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 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 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...

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 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...

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 ...

It’s been almost seven months since I wrote my last Evaluation 6 , but I finally got around to Evaluation #7! Here’s the gist of what I’ve learned over the past few months about my writing and productivity. New schedule My IBS was slowly been starting to feel better recently. I am still extremely strict with my diet, but I am also starting to experiment with what foods I can and can’t eat. I have also started a new eating and sleeping schedule, which I have dubbed my “chrono-diet” because I’m trying to take advantage of my circadian rhythm, according to the book Change Your Schedule, Change Your Life (I had borrowed a copy from the library but I enjoyed it so much I went ahead and bought it). I have started waking up at 6 am and exercising first thing, then having breakfast after exercise. I do house chores and/or work until noon, which is when I eat lunch. I’m supposed to not eat until dinner around 5:30 or 6, but I haven’t been able to break the habit of snacking in the aftern...

I don’t remember why, but I had stopped doing my Japanese study time before my writing time each day—probably so that I would prioritize the writing and get more done each day. Unfortunately, that also caused me to stop doing all but the bare minimum of my Japanese study each day. I know by now that if I don’t do these kinds of things first, I won’t get to doing them at all at the end of the day. So I decided to once again spend a couple hours doing my other work before starting on my writing each day. Aside from my Japanese study, I also want to spend more time doing research reading, so I’m going to try to do about 30-45 minutes of that each day. I prefer diving straight into my writing work each day, but I’ve realized that my Japanese and my Regency research are too important for me to slack off on anymore. So I’ll just have to knuckle down and force myself to get this done before I start writing. Yesterday, I also had a hard time getting to my Hawaii book and also checking my email...

UGH! I was terribly distracted and didn’t get straight to work today. I got really excited about some new books coming out and added them to my book catalog, which I probably could have done later but I got into it and next thing I know, it’s an hour and a half later. It’s because after I did some Japanese reviews on Bunpro, I clicked on an interesting forum thread and heard about some new books coming out, so of course I had to go see what they were. I should have been more mindful and not checked the forum boards after doing my Japanese grammar reviews. I know very well that checking any news or social media before work is a recipe for disaster, but at that moment, I had forgotten. I actually haven’t been distracted by social media in a long time, so I got complacent about guarding against checking social media. A lot of authors I know simply unplug and don’t go online. That would certainly keep me off of social media, but I often need to do some research or look up a word while I’m ...

Health versus laziness For the past few days, I had some bad IBS flare-ups. On Monday and Tuesday, I actually got some writing done before the flare-ups started, but ended up only getting the bare minimum of blocking done. And then yesterday, the flare-ups were on and off all day, so I only got the bare minimum done. I probably should have posted my daily writing times even though they were just the bare minimum, but sometimes I feel like there’s no point in doing that, because there have been SO many days where I simply felt too sick to work. I also have to be careful not to just give up and do the bare minimum on a day where the pain isn’t TOO bad but I’m just being lazy. Monday was actually like that. I did get a full 800 words written, and when the flare-up started, I did the bare minimum of blocking (just to make sure I got it done for the day), and I intended to do more blocking later. But I never went back to work, even though the flare-up died down a bit more after dinner. I do...

I had a couple flare-ups while working today, and each time I had to wait until it passed before I could start work again. As a result, I was pretty distracted during my writing time, and I also didn’t get a whole lot done. I couldn’t do anything about the flare-ups and needing to wait them out, but I really should do something about managing my distraction. I probably just need to practice more, but I feel bad about days like today when my attention is jumping all over the place. It took a while for me to get my attention back on my work, but I managed to stop what I was doing to procrastinate, and I closed my eyes and did some deep breathing for a minute. It really worked to help me calm my thoughts, which were jumping from topic to topic. I took that time to remember that I need to practice my deep focus, and then I went back to work. I think it worked pretty well, but the problem is snapping myself out of whatever mental state I drift into when I’m distracted and procrastinatin...

I hate it when I get a late start to the day, but I was up late last night with some pain and discomfort, which made me get up later today, and then I had a bunch of house chores that needed to be done before I could start work. I’m also still feeling some IBS pain, but I took some medication and I’m just waiting for it to kick in.  Once again, I’m practicing patience with my health. I don’t know why I’m the type of person to throw in the towel so easily when I’m feeling sick, but that’s how I am. When I feel really terrible, I want to just quit and not think about work for the rest of the day. But I’m trying to learn how to be patient and wait to see if I feel better. So far, I usually only need to wait a few minutes or at most a couple hours before I feel well enough to get to work. I haven’t had a really bad day recently, so hopefully all this practice will help me to do the same when one of those hits. I realized that I’m also learning how to work through a little bit of discom...

I have to confess that not only did I go to bed late last night (I was watching Kingdom on Netflix—SO good!), I also wasted a bunch of time this morning updating books in my Apple Books reader app (basically I was adding series numbers to books I haven’t read yet so I’d know which book was next in the series after I read the first one). I fully admit it was a colossal waste of time, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself once I’d started, because I wanted to finish it so I wouldn’t have to remember to do it later. Which, thinking on it now, I should have just left a note for myself in my bullet journal to do later. Part of the reason I did it was because my IBS was bothering me and I didn’t want to write. It’s actually still bothering me now, but I have to get work done since I wasted my morning. Why do I do this???? Actually, I think I know why. I get focused on a task and don’t think about other things, such as the fact that I should stop the task and leave a note for myself to do...

Different work in different places I’ve heard this advice before, but I never really thought how I could put it into practice, and then I did it by accident today. While I can do my Japanese flashcards on my phone most of the time, when I have to figure out mnemonics for new kanji, I usually like to do this on my computer since I’m searching for mnemonics on the Wanikani and Kanji Koohi websites and then copying or typing them into Anki. I also tend to like doing my grammar SRS on my computer since I have to type in the answers for the cloze flashcards on the Bunpro website. However today I happened to bring my iPad and bluetooth keyboard to the dining room table while I was eating breakfast. I did my flashcards on my phone, but I also have Anki on my iPad, and my flashcards sync between the two. I opened up my iPad to add some new mnemonics to Anki using a cheap bluetooth keyboard that I just bought. Then it occurred to me that I could do my grammar SRS using my bluetooth keyboa...

Today didn’t start off too well. I woke up with another headache, so I had a slow start after getting up. I also had more messages to answer on Facebook so I went ahead and did that to get it out of the way. As part of my clearing the decks ritual, I’ve been doing my Japanese flashcards before work, but today I decided to spend a little extra time on it. I had been thinking of restructuring my Japanese learning for a while now, so I went ahead and organized my flashcards for kanji, vocabulary, and also grammar. A part of me worries about taking too much time to do my Japanese before getting to my writing work, but I know that if I don’t do it before work, it’s never going to get done. And the Japanese learning is important to me personally. I would really like to be proficient enough one day to be able to translate my fiction into Japanese, and maybe only needing an editor to smooth it out. I’m really far from there right now, but I hope I can get there, if I study diligently. *...