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 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...

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...

Wow, I can’t believe it’s already been over 1000 days since I started this writing blog. It has been immensely helpful to me to be able to blog about my writing productivity experiments. It has also been good accountability to blog about my word count and hours worked. I usually try to take a day of rest on Sunday, but I ended up doing a lot of marketing work, so I decided to take yesterday (Monday) as my day of rest instead and I only did the bare minimum of writing work to keep up my writing streak. I intended to only dictate 5 minutes, but it ended up being about 15 minutes instead. I also decided to try using the Dragon Anywhere app and also the text-to-speech function in the Pages app on my iPhone. I only used the microphone on the phone, but both apps performed remarkably well. Dragon Anywhere allows you to add vocabulary words so that I could add my characters’ names and record myself saying them. When I dictated the names, Dragon Anywhere correctly transcribed them. You...

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 ...

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...

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...

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 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...

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...

Today I had a ton of marketing stuff to do because my book is releasing on Wednesday. I got a fast response from Amazon (go KDP!) about why my paperback book was having that error message—apparently the title in the ISBN listing on Bowker’s was different from what I’d typed as the title in KDP. The problem was the apostrophe—my browser automatically changes the apostrophe to a smart apostrophe, but it’s a plain apostrophe in Bowker’s. So I just changed the apostrophe in KDP to a plain apostrophe and it worked fine. I had intended to do my writing first today, but I wanted to get all my marketing tasks out of the way early, especially because I had to send an email as early as possible today for my Street Team. This is all because I’m so last-minute with everything for this book launch, since I was pushing to release books 4 and 5 this year, within 1 month of each other. Next time I’m just going to release after the book is done, no matter how long it might take me to write it. It’s...

Today is 400 consecutive days where I’ve done at least the bare minimum of writing every single day! It helps that my bare minimum is only 100 words in my manuscript, but I think it’s been really good for training my self-discipline and motivating me to sit at my computer or even just type away on my phone no matter how sick I might be feeling. I haven’t blogged for a while because not much has happened. I finished self-editing my book, but it took longer than I wanted because I had some nausea from my IBS, which made it hard to concentrate sometimes. I sent the book to my editor, who got it back to me lickety-split. I put the ebook up on Amazon for preorder. I had problems with publishing my paperback on Amazon and now I’m just waiting on an email I sent to their help desk. On a whole, my IBS is better than it’s been, so I’ve been trying to increase the number of hours I work each day. It’s easier to do when I’m editing or doing marketing, which doesn’t require as much intense c...

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...