Camy's Writing Diary

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’m really struggling today with procrastination. It might be because I didn’t sleep well last night yet again—even though I went to bed early, I lay awake and didn’t fall asleep until close to six o’clock in the morning. So I ignored my alarm and overslept. I don’t know why I felt such resistance to starting work earlier today. I was a little mentally tired, because it was later in the afternoon—I exercised this morning, but I also had to attend an online orientation for a class I’m going to be taking for the next four weeks, and it was not only a lot of information, but also I found it a bit mentally tiring since I’ve been a hermit lately and I’m not used to all the social interaction.
 Maybe that contributed to it—I was trying to start work right after signing off from the online orientation, when I should have scheduled some down time after that before I started work. It’s the same reason I can’t do marketing first and immediately start writing after that, it’s too mentally tax...

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 ...

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...

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...

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...

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 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...

(I discovered today that I miscounted a few days ago, so today is actually day 899 and my writing streak is actually 378 days today.) I started the day off rather badly, with bad IBS nausea when I woke up. However, since I wasn’t in any mental state to write, I finished a lot of house chores. I usually have a heavier load of house chores than normal on Thursdays, and I got it all done. Because of the number of chores I need to do on Thursdays, I have also scheduled Thursdays as a marketing day, and so I did some marketing tasks that were due today. I finally started feeling better late in the day, but by then I was already feeling tired. I found myself procrastinating a lot rather than just getting started on my work. I really don’t know why I have such a tendency to procrastinate. It’s not like I hate my work—I love writing, plus I’m at the end of the book, which is usually the best part to write. And yet I wasted time on Amazon. I bought supplies that I did need, but I didn’t...

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’m feeling much better today, but I didn’t bother to try to do dictation. As a result, it was very easy for me to simply sit at my desk and start writing. No procrastinating, I didn’t have to fight myself to get started on the dictation. I still don’t know why dictation is so much harder for me than typing, but at the moment, I’m more interested in finishing this book on time. I also hope that typing will enable me to write for longer and longer hours each day until I can get back to writing 6 or 7 hours a day, assuming my health keeps improving. My writing today was slow, however, because I found a couple plot holes that needed to be fixed. I could have left them to be fixed later, but I felt that it would be better to fix them now, while I knew where exactly in the manuscript I needed to revise the text. I worked longer hours today than I have recently, about 4.5. I got about 3900 words done. I had been aiming for 5000 words, but writing was taking a long time today and I was ge...

I really wanted to do more dictation today, but because my IBS was bothering me off and on all day, it just seemed easier to type rather than dictate. Logically speaking, I don’t know why it’s easier. Theoretically, I could easily turn on my digital recorder or start the recording app on my computer, almost as easily as starting typing on my manuscript. I think it’s simply that it’s more mentally challenging to dictate than to type, at this point, since I’m more used to typing. I was able to type and write in my manuscript, stopping at times when the IBS gave me issues, for almost 2.5 hours today, which is great. It’s much more time than I’ve spent on my writing in several weeks, since the IBS flareup first got bad. I wrote almost 3000 words today and finished a scene. I did notice that while my writing speed was slower when I first started, it picked up in the middle, but it slowed down again at the end because I was feeling tired. But I pushed through because I was almost done ...

I’m a bit ashamed to admit that I miscounted my days and my 365 writing streak was yesterday! I didn’t notice it until this morning when I discovered I’d forgotten to count two days before. So, yesterday was 365 consecutive days of writing at least 100 words in my manuscript every single day! It was really hard, especially on days I felt sick. But even when my IBS was particularly bad, I always had at least 10 minutes here or there when the pain or nausea would subside temporarily, and so I whipped out my phone and wrote 100 words. It was especially easy to do because I write in 4thewords, and so the most recent chapter I’m working on is saved online at the website, and I can access it anywhere. It’s also easy to start a battle with a 100-word monster and then stop when the monster is defeated. 100 words a day is really not very much, so it’s easy to do, although it would take a long time to write a book that way. But just the act of getting my head into my manuscript every day ...

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...

After several weeks of being sick, now that I’m feeling better, my self-discipline is in the toilet. I stayed up too late last night and ended up sleeping through my alarm again this morning, so I had another late start to the day. I was going to try to do my writing right after getting back from exercise, but I’ve been feeling bad that other important things have been not getting done lately. Usually, there are things I do as my “frogs” first thing (exercise is one of them) because if I don’t do them first, then I never get around to doing them at all during the day. That’s just how I am—I’m usually too tired to get to them after I’ve finished my writing for the day. So many of those things haven’t been getting done recently, and while they’re not urgent, they’re still important. Things like house chores (because really, I can only stand so long before the floor has to be mopped and the shower has to be cleaned). So I did my “frogs” this morning before writing, and I admit I felt ...