Camy's Writing Diary

I am getting started on my dictation a little late in the day today, because I had to go pick up the vegetables from the co-op. In hindsight, I should have done the dictation first, and then gone to pick up the vegetables afterward, and then I could have done the cleanup editing after that. But I'm so used to picking up the co-op vegetables at a certain time, that I simply didn't think of it. I'll have to try to remember this for next week. Also, I don't know why this is, but before, when I tried to write via typing, if I hadn't yet picked up the vegetables, the thought of that would nag at me while I was writing. I think because I was afraid that I would forget. It's a little bit easier to simply go pick up the vegetables as soon as the alarm sounds on my phone. I'm not sure if the reminder to pick up the vegetables would still nag at me if I were walking and dictating, but I suspect it would not simply because I am outside, and I also have found that I...

Just when I was blogging about disruptions to my schedule yesterday, I had another disruption today. I woke up with a terrible headache, and while I can usually do certain types of work (marketing, editing) while suffering from IBS pain, I absolutely cannot get work done with a headache. Actually, I could force myself to do some work, but after about 20 minutes, my headache will get worse and turn into a full-blown migraine, and I have to avoid that at all costs. A migraine on one day will leave me feeling drained and slightly headachy the next day, also. So I did my best to get rid of the headache. I moved around, I drink lots of water, I drink some tea, and I took pain meds. However, it didn't start to go away until the late afternoon, and now that it's dinner time, I still feel a slight headache. However, I want to get some work done today, so I'm going to try to do some dictation on my book. And while it’s transcribing, I will also try to get done the cycling edit o...

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 ...

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-...

I’ve still got some IBS issues today, so writing is going to be a little difficult since I’ll have to push past the pain. However, the discomfort is not as bad as normal, so that’s good. I’m still apparently eating something that’s causing issues, but it’s not in a huge amount, so I can still get my work done while I try to figure out what it is. I got most of my “ frogs ” done this morning—exercise, a little Japanese study, my email. I skipped the house chore for now and will try to get to it later, because I wanted to get started on my writing as soon as possible. I did get to sleep early last night, but still overslept a little. I think my body tends to need more sleep when I’ve had a flareup, and I forget that. However, I was glad I had the self-discipline to get to bed on time, and I hope I’ll have that same self-discipline tonight. I think that I get more done during the day when I go to bed earlier and wake up earlier. It might be because of the daylight hours. I’m going to ...

I woke up a bit late this morning, and I wasn’t feeling 100%, but after doing a few of my “frogs”, I got started on work as soon as possible. I wanted to have as much time to get writing done as I could while I didn’t have too much IBS discomfort, just in case some flared up later in the day. That didn’t happen, thank the Lord, but I was still glad I was conservative with my energy today. I haven’t been spending as much time on my “ frogs ” lately because of my health. I usually try to do exercise, email, my Japanese study, and house chores. I’ve been cutting short the time I spend on my email and Japanese (my exercise is already only 45 minutes of walking and I don’t want to go less than that). Eventually, I’d like to spend more time on my Japanese in the morning before I start work, but since I’m still in that stage where I’m not sure if my IBS will flare up later the day, I’ve been rushing my “frogs” to prioritize the writing. Now that I’ve moved my marketing to Thursdays and Sa...

I got started REALLY late today. It was totally my fault, I overslept through my alarm. On the bright side, I woke up feeling really refreshed and awake. Unfortunately, it’ll probably be hard for me to get to sleep tonight, which will make me get less sleep and feel tired tomorrow morning. I didn’t blog yesterday simply because I was a bit lazy, plus I ended work kind of late. I not only finished blocking the next scene, but I also blocked an additional scene which I had realized I needed a few days ago. Unfortunately I ended work around 11 at night and felt too tired to blog about it. I also feel guilty that I haven’t done any dictation for several days. A part of me wonders if it’s even worthwhile for me to dictate, since it has been taking me extra days just to do the cleanup editing. It’s nice that I can write 3000-5000 words in one day, but if I have to take an extra day or two to do the cleanup editing and rearrange my blocking notes, what’s the point? Then again, I am red...

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 had a little bit of IBS that caused me to have a slow start this morning, but I got all my “frogs” done. The only problem is that I had to do a marketing task that took over an hour. It absolutely had to be done, and I’m glad I finished it, but it did make me late to start my dictation today. Because of that, I decided to cut my dictation time a bit short. The free writing exercise I did yesterday seemed to help me practice not pausing while I dictate. Freewriting is supposed to help you to release inhibitions and just write without worrying about how it sounds. I guess I need that for my dictation, because I still had a lot of words I needed to delete yesterday because I’d dictate a sentence, then repeat it with corrections. But mostly I want to get used to just keeping on dictating without silence. Sometimes that’s hard because I have to read my blocking notes on my phone to see where I’m supposed to go. Some days will be like yesterday, where I dictated some dialogue out of or...

I’m starting on my new scheduling experiment of starting and stopping my writing at the same time each day, regardless of if my “frogs” got done, in order to try to transition more seamlessly and easily in deep focus for work. My IBS was bad again this morning, so I got another late start to my day. I had been hoping to get all my “frogs” done before lunch and then getting to my writing work by 1 pm, but because of my late start, I only got my Japanese study done before lunch.  However, while doing my Japanese, I got distracted down a grammar rabbit hole and ended up taking an extra 30 minutes. It was still important work that I would have eventually needed to get done, but doing it today took time away from my writing. After lunch, I got only a couple frogs done, and at 2 pm, the only frog I hadn’t done was my marketing task for the day. However, I decided to start writing work at 2 pm anyway, in the hopes I’ll do my marketing later. I realize as I’m typing this that it sounds...

OH MY GOSH it was so hard to focus on my writing today! And I have no idea why! The day started off great. I got up early, I took care of some house chores that needed to be done. I got my “frogs” done and had lunch. I always start off my writing session by editing what I’d written yesterday. It did take longer than normal because I’d left a note for myself to look something up. I knew the research would take a long time, and yesterday instead of doing the research right then, I left a note to do it today while editing. And yup, the research took a long time. But after the research and the editing was done, I had a really difficult time focusing in order to write prose on the scene. I had such high hopes for today since I had a lot of time and I had gotten so many words written yesterday. But I spent a lot of time just staring at the computer screen. The worst part was that I had completely forgotten to try the Pomodoro method to help me focus. Finally I remembered, and it did ...

Today is the second day of a scheduling experiment I’m trying to do. Instead of doing my marketing work first thing before my writing, like I have to do with my “frogs” (Japanese study, email, and Regency research reading) in order to make sure I get them done, I planned to do my marketing after my writing. I still did my other “frogs” before writing, but I was hopeful I’d be able to stop writing at 5 pm and then work on my marketing work. I wasn’t entirely sure I’d get to it, because in the past, when I left my marketing to the end of my day, often I’d be so tired that I would simply skip it. My writing ended up taking longer than I expected. I had thought it wouldn’t be so hard to stop writing by a certain time, but it was actually a bit difficult because I was trying to write a certain number of words today, and I hadn’t made it by 5 pm, so I kept working and didn’t finish my writing until almost 6 pm. I was trying to concentrate, but I admit my mind was distracted often. I’m st...

I think the adjusted schedule worked rather well today. I did my email, marketing, and Hawaii book first to make sure they got done. I made sure to set a timer so that I wouldn’t spend too much time on any one thing, although I did go a little over when I did the marketing. Then I got started on my writing on the Regency book, up until lunch. I did my Regency research reading over lunch. After lunch, I took a short walk, so lunchtime felt like more of a break rather than a continuous time of only working. I got back to the writing after the walk, and managed to work for a good chunk of time. Rather than aiming for a certain amount of time to work on my blocking, which I’ve been doing before, I decided to stop by a certain time so that I’d have time to do my Japanese study, which was the last thing I needed to do today. So I still managed to get a lot of writing done, but I also made sure I had time for my Japanese study. I’m not sure why I can now do the Regency research reading and Ja...

I decided to take a few sick days because I was in so much pain. I felt a bit silly for needing sick days, but I honestly haven’t ever bitten my tongue so badly or had it hurt so much. It also made it hard for me to sleep well since I woke up every hour or so whenever I happened to move my mouth and the pain from my tongue woke me up very sharply. So the past several days have been pretty rough for me, despite how stupid it sounds when I say I only bit my tongue. On a more positive note, my IBS has not been giving me many problems at all, except for yesterday and today when I started feeling some cramping. And while I was sick, I got a ton of laundry done. As for my writing, I’m going to continue what I’ve been doing for the past week or so, which is to write the bare minimum of prose in order to have more time for blocking and get that done as soon as possible. I was really torn about whether I should do this or not, because I want to get books 4 and 5 of the series released so that I...

I admit that today I was really tempted to just make it a sick day, because the sore in my mouth where I bit my tongue is really painful. I haven’t bitten my tongue this badly in a long time. But my husband smoked ribs yesterday so I don’t have to cook tonight, so I thought I’d use the time to get some work done. However, I’m not aiming for as many hours as a normal day and I’m going at a more relaxed pace, since I feel a little bit like an invalid recovering from a wound. Today I’m going to devote the majority of my work time on blocking the next book. I decided this because in working on the outline of my Hawaii book, I was reminded how I do my outlining/blocking much better when I have larger chunks of time to devote to it. Also, I had been vaguely aware of it earlier, but when I start blocking each day, I usually have to spend some time reminding myself where I am in the story and where in the scene I last stopped. I think I have to re-immerse myself because I have to reorient my m...

I’m still working on my Hawaii book outline today. I didn’t get as much done yesterday, but I woke up a bit earlier today, so I hope to get more done today. As yesterday, I did only the bare minimum of writing and blocking on my Regency book, just to keep up my streak. *** I had a long stretch of uninterrupted time, but for some reason I had to keep pulling my attention back to my work. I wasn’t distracted for more than a couple minutes at a time, I wasn’t completely focused on my work. However, I don’t feel like I wasted time or anything like that, I was always able to get back on track quickly. Part of the reason might be because I was wrestling with a particularly difficult story problem today. I could practically feel steam coming out of my ears as I tried to think and figure out a solution to the problem. Since I was having so much trouble figuring out how to solve my problem, I did a lot of free-writing to brainstorm solutions. In many ways, 4thewords is perfect for this because ...

I’m still working on outlining the Hawaii book. I got a lot done yesterday and made some key decisions on how I wanted the plot to unfold, so today I hope to get even more done and maybe finish the outline entirely. However I’m not sure since I got a late start to work today. Since I’m working on the Hawaii book for most of today, I’ll only do the bare minimum of writing and blocking, just to keep up my streak. *** When I was working on my Hawaii outlining, I had to interrupt my work a couple times in order to do food prep for cooking dinner. I’m not sure if that made it hard for me to concentrate or not, but I did feel a bit annoyed that I had to stop. Unfortunately, house chores like that are unavoidable unless I want to force my husband to eat take-out every night. And cooking always takes me so much longer than I expect it to. I had been hoping to get a total of 6 hours of work today like yesterday, but I only got about 4.5. :( We even had a late dinner, and yet I still couldn’t ge...

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...

Surprisingly, it was a little hard to get back to work after taking a sick day yesterday. I felt kind of sluggish today, but I think it’s mostly that inertia I feel when I’ve been taking it easy—I want to just keep doing nothing because it’s the easiest thing to do (or in this case, not do). I’m not normally a very active person, I think I’m rather like my dad in that I’m slow-moving and more likely to take things easy. It’s probably one of the reasons why my productivity isn’t as high as other authors—my natural, everyday energy level just really isn’t all that high. However I really want to change that. I don’t intend to spur myself to work faster, but I do want to train myself to concentrate better and not be distracted so that I can get more done in less time. I think that short bursts of intense focus will enable me to be productive in my writing, and still get all my house chores and Japanese language learning done each day. Lately, since I wasn’t feeling well, the Japanese learn...