Camy's Writing Diary

The haze from the California wildfires has been very bad lately, and yesterday and today, my allergies have acted up and hit me with a very bad sinus headache. So I am taking a couple sick days. Man, this is really very frustrating to be incapacitated this way. I want to write!

So, the good news is that I got my blocking done today on that difficult scene! I ended up needing to redo the last (climactic) part because it just wasn't possible logistically (it really sucks when you have to obey the laws of physics). Plus a part of me wasn't quite sure if it glorified God in the right way, so I adjusted it a bit. I'm happier with how it went, especially the spiritual part of it. The climax itself still might seem a little unbelievable, but I researched it and everything! Professor Google can't be wrong, right? I think I'll just keep writing the rough draft and when I get to it again, I'll reevaluate how it looks. I also started working on the rough draft again, and it was fun to get back to writing after doing so much plotting for the last few days. But I also got a bad bout of IBS that distracted me, and I would stop writing every time it got bad, so I didn't work for as many hours as I'd have liked. I also spent a little to...

I'm still eating my frogs first thing by doing my exercise and my email first, and my email took only 42 minutes, so that was great. I really thought I'd finish the blocking today, but I only got mostly done. The scene had seemed pretty straightforward when I wrote it while doing Snowflake step 6 (expanded synopsis), but when actually blocking it out, most of the time I was going, "Wait, where is this character in the building? If he's there, why doesn't that happen to him? And how does this character get there in order for that to happen? And what door does this other guy come in through? Because if he uses this door, then wouldn't that happen to him? And if these other characters are escaping, why doesn't the villain stop them? And once that happens, how do they get out?" I also had to adjust a fight scene because realistically, the villain wouldn't leave only one guard at the front door. Yeah, it was a very frustrating time of bl...

It's the 100th day since I started this writing diary! I did skip a few days, but on a whole I've kept up writing this diary almost every day. Alas, I have nothing special planned for my 100th day. It was another day of writing. I'm still using 4thewords.com and I worked on blocking for the last climactic scene in volume 2. I was hoping to finish that today, but as I was working on it, I discovered a rather large plot hole. It went along the lines of, "Okay, now I need the villain to do this  to this guy  … Wait, when did this guy get here? Just now? Why wouldn't he have entered the scene sooner? Does he actually have a good reason why he didn't arrive sooner? But if he does enter the scene earlier, then when that  happens, why didn't he get involved? And if he gets involved, that would completely ruin that other thing  that happens! Aaaarrrghh!!!" As I mentioned yesterday, I've been able to be more focused when it comes to outlining if I...

I got a late start today, and I ended up taking a nap because of the heat (96 degrees in the house!), but I also discovered something rather neat. I started 4thewords.com 12 days ago, and they encourage keeping up a writing streak. In fact, they give you little gifts for when you hit certain milestone days in your streak. When I started 4thewords, I was (and still am) writing the rough draft of volume 2 of my series, so keeping up the streak wasn't a problem. Even writing on Sunday wasn't an issue, because I usually go to bed after midnight, so I'd write some words after 12 on (technically) Sunday morning and they'd count as words for my streak on Sunday. Then I'd go to bed and not write at all on Sunday when I woke up, and I could still keep my writing Sabbath day.
 But the past few days I was doing additional characterization for my villains, which included adding bits and pieces to my outlines for my manuscripts, and not writing prose. But I didn't wan...

After writing yesterday I realized that I hadn’t checked my email or social media all day, so I did it later in the evening. However, I almost didn’t do it because I just don’t really like it. In fact, it took me about an hour and a half to get it all done. For me, email and social media are things I don’t enjoy very much at all. In fact, they’re kind of up there with exercising. Productivity experts say to do first the things you don’t want to do (“eat that frog”) and in this instance I think they’re right. Since exercising and checking email and social media are my frogs, I should do that first before writing. A lot of writers advise not checking email first thing, but I think that if I don’t, I might be tempted not to do it later (just like exercise) or I might simply forget to do it entirely. So I did email and social media before working today, and they only took me 26 minutes. Based on that and on how difficult it was for me to do my email and social media last night, I thi...

I was working on formally outlining my villains' internal arcs today (as opposed to just winging it as I was writing the book), and I got through the second half of volume 4 all the way through volume 9. That means I only have volume 10 left. Technically I should probably do the serial novel, too, but I'm not entirely sure yet if I want to do it right now. Mostly because I want to finish writing the manuscript I'm working on currently, which is volume 2 of the main series, so that I can start releasing the books. I talked with my husband about options for my book release schedule. Originally, I had intended to write all the books at once and then release them once a month or so. But since I made a new goal of making some money this year, I thought it would be best to release the books as I finish writing and editing them. The only issue is if I'm writing a volume in the series and discover something I have to change in a book I've already released. But since s...