Tag: productivity

Working on Vacation

Laura Highcove

So this past weekend I was in Williamsburg for vacation (Yes, Williamsburg, because I’m old.) and I can still remember the stresses of the up-coming vacation. Trying to get everything done in prep (I didn’t) hoping things would be calm at work (they weren’t) not forgetting anything important (we did).

The first morning I sat down in front of my computer, entirely intent on writing something, as I usually do on vacation because I just love to write. I realized about ten minutes in that I didn’t want to write. I forced myself to anyway, because what is vacation for if not having time to get things done?

And after I had finished I looked at it. Why? Why was I forcing myself to work? Yes, I got something done. Something that wouldn’t have gotten done otherwise. I had filled my head with idea that since I had written on vacation in the past, I should do it now. Because this was time I could spend writing …why wouldn’t I?

And I think we humans do this a lot. We convince ourselves that it’s not a good time to take a vacation. That there’s more that needs to be done! Right now! Can’t wait! I was able to turn something I generally enjoy into work. (I mean and it normally is work, but I was on vacation.)

The truth of the matter is yes. There is always going to be something to do. All. The. Time. That’s never going to go away. It’s important, I think, that when you do set aside time for yourself, whether it’s a whole vacation or just relaxing in the evening, that you don’t convince yourself somehow that you should be working. Take that time to relax. Yes, you could be getting something done, but relaxing is getting something done as well. It just doesn’t always feel like it. There is a time to get the job done and there is a time to sit back and relax, and you’re never going to relax unless you make that time for yourself.

Lack of Motivation

Laura Highcove 1 Comment

I have been suffering recently with a lack of motivation. Ever since I put the Huntsman in my hubby’s hands for an alpha read, I’ve been struggling to find another project that interests me as much. I was working on the rough drafts of two other novel ideas that sort of fizzled. I tried doing some prompts, but those ended up just flopping around and not feeling very effective. I also wrangled an idea for a short story where I tried to outline it before writing it, but I ended up with a story where none of the characters feel like characters.

There were brief moments for each of these that felt exciting. But it’s like the sparks that jump out from the fire. They burn brightly, and you wonder for a moment if they’ll really catch fire, but instead the light fades, leaving you with only a tiny sooty reminder that there was anything there at all.

This worries me. If I’m going to make a career at this, I should be able to sit down and write that needs to be written. What happens when I pitch a book idea to my eventual agent, and they get all excited about it, and then I get into this same situation where I can’t write it? What if more of my projects fizzle than catch fire?

Am I really getting better at this writing thing? Because I feel like my skill with actual writing may be growing, but at the same time I’m losing access to the things that used to come so easily. What good is it for me to be able to write a beautiful sentence, or have all my plot points in a row if I can’t come up with an interesting concept that can carry a book or a character that feels real?

I did, however, get the Huntsman back at the beginning of last week and I was finally able to sit down with my hubby and hammer out some plot points that should help with my muddled middle. I’m so still in love with this project, and though it still needs some serious work, I’m feeling much better about it.

I’ve also gone a long way toward accepting that writing a sequel really is that much harder than writing book one, so I’m feeling less bad about my ‘lack of progress’ on this book. It’s going to take however long it’s going to take, as annoying as that is, but I want this book. I want to keep following these characters and I want to know what happens.

It’s also the third week of the short story I’m publishing through my newsletter about a young Loki and a war between men and gods. If you’d like to read it, you can sign up here.

Still having doubts, still moving forward.

Starting the New Year Cold

Laura Highcove

Hello and Happy New Year! I do not have any New Year’s Resolutions to report. I am, however, very glad that we are out of this cold snap. I am continuing on in my writing journey in much the same fashion as last year in that I and evaluating what is and isn’t working every week or so and changing things up as needed.

And this week is no exception. A few weeks ago I saw a friend post about a time tracking program she was using to see how productive she is. I decided it might behoove me to check and see how productive I actually am, since I often don’t feel productive just because I don’t spend every waking moment on my writing.

So for the past two weeks I’ve been just (trying) to record my time I spent on what. Part of the problem was remembering to write down my start and end times. This was the time between (roughly) 2 and 5 pm Mon – Thurs and /shrug on weekends. My plan was to do my best to not change my habits and to just record what I was doing.

First week:

19.5 hours
33% of my time was spent on “writing” activities. Either writing, revision, or smoothing. Anything that is actual work on one of my stories.
44% of my time was spent on “Professional development” things, this includes my social media presence, stuff dealing with agents, and any books that I read.
23% was “other” which is cleaning my house, taking breaks, and playing video games.

Yeah, I was rather disappointed with myself, even though this was supposed to be a fact finding mission. So this past week I tried to focus a little more on doing more writing/professional development, even though I still didn’t give myself any hard-set goals.

Second week:

18.5 hours
62% Writing
27% ProDev
10% Other

Which I am much happier with. And now that I’ve seen the general shape of my working habits, now I’m ready to start setting some goals for myself.

I would like to have is 20 hours a week (a part time jobs’ worth) of time spent on Writing, Reading, and ProDev. Not that I won’t take breaks in my day, but overall time spent should be 20 hours a week. That should boil down to 3 hours a day Mon – Thurs and 3.5 each Sat and Sun. At least approximately. It’s also possible for me to make up time on the weekends, most of the time, but any travel or events will throw a wrench in that. I’ll just have to see how it goes.

Goals:

1) I’ll be done with my last polish of The Law of the Prince Charming before Sunday. It will then be sent to my hubby for his read-through. Once I incorporate anything he finds, it will sit around waiting for some lucky agent to request it.

2) I am doing a smoothing pass of the Huntsman with the new changed beginning. I want to have that done by the end of the month in order to send to alpha reader(s). The goal for this week is just to get through a chapter a day., which could either be easy or hard based on how much I have to rewrite.

New Challenge for December

Laura Highcove 1 Comment

The last two weeks have gone well. I finished up the revision pass of The Law of the Prince Charming, adding in the new plot lines I decided I needed after receiving feedback from an editor. That ended up going a lot more smoothly than I thought it would, and I’m happy with the way it ended up.

A side effect of this, however, sent the first 13k words of the Huntsman into the trash. This was both good and bad. It was good because it highlighted that a certain plot-line was superfluous and probably would’ve just confused things. I was also really having trouble with the end of that section and I’d just as rather not have to fix it. Losing the beginning of the Huntsman was bad because …well throwing away 13k words, and I actually really liked how it started the story. It gave legit reasons to explain what had happened in the last book without it just being the narrator telling the reader. I also loved a lot of the characterization I did with my main characters that, as a discovery writer, I’ll have to see if I can finesse into the new beginning.

And speaking of the new beginning, I was inspired by the DIY MFA Radio podcast to start trying to write every day. Not that I don’t, but I mean to actually write new prose every day. For some reason I assumed that if I was going to write new prose, it had to be as much as I possibly could manage in a day. And that would mean revising and working on my website would be left as daunting side projects. It was pointed out that even 100 words a day is 36.5k a year, nothing mind blowing, but I realized that it would be child’s play for me to write 500 words a day. That’s 30 min, 45 on a bad day. So I just make that a daily thing and that’s over 180k words a year.

As of right now I’m using that to rewrite the beginning of the Huntsman (the rest of the story was not much effected by the beginning being changed, which was part of the problem.) and I’ve also been throwing the occasional 500 words at a new story idea that’s been burning a hole in my brain. So for the most part, December is an experiment of whether I can polish a novel, write prose into a second novel that is on the edge of stepping out of rough draft status, and write prose toward a different project’s rough draft all that the same time. Sounds like a lot of fun doesn’t it? I know right!? So far I’m not having any trouble switching among them. My plan now is to see what happens and reevaluate at the end of the month.

Extra time to Write

Laura Highcove

Starting in September I now have my weekday afternoons to work on my writing. I knew it would be an extra four hours a day, but I don’t think I quite understood how much time that was when I made my plan the other week. Which is a good thing, because working through the fight scenes and the prose ended up taking longer than I expected.

It’s not that the work is harder than I thought it would be, just more tedious. The book is over 100k words. Even if all you’re doing is reading the book, that takes a while to get through. Though there is a certain sense of satisfaction in going through and fixing the ugly bits that I’ve been ignoring up until now. This novel is more complete than any other novel I’ve ever written, and it’ll only get more so. It’s very exciting.

I also did some looking into agents, which was a little intimidating. Partially because of the idea that I am actually going to start submitted before long, and partially because I realized I am going to have to write a synopsis. A synopsis is basically taking my book and boiling it down to two pages. Or one paragraph. I started working on it, just jotting down the main plot points and I already have way too much, and I’m only halfway through the book. I decided to put it aside until a little later.

For now I’m going to keep working like my plan is perfect and infallible. When October hits I’ll reevaluate where I am.