Dear internet, I have a problem

 

I hate the book that I’m writing.

No, scratch that.  I don’t hate this book per se.  I hate the fact that I am still writing the damn thing.  I am hating the fact that my process is so slow, and that it takes me forever to churn out a draft.

There are some limitations that I cannot change: I have a small child, for one, and he always takes precedent over everything else.  But said small child is getting older and more independent (and would it be awful to admit that part of me is hanging out for when he goes to kindergarten just so I get those writing hours?), and I do have help with my mother coming and watching him for one or two hours, plus he does reliably nap for at least an hour every day.

You’d think that would be plenty of time.  But I’m still not getting enough done.  And it’s driving me crazy.

There are many issues here at work.  The first being the internet.  I am a distractable person at the best of times, and the internet is just too much of a damn siren call to me.  Today, I think, I shall be downloading Mac Freedom and using the damn thing for my writing time.

At the moment, I manage one writing session in a day, usually from 11am until somewhere around 1-2pm.  At that time, I usually switch to reading, reviewing or slushing.  All things I don’t want to cut back on, since they, in turn, feed the writing.  The kid usually wakes up somewhere around there, and I spend time with him, and get some exercise in (which usually involves me dropping him off with my mother again so I can walk/run/do weights/whatever).  Exercise is a necessary thing for me, since it is the primary method I have of managing fibromyalgia pain.

What I would like to do, given the constraints I have, is to carve out some more writing/editing time in the day, maybe in the evening.  I also need to be way, way more productive in the writing time I do have.

In order to do this, I am going to make myself accountable here.  Right now, I average about 1500 words a day while I’m editing – which for me, involves retyping the whole manuscript.  It’s just how I work, and word count works as well as anything else as a measurement of this.

Let’s see how much I can push this.

If anyone has any advice on how they manage to be more productive, feel free to share?

 

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.

Productivity (and a winner!)

First: I picked a random winner for my sneaky giveaway tucked at the end of my post about the Night Circus – the winner of the paperback copy is bookgirlwa over at Livejournal!  Lob me an email with your address (stephanie.r.gunn AT gmail.com) and I’ll get it out into the mail!

And I just had a writing session using Mac Freedom for 75 minutes.  And, to be fair, I did chat on gchat a bit on my phone during said session (which I think I’ll continue to do, because the only two people I talk to during the day are used to me being silent on chat for ages while I work), and I did wander away from the computer a couple of times just to get a break.

But in that 75 minutes I managed almost 2,400 words.  And they’re words I’m fairly happy with, and can move on.  So, a success I think.

I’m going to squeeze in another writing session today, I think, assuming the brain will comply.  Is it possible to actually train your brain to concentrate for longer?  Must research, I think.

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.