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 ...

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 admit I’ve been a bit lazy about blogging lately. First I had a bad IBS flareup, although I did manage to still get work done because the pain was not so bad that I couldn’t do certain things. I did my “ frogs ” first in the morning when the pain was the worst, since I could usually do Japanese study and house chores (sometimes) even if my IBS is bothering me. Then I did marketing and editing, which I can also usually do even if I’m feeling discomfort. In the afternoon when the symptoms died down a bit, I tried to do some dictation. Sometimes the cramping was still bothering me a bit and I didn’t get to dictation, but I was always able to get at least some editing or blocking done on a book. I also only did work on one manuscript, either the Regency or the Hawaii book. If the cramping was bad, I usually only did work on the Hawaii book since right now I’m mostly doing editing and revising on old writing, and I can get at least a scene edited as long as the IBS isn’t too bad. I f...

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 kept up my dictation streak over the weekend even though I was scheduled to only work on my Hawaii contemporary story on Saturday. I did some blocking for the next scene, which needed a lot of work before I could start writing it. I also was scheduled to do mostly marketing on Saturday, and I happened to have a lot to do this weekend, so I decided to only do a little work on the Hawaii book (only about the amount of time it took to finish blocking the next scene). I still wanted to keep up my dictation streak and usually try to do at least the bare minimum of 5 minutes, but I didn’t want to do only 5 minutes of dictation on the Hawaii book now when I won’t get back to it until next week Saturday. So instead I did five minutes of dictation on the Regency manuscript, and then I spent the majority of my workday on Saturday on the marketing stuff. And then on Sunday, I did another 5 minutes of dictation on my Regency manuscript, just to keep up my writing and dictation streaks. To...

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...

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 this morning, which made it difficult to concentrate, so I decided to do some marketing rather than writing first thing. I ended up getting a lot of marketing done, which was great. However, my IBS never really got much better as the day went on. My IBS is still bothering me even though it is close to dinner, and so I decided to do a little bit of dictation now, even though I feel some discomfort. A little bit of dictation is better than nothing. I'm not sure how much I will be able to dictate, but at the very least I can do my cycling edit of the dictation from last week Friday. I am also almost at the end of the scene, and if the dictation isn't going too badly, I will hopefully do more than just the bare minimum and try to finish it. *** I’m so frustrated! I lost 30 minutes of dictation because I had forgotten to make sure my digital recorder was recording (it was not). I had to redo it, which took less time than before, but that’s still 30 mi...

Since today is Saturday, I decided to dictate my writing for my contemporary contemporary romantic suspense, Year of the Dog. It was a lot more difficult than I expected. I'm not certain if it's because it's a new story, or because the language is different, or perhaps both. I only dictated for a little less than half an hour. I could have I needed another 30 minutes of dictation to finish the scene, but it was due to rain, so I decided to go home. I was going to dictate the rest of the scene while walking around my house instead, but I ended up getting distracted when I got home (argh!) and instead typed it at my desk. But I finished the scene, at least, so that’s great. I'm glad I did the dictation, but I'm also wondering if I need to to do exercises before I start the dictation. When I was doing dictation before, I found that doing dictation exercises before jumping into the writing made it easier for me to immediately start dictating quickly, and I think my ov...

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...

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 had a bad IBS flare-up this weekend, which really set me back on my writing. I had a bunch of marketing tasks to do on Saturday that didn’t get done, so I spent about 5 hours yesterday doing all of that. It was a lot more work than I had expected, but I’m glad it’s finally done. But since that was all I did (besides the bare minimum of writing on my manuscript, about 100 words), I didn’t bother to blog about it. My self-publishing To Do list helps me to keep track of everything that needs to be done, but it’s been really tough to coordinate the scheduling of everything when a book releases a month after the other. If I ever wanted to release a book a month, I will have to readjust my self-publishing To Do list and schedule. I simplified my To Do list a bit yesterday. It makes self-publishing easier because I can just copy and paste a lot of stuff that needs to be written, such as newsletters and messages to my Street Team. The only thing that took a lot of time yesterday was comi...

My self-discipline wasn’t great last night, I went to bed a couple hours later than I should have. However, I also woke up a little earlier, so hopefully that will make up for it. My IBS isn’t too bad today, so I managed to get my “ frogs ” done before starting work, which always makes me feel better. It’s a refreshing feeling that's a bit like cleaning my desk before starting work. Since today is Saturday, I had a bunch of marketing tasks that needed to be done before I could start writing. If I weren’t trying to finish this book by Wednesday or Thursday, I would have simply worked a bit on my Hawaii serial novel being posted on my blog. However, I’m trying to write as much as I can to make my personal deadline, so I need to get Regency writing done today in addition to the marketing tasks, which makes for a more busy day. I didn’t finish all my marketing tasks, but I already spent 90 minutes on it, and I want to make sure I get my writing done. I’m feeling a bit tired—maybe...

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 had a bad IBS flareup the past few days, and I'm still not feeling well but I wanted to get some work done today. I took some medication but was still dealing with pain and nausea, but I just powered through it to get some marketing work done. My book is releasing on the 16th this month, and I had some issues with uploading it to Kindle with the ISBN I had purchased from Bowker. After chatting (rather fruitlessly) with Amazon customer service, I finally tried a different ISBN number and that seemed to work. So now I'll have to deal with customer service with Bowker in order to fix it (and likely they'll say nothing's wrong with the ISBN and the problem was with Amazon). I was still feeling crappy so I was only going to do the bare minimum of writing today, and I started work on my manuscript, typing in 4thewords. However, I started feeling better as I was writing and I ended up writing more. I also accidentally started a large word count monster, which made me wri...

I wasn't feeling very well when I woke up this morning, but I wanted to try to get some dictation done today regardless. I've been wanting to try to do dictation first thing, not only because it helps me not to procrastinate doing it, but also because my brain tends to be freshest in the morning. However, if I'm in pain or queasy, it's really tough for me to do my dictation. So even though I have the desire to try to do the dictation first thing, my body doesn't always accommodate me. I'm always hoping I’ll be well enough to be able to do the dictation first thing, to see how well it goes, but I'm starting to realize that I simply cannot count on that happening, even though I tried to be really strict about my diet. I simply never know when I'm going to wake up and not feel well. Instead, I need to try to work around my IBS. With that in mind, I think I need to give up or postpone my hopes to try to do dictation first thing. I almost always feel wors...

I wanted to try walking and dictating earlier in the morning again today, but I woke up extra early with bad IBS pain, and the medication only half-worked. There are some days where I have the energy and want to push through the pain in order to get work done, but today wasn’t one of those days. So instead of dictating in the morning, I’ll do my dictation later in the day, whenever the IBS lets up. Since I couldn’t dictate, I decided to do my cleanup editing, which I’m way behind on anyway. Some of the editing took a really long time yesterday, so I didn’t finish editing all the dictation from Wednesday, and I didn’t do any of the editing of the dictation from yesterday (Friday). It’s not easy doing the editing while I’m feeling sick, but it’s easier than trying to dictate. I had done marketing and my Hawaii book on Thursday, which turned out to be good since I was behind on my marketing tasks before then, and I’m getting behind on my marketing again now. It seems I have so many ma...

I had yet another bad morning because of my IBS, but once it calmed down in the afternoon (helped by a lavish dosing of medication), I managed to get about 3 hours of marketing done. I’m really behind on my marketing tasks. I have to stop skipping my daily 1 hour of marketing during my other writing days. It’s piling up so much that I’m going to need to cut short my writing time in order to make sure I keep on top of the marketing. I feel most sluggish in the morning—partly because I’m still sleepy and I’m not a morning person, but also partly when my IBS is acting up. I usually do my Japanese study first, but what I should do is do some marketing during that time since that’s easiest for me to do when I’m not feeling 100%. I didn’t do any dictation exercises today, but I managed to write another short chapter in Year of the Dog , the Christian Humorous Romantic Suspense I’m posting chapter-by-chapter as a serial novel on my blog. I’m moving pretty quickly through the manuscript ...