feel better when I work, so I’m trying to make that a priority. Eating my frogs I’m still finding that there are important things which, if I don’t do them first thing when I get up, they won’t get done. Right now, those things are: 1) exercise, 2) daily Bible reading, 3)...

Clearing the decks: I woke up feeling okay-ish and had been planning to jump right into writing, but I found that I kind of need a little time to myself in the morning to wake up. I made tea, ate breakfast. I haven’t been feeling well enough to do my house chores lately. I have one house chore assigned to each day so that I eventually get to the entire house over the course if two or three weeks, with some chores repeating (such as cleaning the toilet). When I was feeling better, I would get my chore done before writing, because otherwise the thought of a chore left undone would nag at me while I was working. Also, I was less likely to get it done if I left it for later in the day. This morning, I was still feeling a little sleepy, and decided to do my house chore for today (mopping the kitchen floor), especially because it was bothering me that I hadn’t done it last week. It took all of 10 minutes, and I felt so much better after it had been done. Something about a clean house...

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...

I got up a little earlier today and I’m ready to start my new rearranged schedule. I did my chores and my daily Bible reading, but I will put off my exercise and Japanese language study until later in the afternoon so that I can start work a bit sooner. I hope I will still do both of them despite not doing them first thing. I can totally see myself being too lazy to do them later. Last night, I found two plot problems in the side novel synopsis that I’ll have to fix today. I’m really grateful for 4thewords.com especially at times like these where I can free write to brainstorm, and defeat monsters at the same time! It makes it fun to tackle plot problems, which otherwise might frustrate me. *** I don’t know for sure if I was able to think better by starting work sooner after I got up, but it did feel good to have some work done before I went for a walk in the afternoon. It helped that I put an alarm on my phone to go off when it was time for me to go walking, so I could find a...

I was a little sick (not Covid) for the past two days so I just spent the time sleeping (a lot) and relaxing, watching anime on Crunchyroll. An unexpected result of that was that after watching a fun anime series (Idolish7), I got inspired for a storyline for my Regency Gentlemen Quartet series. It was really fun to brainstorm that story! I love that effervescent feeling of a fresh new romance storyline, the rush as I come up with new characters, new conflicts, new situations. To be honest, it feels a bit like I’m falling in love for the first time, all over again! I’m still reading through the synopses for the other books in my Lady Wynwood’s Spies series to get a better handle on the overall series plot. I’m glad I’m doing this because I saw some things that I had to fix. A part of me wonders if I’m just procrastinating starting work on book 4, but I feel like I want to be ready and prepared in my head before I start work on it. I want to know that I definitely have all the plot ...

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 ...

I had a good walk today. At first I was listening to the Dear Writer, You Need to Quit audiobook, but then the book made some good points so I shut it off so that I could think about it. I realized that the reason I've been rambling and worrying about my slower writing style the past few days is because I have a Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) on the creativity supposedly generated by flow state. I don't doubt that a writer enters into a more uninhibited creative state in flow state, although I haven't positively seen the results in my own writing since I haven't done a real experiment with it--I haven't deliberately generated writing while in flow state and then compared it to writing not done in flow state. So because I don't have any solid data, I've been wondering if my writing during flow state is superior to my writing when doing this current slow, but more polished writing style. But I also know writers don't necessarily have to write in flow st...

Wow I got a lot of business stuff done yesterday. I checked my email and Facebook, and then I put together drafts of my newsletters for both Camy Tang and Camille Elliot for May. I also set up several blog posts for my Camy’s Loft blog, which took a lot more time than I had expected. However, I’m glad I got all that stuff done ahead of time. It was helpful that I had a To Do list with everything that needed to be done, so I just had to check things off. I also feel better that now I don't have to check email or Facebook until Saturday. I can focus on just my writing. I even turned off the email notifications on my phone. I had been using the notifications in order to do a quick look at the senders and subject lines of the emails I received to see if I needed to go into my email program to answer anything that was urgent. But as my husband mentioned, if anything was really urgent, the person would text me or call me, so I think it'll be okay if I don't answer emails unt...