Radio silence: a writing update

I know that it has been a bit quiet in these parts – surely a good sign that I’m off doing other, fantastically non-blog related things. Right?

English: An early American typewriter, made by...
English: An early American typewriter, made by the Oliver Typewriter Co. in Chicago 1895. This is a rare nickel-plated model, so perhaps it belonged to someone fairly well off. The image was taken at an exhibit in Toronto Airport in 2008. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In this case – yes. I’ve been working on my work flow lately, trying to find that groove that works best for me. I’ve been looking at what times work best for me, and what actual workflow is most productive.

First, I looked at when I write.

Thankfully, I have a most enviable job right now – I work from home for a company that’s based in the west coast (and I live in the east coat). That means that while my day tends to run longer than other folks around here (work typically ends between 8 and 9pm for me), my day also doesn’t really begin until noon. With these skewed hours, I’ve been free to explore and find the time and pattern that works for best me. Am I a writing night owl? Or a morning bird?

As it turns out, even working from home, anything at night is most likely to fail. I may work from home, but that doesn’t mean I’m not exhausted by the time I can stop for the day. In looking back at my word tracking for this current novel draft, the first few days I started off strong, then quickly tapered to a few hundred words a day. Then nothing for almost a week. A thousand words, then another desert.

The problem for me is that evenings are too chaotic a time to count on. Some days are quiet, and I’m revved up and ready to go. But busy days aren’t predictable and tend to build on one another. Trial and error eventually led me to realizing that as romantic as the thought of the writing typing away at night is, that’s not when my mind is geared up for storytelling.

As it turns out, my Goldilocks zone is between 9am and 11am. If I start and finish in that time frame, I’m more likely to turn out 1k in an hour or less.

Then, I looked at how I wrote.

I’ve mentioned recently that using notepads and transcribing later helped me through some rough patches. Lately, though, I’ve made some modifications to that technique. I still use the notepads if I feel like I’m painted into a corner, but for day to day writing I’ve changed things up a little. My current toolchest – and workflow – looks something like this:

1. Focuswriter. I start here because I like the sound of typing. There is something cathartic about the sound of a typewriter as you work. My theme is simple – typewriter paper for a background, American Typewriter for a font, and sounds turned on. The results – I usually bang out about a thousand words in 40 minutes. Then I copy what I’ve written, and go to

2. Hemingway. This app is not the bee’s knees, I know there’s room for improvement. That said, I buckled and bought the desktop edition (link goes to the web version). For the price, it does exactly what it says it will – it helps you spot awkward sentences, overuse of the passive, adverb usage. Hey, it cost me $5 and helps keep me from looking like a 100% horrible writer, so that’s good. Then I copy it again and go to

3. Scrivener. You expected anything else? Serious, in the end, I can skip all of the above (and do), but Scrivener is where its at. Scrivener is where I keep track of the larger picture, manage my burgeoning outline, etc. Some days I skip straight to Scrivener, because that’s the mode my brain is in.

Of course, in the end, the only important step in all of this is that I put the words down. In a lot of ways, this is a lot like the notepad method. Putting the words down, then going through transition steps lets me shape it to a point that I’m happy to move along.

The proof is in the words.

I’ve been working on this novel draft since June 22, and I’ve written 23k. In the last 10 days, I wrote 10k of those words. I expect there to be some hiccups pretty soon – the initial outline I wrote has reached its end. I’d planned on extending the outline at this point, but needed to see where the story grew and changed organically before trying to organize it. Now that I’ve seen what stuck and what shifted in this draft, I’m ready to work some more on it, probably tonight.

Now, back to work on the novel for me. It may not be the only novel with a kick ass, monster hunting gal, but it’s the one I’m writing. And believe me, all she wants to do is retire. If only everyone would stop trying to kill her.

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