I think I'm past due for another writing update. You might think that I'd given up on it, considering that it's been two weeks since the last update, but I haven't. I'm still going. I could probably kick it up a notch...
I'm going to skip the day by day round-up, mostly because it's been long enough that I don't really remember what was going on from day to day anymore. I do have my chart, and I'll post that here.
You'll notice a couple of red days with big zeros in that word count column. Those are going to happen.
The first one was last Saturday, when my son had his first swim meet. My wife has been looking for some kind of sport for him to participate. He's done soccer, and hated it. He's done basketball, and hated it. This year, she heard that all of his school friends are on the local swim team, so she signed him up for that. I was all for it, until I found out what kind of time commitment swim team insists upon. Parents have to volunteer a bunch of times over the course of the season. So, last Saturday, I was up at 6:00 AM to get to the pool by 6:45 and get my son registered for his events, and then help run the snack bar all morning. The swim meet took all day too. We got home at 2:00 PM. I was so worn out that I spent the rest of the day in a kind of a stupor, and went to bed at the end of the night without having writing once cross my mind.
It wasn't until the next morning that I even realized that I hadn't written. Not to worry, I just picked up as though nothing had happened. I think that is the real key. Writing every day is the goal, but it's not a streak or anything. It's not like I have to have thousands of unbroken days, never messing up once. If you think like that, then the first time you mess up is the last time you'll bother doing it. And you're bound to mess up sooner or later. It's guaranteed. So, if you think that way, it's a guaranteed failure.
I went back to writing the next day, and didn't miss another day until yesterday. I decided, for some reason, to see if I could get caught up on my personal blog. I send it out to family so that they can know what's going on with us. My family is pretty big, and as time goes on, we get further and further dispersed around the continent. That goes doubly for me, now that we live several states away from our closest relatives. I'm pretty notorious for letting the posts pile up for weeks, then writing them all at once, which totally defeats the purpose of trying to help our distant family members keep up with the goings on of our local family. But I had allowed that to happen again.
So, yesterday, instead of writing on my treatment for The Gauntlet, I wrote a bunch of backlogged family blog posts. I figured I'd write on the gauntlet when I got home at night. However, I totally forgot to do anything of the sort when I got home at night. Instead, I went to bed, and wrote nary a word.
It's okay though, because today, I wrote again. It is not the end. The streak doesn't have to remain perfectly unbroken. It just has to continue despite any setbacks.
I have to admit that I do find it challenging. I feel like I should pump it up a bit. Writing should be my number one priority. Back in 2017, I made it to the point that I was writing at least 1,000 words a day, and I wrote about 30,000 words a month for two months in a row. I finished writing an entire novel in that time, and wrote deep into its sequel as well.
If I want to be a writer, that should be something I should be aspiring for. But there are other things going on as well. Of course, I have a full-time job, and that always has to be a top priority, or I will end up getting fired from it. I have a family, and they have to be THE top priority. I have a podcast, and I need to keep that as a relatively high priority. I have a YouTube channel that I've been running for the last few months, and I want to keep that as a high priority too. I have my health problems that I've been dealing with since I was diagnosed with diabetes three years ago (jeez has it been three years?) and I need to keep those as a high priority too. I've been considering a YouTube channel in which I document my struggles to get my health back as well. How do I keep all these balls in the air, all these plates spinning, without letting one of them fall to the ground and shatter? That's what I need to figure out.
But the writing is the top priority of all those secondary things, you know after the job and the family. The podcast, the YouTube Channels and so forth are supposed to work synergistically with the writing goal. The other things help bring attention to my writing, help bring fans that might want to read my writing. So, if I don't keep the writing going at full steam, then the rest is for naught.
I did get really excited the other day when I was talking with Rish on the phone on my drive to work. It takes me 45 minutes more or less to get to work each day. Another 45 minutes to get home. That's an hour and a half of my day. I was lamenting not being able to make good use of that time for writing. I've tried recording myself as I try to plan out stories, which is how I worked out a lot of the details of The Gauntlet, but going back and listening to those recordings and trying to transcribe them is very tedious. I've tried using my iPhone's text-to-speech function to have it transcribe what I say, but it has a very short time span that it will do that. I want to say a minute is as long as it will go before timing out. I would have to continually look at my phone while driving to restart the transcription, and that just isn't safe.
I decided to put the question out to the writers that are my Facebook friends, and got several responses. It looks like Dragon Anywhere is probably my best bet. It transcribes, has no time limit, and steadily improves its ability to understand you the more you use it. The downside, is that it has a subscription fee of $15 a month, but if it works as described, it will probably be totally worth it to me. The app has a free trial period, so I'm going to try it out and see how it goes. As well as check out a couple of other options that were suggested to me. I'll report back to y'all when I'm done. I'm pretty excited about the prospect.
Anyway, that's my writing update for the past few weeks. I'll be back again eventually to let you know how it's going, and I promise that I will keep it up.
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