Time management

You make a good point, it may have to do with the Genre, Like how you are suppose to watch horror movies at night and in a dark room. . Which I still can't do. I watched Wes Craven's New Nightmare during the day. LOL.

I do agree about Hour/Genre dynamic though I usually create through out the day, and even sometimes while getting into bed I will have an idea, and it is impossible to go to sleep if I do not write it down. .

 

Lately, never o'clock.

 

If I had the time to be strictly regimented, I would probably write in the morning. Most times of day work for me if I'm writing something I know is good. My worst time would be early afternoon, I think.

 

During the day when I'm alone. It's hard to write with someone else in the house... such a tiny house.

 

I'm late in asking this question, and I think I must have missed your post. I really want to know your secret to reading so many books because I have been trying to increase the time I spend reading in a more productive way. I would love to read more books in a short time period. You said that you read about two to five books a week. Wow! I think that's awesome. I can read a book in a week but not five. I was wondering if you have some kind of system or are you just a fast reader? I usually spend around two hours and about six days a week reading. If I double that time, I could probably finish with reading two books.

 

All depends on where my head is. If I'm reading it's usually because I'm writing. When this is so I probably spend an hour last thing each night reading.

Writing, as and when I feel like it - which even when I have the urge probably amounts to about ten minutes on the days I feel like it.

When I don't have the urge, however, I don't read or write at all. This can, and does, go on for months, even years at a time.

 

I don't think I'm a particularly fast reader, I just spend about 6 hours a day reading wherever I can squeeze in the time. It's just a habit picked up in school and reinforced in university. Now it feels kind of weird if I'm not reading something all of the time. I don't watch much TV and I was only just able to get internet in my own place last year, so those don't really fight for my attention very much. I also used to work graveyard as a taxi driver, so I would frequently have time for a few pages in the wee hours. And I don't have any kids, so plenty of time there that a lot of people don't have easy access to.

 

I read about 2 - 3 books a week if they're good and not absolute tomes. And I have a similar situation as The Dapper Hooligan, in that I have no kids and read any chance I get. As soon as I got the e-reader, I started devouring Amazon and Google books. Kindle Unlimited is fantastic. I always have a dozen or so in my queue. Good books, not-so-good books - they all teach you something. That's my pleasure reading.

Then, because of the nature of my current project, I spend a ridiculous amount of time researching. How did the Phoenicans get their purple dye? How did the Romans handle executions of POWs? And so on. Always trying to bring more life to my historic narratives and always some off-the-wall question that needs answering. My Google analytics are probably being studied by Homeland Security by now.

As for writing, I tell myself every day, but I never quite manage that. I probably write between 2 and 4 hours 5 days a week since I restarted drafting a few months ago. Occasionally I will be on a roll and manage to write for 10 hours. That's rare.

I wouldn't be able to do this if it weren't for my very supportive husband paying bills and tolerating all the projects around the farm that have gone fallow. Also, I have some chronic illnesses that put a succinct end to my previous way of life and before I spiraled too far into depression over it, I realized that I finally had the golden opportunity to really focus on writing. So that is what I'm doing.

 

^This

 

I'm a fairly fast writer and get tired of all the "churning out" lines that are thrown around, so maybe this is partly defensive, but mostly I think I'm just curious... what the hell is taking people so long to write?

Is it just a question of not sitting down and doing the writing? Either getting busy with something else or procrastinating (writing boards, anyone?)?

Or are you putting the time in and still it takes a really long time?

Like, by my calculations, even if you're a super-slow writer, say 250 words an hour, if you spend an hour a day on writing, you'd have a novel-length draft in less than a year.

I can't imagine that most of us write that slowly? Do we? Or are people writing first drafts but then spending forever on re-writing, editing, etc?

Or to look at it another way... if we assume that professional writers are probably able to write at least 1K per hour (that's only 17 words a minute!) and can write for 2 hours a day, 5 days a week (with the rest of their time spent on editing, promo, etc.) then that works out to 6.25 books a year (2hrs/day x 1000 words/hr x 5 days x 50 weeks / 80K words per book), but we're shocked at the idea that a writer could produce that much and start talking about "churning out" or whatever.

Why is it shocking? Where do people see the obstacles arising? Is it hard to imagine having that many original ideas? (Probably not - most of us talk about our long lists of "plot bunnies" or ideas waiting to be written). Is it the numbers themselves people see as unrealistic? It's surprising to think of someone writing 1K per hour, or 2 hrs per day, or...?

What's slowing people on this forum down, or, alternatively, why are people surprised by other writers who write more quickly?

 

Sometimes I can't get the tone of the story right and it slows me up considerably.

Also, if a scene/chapter I've thought of is rather weak in concept when I start writing, it shows. Things read forced, and I'll stop and consider what different direction to take things before continuing.

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I could blame the fact that I write in meter as a major slow down, but even if it takes me 2x as long, I still should be able to get 1000 words per night, and right now I am hovering around 400 words.

 

So when you "stop and consider" does that mean sitting at the computer and figuring out possibilities, or does it mean fully stopping, walking away, not writing any more that session? Does it mean walking away for days? (Sorry if this feels like an interrogation... I'm trying to picture it in my mind!)

ETA: And do you anticipate your verse novel being standard novel-length? I've only read a few novels in verse, but I feel like they were shorter than 80K words... maybe.

 

I can only speak for myself. I'm a super slow writer. Before I sit down and start writing, I spend hours, days, sometimes weeks or even longer, deciding on a specific course of action. I read blogs/articles/books for research to be able to judge exactly how I want a specific problem to come together. I take ages to make something resonate.

When I sit down and actually write, I am, maybe not the fastest, but I've been known to chunk out 1k in half an hour. Of course, disregard the editing afterwards that cuts that word count by one 5/6th. Sometimes when I know what I'm gonna write but the scene is challenging, I write sentence by sentence, maybe 600 an hour. Depends on the challenge. I don't equate writing quick with writing well, though nothing says that it's impossible for the quality to be remarkable.

But my goal is not to write professionally. I just want to tell one good story I'm still in the learning stage. Everything else I'll consider afterwards.

ETA: And when a specific scene is not 'right', doesn't resonate, I am literally unable to keep writing. The words won't come. I might get a few hundred words in, but that's it.

 

I'll walk away and go to dinner. A lot of my ah-huh-moments come when I am not sitting at my computer. I don't walk away for days, I usually write something every day. I think the best way to describe my problem is that I get bored with my idea (meaning it's not a good idea) and I try to find a better, more exciting idea for a chapter or scene.

I'll give a example.

In my current WIP, in the second chapter, the MC gets lost in a fog while being chased by some dogs. But I grew tired of writing it quickly because, how many times can I write "She sees the dogs and runs." It took forever to write the scene.

I recently changed the idea of her being lost in the fog to where she hears a variety of different sounds (Howling, Chains being dragged, singing, screaming, the sound of a hammer hitting steel etc.) instead of being chased. It is now a fun chapter to write because I can't wait to get to the point where the MC sees what the source of the sound is.

 

Sorry, I missed this question, I am aiming for 20-25k.

 

I'm not a professional writer. I have a day job with a commute full of just-outside-the-city traffic. I get roughly 6 or so hours a day to myself, which includes eating, showering, laundry, and all my hobbies. I have a few of them, and I try to work on projects in each of them every day if I can. I usually have a game I'm playing, a book or two I'm reading, a song I'm composing, and my creative writing. Sometimes I can't get to everything in a day (some days I go to the parents' house, some days I go out for a drink with friends, etc). Only so many hours in a day, and I almost always go to bed without having accomplished everything I wanted to that day. So some things just have to take priority, and that priority changes all the time.

I think it's all about momentum for me. When I'm between projects, it's hard to keep the momentum going. But when I have a good groove, I can do a thousand words a day most days. I can finish a first draft in a few months. But that requires a lot of focus on the creative writing, and one or two of the other hobbies have to fall off for a while. And vice-versa. When I was working on writing and recording a new album, I barely wrote any prose at all.

I'm sure there's some level of procrastination, but if I'm not writing my novel/short stories, I'm involved in one of my other hobbies. I have been more productive lately, but until I get a firm routine down it'll still be spotty. And traffic's been getting worse lately, so my commute's been eating into my after-work downtime.

Now, as far as editing goes, that's definitely procrastination. Once the first draft is done, I tend to move on to a new project, whether writing or something else, and it's hard to go back. That one's totally on me for lack of discipline.

 

My writing partner is in charge of first drafts. I "churn out" the final draft that we eventually send to our editor. And when I say, "churn", I mean churning cream to make butter. That'd be, very slowly. The process is wonderfully unconventional. She stays one chapter ahead of me, sometimes two, and we don't move forward until we both agree it's ready for the editor's axe.
Writing historical fiction isn't easy. You should see the pile of classic literature I have on my desk for reference!
If at the end of a long day of writing (12 hours) I've two pages (1,000 words or there about) to show for it, well, I'm quite satisfied with myself. As long as I'm happy with the output it usually doesn't matter so much how long it takes.



This took the better part of a day. It was a good day.
__________________________________________________________________________________

Troubled thoughts flitted in Rosemarie’s head; Valerie’s sudden arrival under the fog of secrecy was peculiar. There was no mistaking that. Was Valerie still in danger? If so, then why return now? And of all places, why here, and on a night no less when all of Paris was attending the theatre?

Rosemarie stood at the top of the stairs on the landing opposite two garishly painted doors. She knew to knock first, but with arms full of boxes stacked so high that she could scarcely see her way, and harried seamstresses bumping by her, she dispensed with the cords of etiquette and backed into the fitting room unannounced, promptly caught her heel on the rug, and tumbled into the room.

“Rose!” came a cheerful voice. A young woman — her face painted porcelain white, cheeks caked with rouge — was, save a garland of flowers around her waist, unabashedly naked.

Rosemarie sprang to her feet, straightened her dress, and presented herself to the naked woman standing on a footstool.

“Valerie!” Rosemarie sang out.

“Young lady, have you ever considered knocking first?” mumbled Hugo the tailor, his mouth full of pins.

“You know I would if my hands weren’t busy! I’m so sorry, Valerie. I don’t think anyone saw...” Rosemarie shut the doors behind her and entered the brightly lit apartment. An enormous oak table strewn with the instruments of the tailor’s trade took up the center of the room, on the far corner of which sat an elaborate birdcage, home to the second floor’s most thieving and untidy resident, an acquisitive black and white magpie that welcomed each visitor with the aplomb of a Bombay pickpocket. Rows of lavish fabrics and racks of costumes lined the facing walls. On the back wall, spanning the entire breadth of the room, was painted the most remarkable trompe l’oeil; it was of a sun-dappled forest clearing, where a sisterhood of muses frolicked amongst the ruins of a Roman garden. So absolute was the illusion that one might step into the mural and be inexplicably banished from the natural world. But all Rosemarie saw was her friend standing, statuesque and unashamed and returned to her so unexpectedly. It was as though one of the muses had broken free of the bonds of pigment and brush strokes to sojourn in the musk of flesh and bone.

___________________________________________________________________________________

 

When I was working on LAFS, I put in 2-4k every day, most days. A couple times I only did a couple hundred or didn't write at all. Then I stalled out for about a week of no writing at all because I was close to the end and didn't know how to wrap things up, so I had to figure it out (and also quell my anxieties about the whole thing). And then the first draft was done, 95k in just about four weeks total.

It's not done-done because I need to do a lot of editing, and editing is way easier to procrastinate on - it's harder and not as much fun for me. (I've also had personal / rl stuff come up like losing my job and laptop and dealing with health and family issues, which is always going to be an aspect as long as I have this body and family ) I didn't edit while I was writing; that was the churning out phase. So the writing went pretty fast, and it's other stuff that's taken a while.

That said, in the actual writing ~process, I do tend to get distracted a fair bit. I stare off into space, I check social media, I play with my cat. It can be tough to get myself in the right mindset and focus up. That's why I set myself daily goals. No going to bed until the chapter's finished - so you should probably get started on it before 2AM.

 

It honestly took me 5 years, from the start to the finish of my first draft, to finish my first novel—1996-2001. And I worked on it for hours, every single day, unless something major prevented me. I hated not having a chance to write, and was always keen to get back to it. I even hated going on holiday, back in the day before I had a laptop, because I had to stop writing for 2 weeks. Writer's block was not a problem at all. Nor was social media, which hadn't been invented yet.

The novel (at that stage) was 312,000 words, and needed heavy editing and lots of work to get it down to its present 206,000 words and finished state. But I was so motivated. I went to bed at night, thinking about my story, and woke up in the morning thinking about my story. It was always in my head. I used to work out scenes, plot twists, even dialogue while I was walking to work, and carried a notebook to scribble the ideas down. I was totally committed to that book.

Ever since then, I've more or less stopped writing. I started my second novel a couple of years ago and have four chapters written, but I lost the urge to write at all for a while. Research takes up time, as does editing and tweaking the first novel. (I'm still tweaking one chapter.) But that's not it. I'm just getting distracted by too many other things. And I find that when I have spare time, I don't think about my story much at all, but about lots of other things instead.

I wonder if maybe I'm doing too many other things with the same kind of energy. I'm writing constantly to friends, swathes of online comments and posts, mega beta reading projects and detailed feedback and critiques. That's all writing. And I find myself thinking more about other people's stories than I do my own, working on their story problems, thinking about their characters. I'm trying to find a way to turn that around. (Like saying No to any more beta reading, for a start?)

Of course I was never trying to make a career out of writing. And perhaps I'm one of those people who really only has one, or possibly two novels in me. I am only motivated to work on these two stories, which are actually connected. I don't go around looking for other story ideas at all. I guess I'm a one-trick pony, but I'd like to think it's a pretty good trick!

 

I am probably not, generally speaking, what you're thinking of when you think of a "slow" writer, but I do have slow periods like some people have described above.

They are intentional.

My day job is demanding and I have other responsibilities outside work, so I don't necessarily have the time I need to think, actively, about my story. One of the most influential things I've ever read was "The Eureka Factor," an essay by Isaac "We Don't Need No Stinking Badges" Asimov. (I'm sure I don't need to tell you how he got his nickname; his reputation speaks for itself.) He pointed out that the human brain does a lot of its work behind the scenes, under the covers, between the sheets, in the can, while singing in the shower, etc.: if you occupy your conscious mind with something non-taxing, then your unconscious mind will continue to chew on a thorny problem so long as you keep it primed, occasionally, with focus and conscious thought on the problem.

Specifically, he suggested going to see an Arnold or Stallone flick whenever you get stuck. Obviously those don't come out twice a week anymore, so you might need to branch out into the Fast and Furious franchise or something.

If I finish a scene, I will pretty much always have a plan for the next scene, but that doesn't mean I know exactly how I should write it. When I don't know, or I don't even know what the scene is meant to accomplish, I set the manuscript aside for two or three days. In the evening, instead of writing, I'll pull out a game like From the Depths and maybe build a battleship, or I'll take an evening and hang out with friends. The objective is to be refreshed when I come back to the work, and to have magically discovered what comes next.

That sounds really stupid. Thing is, it works.

 

That was it for me, before the Highly Flavored Novel whatsit. Was it totally obvious, by the way, that your kicking me to write is what kicked me to figure out why the bleep I wasn't writing and thus triggered the HFN? Thank you. Very much so.

So around the time of the start of the HFN, I put a bazillion other hobbies aside, except for the garden, which I put on starvation maintenance, because a garden that's put totally aside dies. So that made more time. But time wasn't really the main issue. Failing to sit down and write in the time that I already had was the main issue.

This is it now. Not that I'm not making progress, but it's probably a-novel-in-two-to-three-years progress. (My goal is first draft by April 2018. But there will be More Drafts.)

Yep.

I'm writing first drafts of scenes and spending forever on re-writing, editing, etc. And then there's a good chance (about fifty percent, maybe more) that that scene is going to land in the scrap heap.

But I'm not going to break that habit until the HFN has a complete first draft--unless that habit grows to the point that I look to be stretching way past that first draft goal. That habit, I've realized, is the second part of the HFN method--a scene has to reach a certain level of polish for me to get the brain "zing" that is at the core of that method. So it's not productive on a task level, but it is productive in the sense that without it, I just wouldn't write.

And right now, dealing with a work burnout situation, I especially don't want writing to be associated with the big pool of brain-intensive things that I'm forcing myself to do against resistance. If I don't solve the burnout problem, a lot of skills, I think, are going to go down with that ship, and I want writing in its own little happy lifeboat before that happens.

Later, I might be able to write with less frequent fixes of zing, and so I might be able to write faster. But I'm not messing with it yet.

This is part of it for me. I have ideas, but I struggle to make those ideas coalesce into a plot. So if I did write a lot faster, the writing would just outpace the plotting even more than it already does. That's something to work on.

 

It could be said I'm a slow writer, but the problem is not that I write slowly, but it takes me quite a lot of time to sit down and start. I am one of those writers who need to feel perfectly confident before they start working, and it also does not help that I'm easily distracted. I have had a novel I worked on for 6+ years and never really finished it, because I eventually realized I lost all enthusiasm for it and did not see any potential in it. At other times, I find myself surprised how quickly I am able to finish a chapter, as their is always an idea inside my head that every word I write is a kind of bonus.

Saying all that, my biggest problem by far was to establish a regular writing schedule. Now I manage to write between 1-15k a day, which is a significant improvement. All-in-all, I would not call myself a slow writer, but a lazy one.