Week of Feb 2, 2015: Week 2 of data collection

Now entering week 2 of data collection. Last week I spent 6:15 writing and wrote 1707 words. This week I'm up to 10:10 writing, and wrote 2404 words. My WPH is going down, but at least I'm getting more on the page overall. It's a far cry from my 4403 words per week goal, but I'm getting there.

I have the day off of my full-time job on Tuesday and rather than going on a date with my husband I'm going to spend half the day working on lectures, and the other half on writing. I'm 3388 words behind and have to catch up! The red numbers on my spreadsheet really scream how far I'm getting behind, and it's certainly driving me to write and get back in the green. Maybe I'll reward myself with a movie date once I'm back on track, heh.

Finding time to write: Blocking internet access at certain times of day in linux (and making it a recurring task)

Yet another productivity post. My switch to 3 days/week at the full-time job happened this week, but I had to use Tues/Thurs to do lecture prep as I was hired as a last-minute emergency replacement (teaching is my part-time job). My writing time will be less than optimal for the next 2 weeks until I finish all the lectures (or at least catch up a bit), but I did find myself with some spare time tonight around 9pm when the kids were in bed. I figured I'd get in a good 1.5 hours or so, but I wasted the time. Sigh. Warning: the rest of this post might be boring for Windows/Mac users, but if you run Linux, it may be helpful:

I run Linux Mint on my desktop and laptop, and for the last few months I used a modified hosts file to prevent myself from accessing distracting sites on my desktop computer. This is fairly simple. Just type:

sudo gedit /etc/hosts

Then add the following to the end of the file:

0.0.0.0 www.facebook.com

0.0.0.0 www.upworthy.com

Etc. When you try to access the site, it won't be able to connect. This worked fine for awhile, but then I would do google searches and just get lost on other sites (like I did tonight). Sure, I'm reading and learning, but I really didn't need to learn tonight; I needed to write. 

Ideally I wanted a script to turn off all internet traffic at certain times of day (like between 7:30pm and 11:30pm, after the kids are in bed but before I am!), but only on my computer. I found a script by zengargoyle that can do this. First you'll need to install the "at" command (it's not installed by default on Mint):

sudo apt-get install at

Then make a file:

sudo gedit /usr/bin/SelControl

Copy the following into the file:

#!/bin/bash

#from http://ask.metafilter.com/160649/Block-internet-on-ubuntu

PORTS="80" # OR enter PORTS="80 443" for https as well

UNDO=""

for p in $PORTS

do

  iptables -I OUTPUT -p tcp --dport $p -j DROP

  UNDO="$UNDO iptables -D OUTPUT -p tcp --dport $p -j DROP;"

done

echo $UNDO | at now + 1 min # <-- change to time you want internet off for

I chose not to block port 443, because I still wanted Google Drive to sync my files in the background. This means that secure websites (those starting with https) still work, so I can still go a simple google search to get a quick definition, but the results are duds :) Once you save the file, you have to make it executable:

sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/SelfControl

And then you just run it whenever you want to block internet access:

sudo ./SelfControl

Now this was all well and good in principle, but what often gets me is that I'll "just check one little thing" before writing... and that ends up being quite a lot of things; a whole writing block of time of things. I needed something I could set and forget. For that, I had to set up a cron job (as root, so I could change IPTABLES).

sudo gedit /etc/crontab

Then at the end of the file add:

# added by [your name] to shut off internet at certain times

30 19 * * * root iptables -I OUTPUT -p tcp --dport 80 -j DROP

30 23 * * * root iptables -D OUTPUT -p tcp --dport 80 -j DROP

The first number refers to minutes, the second to hours on a 24 hour clock, and the last 3 *s refer to day, month, and day of the week, so * for all three means every day (learn more here). The above turns off access to port 80 (http internet sites) from 7:30 pm to 11:30 pm daily. If you're between your start time and end time on the first day you set this up, just type in:

sudo iptables -I OUTPUT -p tcp --dport 80 -j DROP

to turn off access, and the cron job will turn it back on again at the time you set. If there's an emergency and you ABSOLUTELY NEED to access a website (that isn't https), you can type:

sudo iptables -D OUTPUT -p tcp --dport 80 -j DROP

So my hope is that this will force some productivity on me by the sheer lack of anything else to do. That said, blogger is https, so I can still post during writing time, haha. If you'd rather turn off everything (at the risk of not syncing files in the background) just add port 443 to the above. I'm not quite there yet!

Week of Jan 26, 2015: Productivity and optimizing writing speed

I follow quite a few author blogs. One of those is Dean Wesley Smith's. Everyday he outlines his writing achievements of the day, which I found interesting to read in the beginning, but they've become somewhat monotonous. That said, I think blogging about progress is an excellent way to hold yourself accountable, a topic that author-entrepreneur Joanna Penn wrote about this week (someday I'll write a post with all the excellent blogs I follow). In the interests of holding myself accountable but not becoming too monotonous, I thought I might write weekly progress updates.

This is the first week that I actually feel I may be able to do this. It's my final crazy week at work, but my don't-break-the-chain's are keeping me on track regardless, and I feel like I'm getting back into "the zone." I think having achievable baby-step goals really helps it feel less daunting. I've printed out my "production calendar" and will put it up with the rest of my goals in my dining room. (Production goals are another thing Dean is big on.)

My little productivity worksheet is now tracking how many words I write a day. Unfortunately I'm finding that if I write 500 and delete 200 old ones from yesterday, my count is still only 300. I both like and dislike this. It's good because realistically I'm only 300 words closer to my goal; it's bad because I don't really have a good grasp on how fast I can write, and that hurts my scheduling. After reading Rachel Aaron's post on how she used data collection to improve her writing efficiency (check out Step 2), I started keeping a spreadsheet to track how much I write at certain times of day and how I'm feeling. I'll do some rough analysis once I have some data. (I'm a real fan of data; if you are too, you may want to check out the quarterly Author Earning Reports run by Data Guy and Hugh Howey.)

Every Sunday I will (try to) update my word counter on the sidebar, an idea I gleamed from Hugh Howey, a very successful indie author. I'm up to 11,000 if I count early half outline/half draft versions of Act I, which I won't. So looks like 2800.

And we're back: On balance, resistance, and motivation

Clearly I'm becoming one of those blog people who announce to the internet that they're going to accomplish something great, only to peter out after the first few weeks of newness wears off. Or I could say that life got in the way, that my son was diagnosed with a condition that needed daily therapy and really wore us down, and it was just impossible to squeeze everything in, but it still feels like a huge excuse. Sigh.

I can't believe I started this blog almost a year ago now. It's funny that I should post around this time of year; it's a time of revival for me, a time for coming back to normalcy. Basically from mid-July to around early-Feb my full-time job takes 150%; I'm talking evenings and weekends of overtime and some serious burn-out. Thankfully I'm able to balance this with some down time during the rest of the year, and plan to use my saved up time to only work 3 days a week for the next few months (told you it was a lot of overtime). I had cleared my slate to focus on the novel; no teaching, no more students to train, just freedom! Unfortunately things won't work out perfectly though, as a colleague of mine took quite seriously ill and I have to make up her classes. So my free time is essentially going down the drain. Again. At least I can afford dry wall for the basement by picking up the extra work, heh. It just always seems that there's more and more work to do, and my own goals keep getting pushed back.

Resistance is my #1 enemy. It's hilarious that as part of my day job I help people plan out how to complete their own large writing projects. So I took one of the spreadsheets I make for them and made it work for me instead. There will be a mass restructuring at my day job in 5-years time, and I'm hoping to be well set up with my indie side income by then (HAH! But let's pretend that's a possibility for the sake of argument). Anyway, I worked out a spreadsheet that automatically generates a calendar to get 8 books out in 5 years. Each book is planned to be 100k and I'll use 5% of my time for plotting, 70% for writing, and 25% for editing/proofing. The spreadsheet automatically calculates multiple deadlines for each book: for the start/end of each stage, and then at the 25/50/75% points in between, for each of the 3 stages. Basically I always have a deadline looming so it's supposed to keep me on track. Even though I only use 70% of my time for writing, I still only need to write ~630 words/day on those writing days to get the whole thing done. Seems more manageable that way.

Another thing I'm doing is "Don't Break the Chain", which essentially involves printing out the whole year on one page and giving yourself an "X" when you accomplish your goal. So I bought a huge magnetic white board to put my "chains" on and stuck it on my dining room wall. Classy, no; motivating, yes. I've got the old standbys (exercise, eat better, get enough sleep), but also some personal goals (no more "dead mommy" syndrome / be in the moment). And of course, writing. But there I ran into a bit of a problem.

How do you track how much progress you've made with plotting? Counting words seems irrelevant, as there's no end-point word count when you know you'll be "done." Counting scenes seemed silly. I wanted to have SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-based), but in the end had to be satisfied with "progress" for that component. I'll use my word count goal for the writing phase, but for the rest I'll just use my deadlines to keep me on track. I hope.

And now I have to go to bed so I can get my "get enough sleep" check. Which I have set at 7 hours to be Realistic, even though I've already determined I really need 8.5 and so even achieving the goal is something of a failure. Baby steps!

Just keep swimming

I always dislike those blogs that start off with good posts and then randomly go quiet, followed by an apologetic post saying the author has to get back to writing. And yet here I find myself.

The good news is that I no longer have two jobs; my teaching commitments ended last week as I passed in over 200+ graded exams, so that was a great relief. I now only have one student to mentor through the summer, so my workload has drastically reduced -- just one full-time job for the next 4 months!

Unfortunately my "life load" has increased... my oldest son was recently diagnosed with a medical condition which requires a significant amount of time and effort to help remedy, and this will persist for the foreseeable future. We weren't surprised by the diagnosis (and are grateful to have it, as we can now obtain the therapy he needs), but it's difficult to squeeze the extra appointments and sessions into our schedule. But we do it!

Awhile back, I wrote a post on how I'm trying to squeeze my writing into the early morning or late evening, but I found that if I stay up at night I just take care of random chores that need to be done; bring stuff like dealing with finances, trying to sell off the stuff in our basement, etc. If I went to bed early and tried to get up at 4am, I was still so tired that I'd just hit snooze even if I'd had 7 or 8 hours sleep by that point. I find this tragically ironic, because I always get up for work no matter how little sleep I've gotten, so deep down I feel like I just mustn't be motivated enough to write.

Characteristics of a Best Selling Novel (Part 3)

I read quite a bit. As I start down the path of writing my first novel, I want to refer to a simple list of things I've learned while reading bestsellers. In part 1, I discussed series I consider to be "excellent" (Harry Potter; Hunger Games; Divergent); in part 2, I discussed series which were popular, but were lacking in some aspect or another (Twilight; Mortal Instruments; Percy Jackson; Maze Runner). So, without further ado, I bring you, "S.J. Kelley's KISS-list to writing a YA bestseller" (in no particular order):

• Build rich, descriptive, creative storyworlds you can lose yourself in
• Have characters actively extract information from the storyworld (including politics, culture, etc), rather than passively receive explanations
• Incorporate symbolism which links to the theme / story culture / goals
• Divide main and supporting characters into groups which echo the larger storyworld society / culture / politics
• Outline a strong plot: 
• Series-arcs as well as story-arcs
• Momentum; urgency; chapters which leave you wondering what will happen next
• A B-line which is realistic, believable, and substantial
• Develop complex characters 
• Flaws
• Minority groups
• Growth and conflict between who they were and who they are becoming

Characteristics of a Best Selling Novel (Part 2)

What can I learn from popular YA series? In the first installment, I discussed three series that were absolutely extraordinary, in my opinion. In this installment, I'll talk about series that were extremely popular and offer some good pointers, but didn't live up to the hype in some aspects.

1) Twilight by Stephanie Meyer (stepheniemeyer.com)

When seventeen-year-old Bella leaves Phoenix to live with her father in Forks, Washington, she meets an exquisitely handsome boy at school for whom she feels an overwhelming attraction and who she comes to realize is not wholly human.

Ah, Twilight. I can never decide if I enjoyed this series or not, but it was clearly a great success, and I admit that it was hard to put the books down. After reading it, I want to keep in mind things to aim for and things to avoid.

• Aim to:
• Have constant suspense; keep the reader wondering; end chapters with hooks that make you want to keep reading
• Fulfill fantasies (while Edward was a flat character to me, the ideal is quite attractive)
• Have strong conflicts: "Us" vs. "Them" (but have them more nuanced and complicated)
• Avoid:
• InstaLove: being attracted to someone is not sufficient to develop a substantive relationship
• Flat characters; everyone should have flaws
• Long stretches of solely internal conflicts
• Lulls in plot action

2) Mortal Instruments by Cassandra Clare (cassandraclare.com)

Sixteen year old Clary Fray discovers, after her mother's kidnapping, that she belongs to a world of Shadow Hunters, a nephilum force protecting humans from downworlders (vampires, werewolves, and faeries). 

I liked the first book of Mortal Instruments. I enjoyed exploring the storyworld, but felt the cultural and political backdrop was too simplistic. While the series went on to discuss some interesting aspects of the magical system, I thought the relationship between Jace and Clary bordered on ridiculous... SPOILER ALERT: When Clary thought Jace was her brother I laughed out loud; it felt like a desperate plot move.

My favourite part of the series was Magnus Bane; I thought he was a fabulously interesting character, and found his bisexuality was portrayed quite well. If the books were about him they would have been better in my opinion!

At some point in the Mortal Instruments series I gave up reading the books. This is unusual for me, but I just lost all motivation to continue. I'm not sure what it was exactly about the series that led to this; it was supposed to be a trilogy, but was expanded to include 6 books, but the story felt done at the end of book 3.

• Aim to:
• Include a few interesting, quirky, eccentric characters, but have them closely involved in the main plot
• Show an openness and acceptance for minority groups
• Plan the series-arc ahead of time
• While I want to outline the first novel and start writing immediately, if I outline all books in the series I can drop hints in books 1 and 2 that will make the series as a whole stronger.
• Avoid:
• Plot twists that feel forced; hints should be placed throughout to avoid reader recoil
• Historical information which feels too far-fetched
• Information dumps from "mentors"

3) Percy Jackson and the Olympians by Rick Riordan (rickriordan.com)
The Lightening Thief follows the Greek god Poseidon's 12-year-old half-human son as he embarks on a fantastical quest across modern-day America to save his mother, return Zeus' stolen lightning bolt and prevent a deadly war between the gods.

Percy Jackson is meant for a younger crowd, and unlike the first two books doesn't really have a romantic element. I enjoyed reading them, but wouldn't recommend them to other adult readers. Similar to Harry Potter, Percy Jackson takes place in a rich storyworld. While J.K. Rowling based many of her creatures on mythology, the mythology of Percy Jackson is much more true to the originals. I think some research into folklore and mythology would add complexity to my novels.

4) Maze Runner by James Dashner (jamesdashner.com)
When Thomas wakes up in the lift, the only thing he can remember is his first name. His memory is blank. But he’s not alone. When the lift’s doors open, Thomas finds himself surrounded by kids who welcome him to the Glade...

Maze Runner was a simple read, but it did an extremely good job of slowly peeling back the layers of the storyworld. In my books, I want my characters to seek out much of their information, and to have as few "information dumps" as possible. Until the very end of the book, I can't recall a significant information dump in this series!


After discussing points from excellent novels in part 1, and popular but somewhat lacking novels in part 2, I've made up a short, simple, and generic list of things to keep in mind when I write my books (see part 3).