Camy's Writing Diary

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 f...

I went to a conference last week and praise the Lord! my IBS didn't act up at all while I was there. Of course, I was downing digestive enzymes like they were candy, so that probably helped. I thought I'd have more intestinal issues after I got back from the conference, but surprisingly, my bouts of pain and nausea haven't been too bad, not enough to prevent me from working for very long. I kept up my dictation streak while at the conference, although in hindsight, I probably should have just decided not to write during the days of the conference and during the travel days. However, since I was dictating into my phone, it was very easy to just whip out my phone and dictate for 5 minutes in order to keep up my streak. It's a lot easier than using a voice recorder and then taking the time to feed it into Dragon on my computer, although it's not quite as accurate. I finally got Dragon installed on my computer, but I haven't set up my profile yet since I want ...

I forgot that one of the problems I had before with dictation is that there were some days I had to do blocking before I could start writing work on the scene. I tried a few times to block all the scenes of a book before I started writing it, but I found it very tedious work, and sometimes I would change my mind about what happened in the scenes, or which scenes to include, which made my work pointless later. So today I did not get a lot of dictation done on the scene because I spent about an hour blocking it first. However, the time I spend blocking enables me to actually write the scene a LOT faster, and without as many problems. My biggest problem when writing is usually making decisions—where the conversation should go and how it should get there, what a character should do, how a character would feel, what problems the character would encounter in the scene. It’s easier to make all those decisions ahead of time before I start writing so that I don’t get sucked out of the creativ...

I stayed up too late last night doing marketing work for my release next week. It was all stuff that needed to be done, but it took a lot of time, and I went to bed too late. I slept in this morning, which made it feel like I had less time to get stuff done in the morning. I’m taking a course on launching your book, but it didn’t have homework last night which was why I spent so long doing marketing. However, they have office hours every weekday, which is really nice because you can ask questions and listen to other people’s questions and learn a lot. But it also does take up time during the day, and I have to plan my activities around those office hours. As a result, I got some house chores done in the morning rather than going walking and writing right away. I went to office hours, and then went walking and dictating right after it ended. I got about 90 minutes of dictation done, which was great! But it was late by then and I ate dinner. Now I’m feeling tired since it’s late in...

Since I have been having such issues with procrastination for the past few days, I decided to nip it in the bud. When I leave the house and write in a different location, it always forces me to get work done, so I went for a walk with my digital voice recorder. It worked really well. I dictated for about 90 minutes. My dictation speed was a bit slower because I was outside and I often had to pause and wait for a car or some chatting old ladies to pass by me, but I still managed to get a lot of words written. I usually walk before my other “ frogs ” are done, but today was a little unusual because I slept badly last night. Because of that, I actually was awake and did some of my frogs in the early morning hours, so I didn’t need to do them when I finally woke up. So my schedule was even more free than usual and I had fewer obstacles in my way to prevent me from immediately going out for a walk. I also avoided doing anything that might sap my energy before I started my writing—I di...

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 ...

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’...

I have been re-reading Elana Johnson’s book, Writing and Marketing Systems (Indie Inspiration for Self-Publishers Book 3) . She suggests that you track your writing schedule for 60 days, and I’ve actually been doing that consistently for several months. My IBS is typically worse between 10am and 2 pm, but sometimes the pain starts earlier and sometimes it goes for longer. I’ve been trying to adjust my diet so that I don’t eat the foods that trigger my IBS, but unfortunately there are a lot of foods where I don’t know if they will affect me. Sometimes I simply avoid them, but other times I want to try them and then I pay for it later. All that to say, my IBS bothers me more days than it doesn’t. And after reading about how Elana had to figure out what worked best for her schedule, I finally decided to try something different. Instead of trying to have a flexible schedule, and writing in the morning on the days when I feel well, I think I’ll just automatically assume I’m not going ...

During lunch today, I was reading Elana Johnson’s Writing and Marketing Systems , because she has such good advice (at least, it really resonates with my personality) and I was hoping for reminders on how to improve my productivity. Re-reading it was a good idea, because I picked upon things I had only skimmed over before. Or maybe it’s just that my life is in a different place this time when I read the book, and so different pieces of advice were more apropos. First I made a definite goal for myself. I’ve been wanting to increase my writing time and word count, but I haven’t actually set a goal. So I set a minimum goal of 10,000 words a week, and a stretch goal of 20,000 words per week on the Regency, and then for the Hawaii book, I set a minimum goal of 2 chapters a week and a stretch goal of 4 chapters a week. I also set a couple bribes for me. When I finish a scene, I can have a piece of candy. I can only eat a small amount of it because of my IBS, but since moderation is som...

My IBS has been bothering me a bit lately. I think I ate too much of a food that is okay for me to eat, but only in moderate amounts. The pain has not been as bad as it has been before, but it has still been distracting. I'm doing a little bit of dictation every day. My bare minimum is only five minutes of dictation, but most days I do about 30 minutes dictation, and then the cleanup editing is another 30 minutes. I also try to do my cycling edit every day. So even though my IBS has been bothering me, I am still able to get work done on my book. I am approximately one third of the way through the book, but I had hoped to have more done on it by now. I started the book in early December, but I was busy because the previous book released in mid-December, and then I had a couple promotions to set up after that. Then I was traveling over Christmas, and got hardly anything done for about two weeks. I thought I would start getting more writing done after Christmas, but I have been ...

I’ve had somewhat bad IBS for the past couple days—I was in pain, but it wasn’t as bad as I’ve had it at other times. It was still distracting and hard to work, but I still managed to get writing done. What I did was work on stuff like marketing and editing in the morning, when my IBS was worst, and I took medicine and waited for it to kick in. Sometimes the medicine didn’t work all that well and I didn’t start to feel better until the late afternoon, but I usually found at least 30 or 60 minutes where I wasn’t feeling too badly. I took advantage of my time when I felt better in order to dictate a bit of my book. I mentioned earlier that it seems easier for me to focus when I’m dictating. Maybe it’s because I tend to walk when I dictate—whether walking outside, or like yesterday, just pacing in my room. I find it’s easier for me to forget about my IBS when I’m walking and dictating, at least most of the time—sometimes there was just so much pain and nausea that it distracts me from...

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 ...

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, but I have had a difficult time getting started on work today because my morning schedule was disrupted. We awoke to find the power had gone out because of the storms. I usually have a set schedule of things I do in the morning. It's partly because I have found that my brain tends to be a little fuzzy for the first hour or two after I wake up. It's not a problem if I have things to do that don't require a great deal of creativity, but I found that my fuzzy brain makes it hard to write, because I will usually stare at the blank screen or have long periods of silence when I dictate as I try to think of what to write next. So my morning ritual keeps me busy and helps to get my mind warmed up and firing. I usually exercise, do some house chores, make breakfast and make tea. The tea is especially comforting when I sit down at my computer after breakfast. My reliance upon rituals and routine is also probably why it's difficult for...

I had a bad IBS flareup in the early morning hours, and so I slept through my alarm this morning and got up late. It’s frustrating to be getting to work late, but I tried to be efficient. As I blogged about yesterday, I did my dictation first thing. Well, not exactly first thing—I did my “ frogs ” first, my exercise, house chores, Japanese study and Bible reading. I have to admit my Japanese study lately has been very minimal and takes only a few minutes rather than 30 minutes. I had gotten into the habit of cutting my Japanese study short when my IBS was bad and I needed the extra time for writing, and then I cut it short when I was scrambling to finish my book in time for it to release in December. I guess I just haven’t gotten out of the habit of rushing through it, even though now I’m not as pressed for time to finish the book. However, when I wake up late, I still feel pressured to get started on my writing as soon as possible, which is why I’ve been still doing only the bare mi...

One of my New Year’s resolutions is to be better about my social media. Unfortunately, that also means that social media has become a distraction for me during the day whereas before it wasn’t at all, since I wasn’t on it at all. So I have to confess that I spent too long on social media today before I started writing, and so I began work a bit later in the day than I had wanted to. I know that getting away from my computer is best in order to remove the distraction of social media, so when I started my dictation today, instead of sitting at my desk to dictate like I did before, I took my digital recorder and dictated while walking around my house. Not as nice as when I walk outside, but it was raining so I had to make do. Walking around helped me to focus on the dictation and get it done without being distracted by social media, so I consider that a win. I dictated a tiny bit faster than yesterday, but I also had less to delete, and so my dictation was overall more efficient t...

I decided to try a dictation streak since the writing streak has helped me immensely with my discipline. I think the writing streak also made me much more productive overall, even accounting for days I only did the bare minimum of work. If I hadn’t had the writing streak, I probably wouldn’t have done ANY work, and that might have gone on for longer than the number of days I only did the bare minimum. I think I got back into the regular swing of writing sooner because of the streak. So, in light of that, I decided to try the same with dictation in the hopes that doing it every day will help me get better at it. I looked back on my writing diary and was able to see that I stopped dictation in November around the time book 4 was releasing and I was frantically trying to finish writing book 5. I was struggling with procrastination (so what else is new) and it was easier to sit and type than dictate. But even then I hadn’t completely given up on dictation since I wanted to put in more ...

Wow it’s been a long time since I blogged! I don’t have a very good excuse for the few days after my last blog post because I was just lazy about blogging (right after I’d blogged that I needed to blog daily for accountability). But then I went traveling for Christmas and was only doing the bare minimum of work during those days. I have to admit I was really tempted to stop the writing streak during the holidays because it was hard to do even a little writing every day. Some days I was busy all day and only remembered a few minutes before midnight that I hadn’t yet done some writing. After that happened twice, I decided to try to write on my phone when I was waiting in the car or driving somewhere with family. But I hadn’t prepared enough and belatedly discovered that I couldn’t write on 4thewords on my phone because the new website isn’t optimized for mobile. I had all my writing notes and the last paragraphs I wrote in the scene in 4thewords, but I couldn’t add more writing using...

The problem with not blogging is that I got lazy and I don’t have the accountability of needing to confess on a blog post what I did or didn’t do that day. I fully admit I was lazy yesterday and after only about an hour of writing, I did some reading. I do know that I haven’t been reading enough and so I probably needed to refill the creative well. I feel much less antsy today and more focused on work. I had forgotten that I need the accountability of blogging in order to prevent myself from slacking off. I hadn’t been blogging because I haven’t learned anything new in regards to my productivity and efficiency. I’m doing my “ frogs ” each morning, then getting started on work. I first do my self-editing on what I wrote the day before, then I get started on writing the scene for the day. My writing speed is a bit slower than before because I sometimes take the time to look up research. I know it’s not efficient, especially since I want to write faster, but I found during the self-...