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Morning Pages Entry – April 15, 2014

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Well, this is a strange morning. Only two days ago the temperature was around 20+ degrees, it looked like we were firmly entrenched in spring finally, and today, I’m sitting here, watching the snow come down at 6:39am, and there is already at least an inch or two of the fluffy white stuff on the ground. That’s just crazy shit. This winter really doesn’t want to leave us. It’s the middle of April, and there is two inches of snow on the ground. Wow! I’m sure (pretty sure) it won’t last long, but I haven’t exactly checked a weather report yet either. Ah well. So, onto the more important things. I started editing my book yesterday. I’d say the first draft is pretty much done. I need to come up with a better connection between my new prologue and the original beginning, as well, I need to flesh out the ending a little better, but I figured that editing would be a good way to refresh in my brain the whole story again, and would help spark some ideas for both those pieces. It took me longer to edit yesterday then I thought it would. I only edited around 5-6000 words yesterday. Now, I didn’t do just editing yesterday. I was organizing some chapters a bit in the morning, and I did get a bit too distracted yesterday. Today, I will be more focused, and see if I can do the same thing with editing, that I did with writing. My 45 minutes focused, with 15 minutes break routine, and see how many words I can really get to. I really hope I can do much better. 20K words would be better per day for my first draft pass. I’m basically just checking for spelling, and wrong use of words, and awkardly worded sentences. I find, that I seem to overwrite sentences, and make them much longer then they need to be when I’m draft writing. I suppose one way to speed up the process, would be to stop doing that. Trying to make your writing tighter from the beginning would be better. Not sure if I can do that. But, maybe I will as I do more editing and tightening things up. It may just come naturally. I’d hate to give too much time to my inner critic during the first draft phase. I do need to do more of the spell checking early on though. No reason not to do that with my first draft writing. I started doing it last week, while I was using WriteMonkey. That will speed the editing up for sure. I know, there are a lot of spelling mistakes in the earlier pages that I wrote. The spell checker in yWriter, is solely lacking. So, that will get better. But, even at 20,000 words per day checking, which is almost a 100 pages, I thank that’s pretty ambitious, it will take me 5 days just to get through this first round of edits. I was hoping it would go quicker then that. Maybe, I do need to do the editing as I go along every day with the writing. So, if I’m writing 5000 words per day. Then, maybe you should do an initial pass of the 5000 words right after you’ve written them. Then, the next day before you start with new days writing, you do another pass over the words. It would be good after a nights sleep. Then you would have two good edit passes at the words. That should get the spelling pretty tight, and awkard and lengthy sentences should be pretty cleaned up. I’m a little unsure as to what edits to do after that. Maybe, use one of those software services, and run your scenes through that. I know, that those aren’t perfect, but I suspect they would catch a few things I wouldn’t. And, I would probably learn a few things about edit from them. Maybe, it would be worth reading a few good editing books on the topic. I believe there were some I had bookmarked that would come in handy. Will have to go through those. So, A final note here. I did end up playing Batman Arkham City last night, and I think it’s finally got me hooked. Sometimes, it takes a while for a game to get a hold of me, and Arkham City, was like that. At first, I wasn’t impressed, but it has a ton of good reviews, and I wanted to stick with it. Well yesterday, I started to see just how cool it was. It actually reminds me a bit of Infamous with it’s game play, which was a game I really liked. I truly should get that one speaker refoamed, as the sound is so much better then the TV speakers. Maybe I’ll just disconnect the bad speaker for the moment, and use just the good one till I order a kit.

TIGERBLOOD: some DAILYMOOD: unsure LOCATION: living room WORDSWRITTEN: edited 5808 PUSHUPS: 2:00 plank TODO: editing, laundry TV: Game of Thrones, Californication BOOK: none GAME: Batman Arkham City EXERCISE: none WEIGHT: 170 BREAKFAST: bacon & eggs LUNCH: big ass salad DINNER: spaghetti sauce SNACKS: orange, grapes, 2 lara coconut bars ALCOHOL: none BEDTIME: 11:30 AWAKE: 6:30

 

Morning Pages Entry – April 07, 2014

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Well, here we go, at the start of what should be a very interesting week. It’s like 6:40 in the morning, and I’m already typing my morning journal. I have to pick up the swim kids at the carling heights pool all the way across town, in about 45 minutes, which means I have to leave in about 25 minutes, but what’s really remarkable, is what I have in mind for the day. I plan on starting to write my 5000 words a day today. I have a plan of events for what needs to happen in the novel, and i’m going to the 45 minutes on and 15 minues off thing with a word goal of 1250 per session. I know I can hit that number easily if I know what I’m going to write about, and I get into the groove. It would be nice, if I could do it upstairs here in my living room on the laptop, as I’m noticably quicker up here, but we’ll see how it goes. It’s all about focus. If I can nail this process down this week, that would be fucking awesome. As to goal is to hit those numbers for 4 sessions, then basically fuck off for the rest of the day. To be able to work only till noonish on the thing (writing), that is absolutely core to my business. If I can get that sucker nailed, then it would practically impossible to fail. It would mean, that I’m knocking out 25K words per week, or the rough draft for a novel about every 2 to 3 weeks. I should be able to get that process smoothed out and perfected in a few months, which would certainly get me on track, to producing a novel every month, if not every 6 weeks, depending on how the editing and cover work takes. Plus, it puts me in position to have a lot more freed up time in after 12pm every day. To be honest, that’s the part that has me fucking stoked. It gives me the freedom in my life that I want, plus it allows me to get to all the other little things in my life, that I never seem to get to. Those things, that I procrastinate about all the time. Or, even the things that I don’t procrastinate about, but would love to do, just because they would be fun, like learn to play the guitar, or do something cool with the boat, or whatever. The things that make life worth living. What’s also sort of cool about this morning, is that I’ve gotten up at a better waking time. I actually set my alarm for 6:30, so I could get up before Karen and the kids. That’s better, as I don’t have to lie in bed, and listen to their frigging banging around the house while I’m still sleeping. I of course went to bed a bit earlier at 10:45, which wasn’t too tough, cause we were up early for a swim meet yesterday. I actually woke up around 5:20 this morning thinking it was time for me to get up, but finally convinced myself to go back to sleep for another hour or so. And, the cool thing here, is I’m not even tired, quite to the contrary, I think I may have a bit of Tiger Blood flowing through the veins. Which has all come about of course, because I’ve been eating super clean like a trooper these days, and have energy to burn. I’ve been walking more then playing squash, which is actually better for me likely, as I’m not wrecking my self tearing around a squash court, and twisting all my joints every which way I shouldn’t. All in all, this morning so far, I’ve got things clicking on all 12 cylinders. I like thinking about 12 cylinders driving me, just because, that’s what would drive a corvette. Just imagine, if you can pull all this shit off, and write a 75K word novel every month, just how successful you would be. Especially in a popular genre like the one your currently pursuing. That would be so goddamn cool. A good novel every month, so by this time next year, you’ll have such a positive cash flow, that money will no longer be a thought in your life. You’ll be doing something you enjoy, because you’ll be better at writing, and you’ll understand how the process works. You will be a complete person, fully in control of your life and how you spend the time in hand. For the first time ever.

TIGERBLOOD: yes DAILYMOOD: happy LOCATION: living room WORDSWRITTEN: 0 PUSHUPS: 2:00 plank TODO: write like a muther TV: farscape, improv documentary, squash game BOOK: none GAME: none EXERCISE: none WEIGHT: 173 BREAKFAST: bacon & eggs LUNCH: big ass salad DINNER: none SNACKS: orange ALCOHOL: none BEDTIME: 10:45 AWAKE: 6:30

 

Morning Pages Entry – April 05, 2014

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Yesterday, was sort of exciting, as I think, I came up with a new process for writing my stuff. I’m going to do the pomodoro method, which basically involves writing for a given period of time, then take another smaller period of time as a break from the task. The idea being of course, that you totally focus on the task for the work period and nothing else. It’s the only thing that you do. For me, that is going to be writing, and I’m using slightly different time periods then the official method, but that’s OK I think. I’m going to use the WriteMonkey software I have to do the writing. It’s nice and distraction free software for the focused part of the writing, plus it has a built in count down timer, which I will set to 45 minutes. It also has a word target goal that you can set for a session, which I will set to 1250 words. The reason for that word count, is that I’m looked to do 5000 words before lunch. If I start the writing at eight am, and do four sessions of 45 mintues, followed by 15 minute breaks, then I can hit my daily word goal of 5000 words before lunch. I think, the big key to success with all of this, apart from the obvious of being focused on the task at hand, is to know what your going to write ahead of time. So, the goal will be to every weekend, spend probably an hour or two, making sure I have enough stuff plotted out to get me through the writing of the week. I suspect, that at the end of each writing session, it would make sense to leave a few writing prompts for the next session/day as well. And, the biggest most exciting part of all this for me, the proverbial carrot, that I will be striving for, is that once I hit my 5000 words at 12 noon, then that’s it, I’m done for the day. No more frigging work. I can do ,whatever else I feel like. I can watch tv, play games, go for a walk, play squash, learn to play guitar, work on the boat, surf the net, or just about anything else my heart desires. I’m basically free to be free. That’s frigging amazing in my books. To have a huge sense of accomplishment with the work I’ve done before done, and basically to just fuck off and do whatever the hell I want after that. Or, even, to put to rest those nagging little things, that I never seem to have time to do, because I’m always worrying about work shit, and never getting enough none of work shit. So, yes, I think the idea of doing what ever the hell I want all afternoon and evening guilt free is very enticing, I also think, the idea of being to catch up on other tedious to-do shit from life is pretty cool as well. I’m thinking, this will not only get my work done, and really start making some money, but I will be a much happier person overall. And, I should make a tonne of money in the process. If (when) I start cranking out 5000 words a day, I will be publishing a lot of books. Definitely a book every month. For sure. If I can do that for a year, I should be not only a much better writer, but also a much richer writer. That’s exciting as well. Rich and happy, that’s what we’re going for here, and the key to it is generating a lot of interesting stories. Which of course is a lot of words. Anyone that can crank out 5000 interesting words a day, will be successful. Especially, if they can get it done before noon. Which in my case, will likely be before breakfast. I’m really looking forward to this. It could be bigger then anything else I’ve ever done. Once it get’s to a consistent money making state, it has more potential than any of my other business plans to not only give me a lot of cash, but also, a lot of freedom as well. None of the other plans really allowed me much freedom in the end. But, this does allow me the freedom to take time to myself once the ball gets rolling. And, that, is really the end game that I’ve always been moving towards, since I began this adventure.

TIGERBLOOD: yes DAILYMOOD: happy LOCATION: home office WORDSWRITTEN: 2800 PUSHUPS: 2:00 plank TODO: read, show Mark the home theatre, get a movie TV: supernatural BOOK: Descent Series by RM Seine GAME: none EXERCISE: none WEIGHT: 173 BREAKFAST: bacon & eggs LUNCH: big ass salad DINNER: none SNACKS: orange, grapes ALCOHOL: none BEDTIME: 12:00 AWAKE: 5:00 and 8:30