I’m already off to a late start today, which annoys me. I spent much too much time awake at 3AM, pondering the vagaries of ebook formatting.

A while back, I got impressed with the quality of ebooks Amazon was turning out and decided it was time to move from simplicity as a deliberate design decision to something a little more creative. I worked on A Lonely Magic and spent a solid couple of days figuring out how to reformat it, how to use flourishes under my chapter titles and for my section breaks, how to start a new chapter with an indented line, how to center text so it stays centered on ibooks, etc. I finished, sent it to a couple of people to check, and declared myself satisfied. But frustrated. I’d had to give up on embedding fonts–the technology is just not there yet–so I’d wasted a lot of time. Still, done was done.

On Monday, I reformatted Ghosts the same way. I finished, after spending more hours on it than I wanted to, declared myself satisfied, and tried to upload it. Nope. Tried again. Nope. Got it working on Amazon finally, gave up on the other sites. I hadn’t intended to waste so much of the day on a project I thought I’d mastered, but it didn’t work. I figured I’d try again later when I wasn’t so tired of it.

I tried again yesterday and it turns out my file does not validate. My file very, very, very much does not validate. Hours of research later, and I still have no idea why. But the internet consensus sort of seems to be “give up and start over from a clean file.” ARGH!

Writing yesterday did include one long stretch of words, a solid block that got me over 300 of the little pests. It also included more after that, some solid thinking time, and a plan for where I’m going next, but no execution of the plan. And, unfortunately, the day also lost a lot of time to formatting. Today I expect is going to be about the same. Goal: one long writing stretch that gets me at least a few hundred words and moves Fen to the damn Great Council meeting where I’ve wanted to get her for days, maybe weeks. After that, work on the formatting until my brain hurts, and then maybe back to the writing again.

But I won’t even get it started until after 9, because it’s already after 8, and the poor dogs don’t understand where their walk and breakfast has gone. I can’t explain to them that it was lost to the useless middle of the night hours spent pondering stupid formatting issues.

I did not manage a single writing sprint yesterday. Not one! Nor did I get my 1000 words done. I did write about 200, in bits and pieces, a sentence here and a sentence there. I also met with the flooring people, worked on picking out a new floor, scheduled car maintenance, went grocery shopping, made meatloaf and mashed cauliflower and asparagus for dinner, did a bunch of back-and-forth on new covers, plus about a half-dozen other things that have been needing to be done, so it wasn’t a wasted day by any means. But it wasn’t a day that included a single sustained writing burst. Something else always wound up taking priority.

I’m looking ahead into today and I already know a bunch of other things are going to be interrupting me. But I also know that’s no way to create a career as a writer. Writing has to become my priority–the first job done, the most important thing on my list–not the thing that I try to squeeze in around the edges of the rest of my day. That said, I’ve got a lot of things that I want to get done today, from figuring out why my Ghosts file isn’t working the way it ought to and uploading it to the smaller sites, to measuring rooms for the flooring, to working on the formatting of A Gift of Time, to yoga… yeah, there’s a lot I’d like to get done today.

I think my goal is one sustained writing sprint, offline, of at least 45 minutes with as many words as that gets me, and ideally breaking through my indecision about the current scene that I’m in and getting into the next scene. I don’t care how many words that takes me as long as tomorrow the story has moved to the Great Council. And now I’ll think about that while I walk the dogs and get the day officially started.

Russell Blake has a great blog post of tips for writing efficiently. I liked it so much that I actually took the rules that were most meaningful to me and turned them into a sticky post on my desktop so that I would see them every morning when I started up the computer.

How come I learned to ignore them so easily?

Yesterday’s word count was negative. I let myself get sucked into editing the words I’d already written–a mistake that Blake describes as “trying to run a marathon carrying an anvil” and never moved beyond it.

That said, I did a lot of other useful stuff yesterday. I finally called a floor company and made an appointment to have someone come give me an estimate; I paid some bills that had been lurking and were over-due; I re-formatted A Gift of Ghosts with its new cover and managed to get it uploaded to Amazon with more technical difficulties than made any sense whatsoever; I managed to finish all the laundry, including folding and putting away. I even changed the sheets on the bed. Today, though, I’m starting with words. I’m going to try writing sprints with internet disconnect, so 45 minute periods where the only thing I let myself do is stare at the open file and type new words into it. The goal: 1000 words. The ambition: to take 2 or 3 sprints to do it, not 10.

The Epcot Food & Wine Festival was wonderful. Crowded, but not so crowded that it was unbearable. Hot, but in the way that ducking inside air-conditioning for five minutes every twenty minutes or so worked to cool us off enough to keep enjoying it. I ate smoked salmon on potato pancakes and a seared scallop from Scotland, fried tostones from Puerto Rice, a grilled lamb chop with mint pesto from Australia, Brazilian cheese bread (gluten-free!), tilapia and pork belly, also from Brazil, an apple maple spiced latte, and venison sausage from New Zealand–probably my favorite, but Scotland was pretty yummy, too. R loved the pork belly, he was scraping the plate on that one. For dessert, warm chocolate pudding from Ireland, and a couple bites of sea salt caramel creme brulee from France. And, yay me, managed to write 100 words, too.

Yesterday, though, was family stuff, and I was gone all day. I opened up my computer when I finally got home around five, but Shanghai called my name. I don’t think I even managed to open up the file. But I was tired, so the words probably wouldn’t have been much good anyway.

Repercussions of the weekend–I ate a lot of food I shouldn’t have. Dairy and eggs, chocolate, wine, nightshades, even some gluten. I’m not going to be ambitious for today, because I’m not optimistic about how I’m feeling. But I am going to aim for 500 words and at least one of the many tasks I need to take care of. Top of the list: reformatting A Gift of Ghosts to post a new edition (new cover!) sometime this week.

91 words yesterday. At a few points, my word count was higher, but it kept going lower in the end. Oops.

That said, I loved my choices yesterday. Yes, I should have been writing, but I went swimming instead. The water was cold. I’m usually much too wimpy to go in when swimming is a shock of sensation instead of a pleasant glide, but the sun was hot, the dogs wanted to play… I probably spent at least an hour in the pool. Zelda was having such a good time with her basketballs and Bartleby loved the water. He swam, he splashed, he exited and ran like crazy around the pool. He acted like a puppy instead of the little old man he usually is. It was a glorious afternoon.

After I changed, I was resolved to write. Write, write, write… but R came home earlier than expected from his trip to Stetson and instead we watched Orphan Black together. No regrets, not a one. Then he borrowed my computer so he could watch an online show and then… time just zoomed by. I grilled red snapper for dinner and ate outside, with the tabletop torch lit and the butterfly lights glittering in the cool night, and I thought about writing more, but it never happened.

If I was a competent Russell Blake style writer (Rule #3, Hit your daily word count no matter what!) I’d be making plans for today to be better. Must catch up. Must write all the words! Instead, I’m headed to Epcot’s Food & Wine Festival, and I’m pretty confidently expecting my word count for today to be… well, zero. But I have thirty minutes before we leave, so maybe I’ll see if I can make that at least something more like 25.

Goal for today: 25 words. Ideally, ones that I don’t just delete tomorrow morning.

Not literally, but wow, it was over a month since I last posted. Way to keep track of the word count, self!

It was a weird month. I spent about three weeks of it feeling sick enough that all I wanted to do was lie in bed and mope. Not so sick that I felt the need to rush to the doctor but just sick enough that I didn’t have the energy to get up and do anything. Lots of coughing, lots of congestion, lots of exhaustion. Maybe it was allergies or side effects of my allergy drugs. Maybe depression or some issue with my nutritional balance from this crazy diet. Maybe the flu or an infection, or maybe some combination of all of the above. But it wasn’t a productive month.

By the end of it, I seriously considered abandoning all social media, including blogging. Well, not my main blog. That one has come and gone for years now, and although I might fall silent on it for months at a time, it’s got 8+ years of my life stored there, so I’m not likely to leave it forever. But my goals of regular blogging seemed as unobtainable and as ridiculously ambitious as… oh, I don’t know. Writing an NYTimes bestseller. Equally unlikely.

Fortunately, I’ve been making a slow climb back into feeling healthy. And yes, that means I am inspired to get back to my writing push, including trying to make daily updates here, if only to track my word count goals and get my fingers moving. So today’s achievement: well, actually, I put a load of laundry in, which is totally counting as my achievement. But I’ve also updated two blogs and I’m going to write at least 500 words of Fen’s Adventures in Syl Var. Maybe more.

Off I go to achieve it.

Word count, yesterday: zero.

Word count this week: trivial.

I’ve done lots of other stuff–yoga and lots of cooking and some errand running, meal planning, reading–I read TWO books yesterday–redesigning web sites and reformatting books, but I just cannot seem to get into the word flowing stage. I don’t even know why.

But it’s a beautiful September day, and on a day much like this thirteen years ago, thousands of people died and the world spun into a different place. And so I’m not going to beat myself up. I’m going to appreciate my life and my time & I’m going to swim & play with my dogs. I will write, too, but I’m not going to lose the beauty of the day staring at an open document on my computer screen.

Last year I asked R what he remembered from 9/11 and he remembered nothing. It pleased me, because I tried very hard to shelter him from it at the time. But it is still strange to think that there are teenagers alive now who weren’t even born when the towers fell.

I spent all of yesterday–literally, the entire day, working until past 8PM–trying out new formatting on my books. In the past, I’ve tried to stick with super-simple, super-clean formatting. Nothing special, nothing complicated, just the words, with a working table of contents and the most basic of styles attached to chapter headings. I knew enough about html formatting and device compatibility to realize that trying to force design onto an ebook was likely to be more frustration than it was worth.

Yesterday, I fell into that frustration trap. I’m not sure whether it was worth it or not. I guess I’ll see. But I spent hours trying to embed fonts and that part is definitely a no-go. Anyway, my efforts were mostly because Amazon has been producing such pretty ebooks lately. It made me think it was time to try. I definitely managed to level up my skills–my CSS book stylesheet is quite lovely now and if I could embed fonts, the way I did some decorative elements would rock. And although I didn’t succeed in what I was trying to do, I do have nicer formatting on at least two books now, so that’s something.

Today I was determined to write and I definitely got some done. Not 1000 words, though. Maybe 400? I’m trying very hard to get into the rhythm, but I’m still at the drifting off to research interesting ideas stage & very definitely the “but I don’t know what happens next” stage. I’ve got some big ideas for this book, but they’re not translating into how I move the characters from the place they’re at to the next place, though. At any rate, I reminded myself tonight (it’s currently 10:26 and I should be going to sleep) that last year, working out my issues on this blog got me moving again–the write push, ha. So I’m going to be trying that again. And these words make another few hundred to add to my daily quota.

Tomorrow: Fen will take some sort of proactive action. Enough wheel spinning. It’s time to go places!

It’s been an off weekend. Although useful in ways like organizing the tea cupboard. (Why, yes, I do have an entire cupboard devoted to tea. Doesn’t everyone?) Also grocery shopping and hanging out with dogs and cooking crazy food, and yes, yuca root does actually make a pretty good pasta-style dough. I’m going to try it with some type of Chinese dumplings next time–maybe shrimp and spring onion?

Ahem, but none of that was why I’m here. This blog post by Patricia Wrede, Recruiting Extras, is so darn useful for writers that if you’re reading this (and you’re a writer, but then probably you are, else why would you be here?), you should go read that immediately, instead. It is packed with good ideas about writing crowd scenes–such good ideas that I want to write a crowd scene just to use them! Oh, wait–I am writing a crowd scene. Well, ha, perhaps my banquet just got a lot more interesting. Someday I will finish this banquet scene, I’m sure of it.

I’m equally sure that today will not be the day.

Goal for today: a healthy dinner, happy dogs, some Doctor Who, and a big win on Covet.

Goal for tomorrow: to stop acting like my life is a weekend. And write 1000 words!