Adara VS Feb 23: Writing Goals VS Change
In today’s video I review my writing progress in February, including the challenges of a kitchen renovation and upgrading my writing area.
Visual Description:
Shows Adara unboxing and assembling items for her new set up, then filling in a green notebook with times worked and adding gold stickers to the pages. The ending image shows a dark starry sky above a forest canopy with the words ‘writing my story one word at a time’ in the stars.
NOTE: My usual recording set-up was unavailable, so the camera is more shaky/grainy and my audio fuzzy. Apologies.
Time Stamps:
00:01 - Intro
00:23 - Changes to writing area
03:46 - Changes to tracking writing/author time
04:40 - Star giving celebration/round-up
07:21 - Writing updates & future plans
08:06 - Non-writing updates
09:15 - Adara VS Dual POV: struggles + motivation!
10:55 - Online presence/activities
12:14 - Question to audience + outro
Transcript
Hello and welcome to The Canopy! In today's video: Adara versus February - Adapting to change.
This was very much a month of flux. The world is starting to wake up to the Pandora's Box that's been unleashed that is AI. Also, in the northern hemisphere it can't seem to work out what season it wants to be.
Now for most of my month I didn't actually have access to my living room downstairs while the kitchen floor was being changed. I had to spend an awful lot more time in this little writing area. A lot more. Practically living here, throughout most of my days. And as I've spent more time here, I've realized there are things that I can change to make it more inviting for me to be here. So I have set about making some changes to my writing area to hopefully fix things like posture and eyesight, while also keeping in mind my POTS, which is a chronic illness that makes me sit with my feet elevated for the majority of the time. As a lot of you know by now, I had to retire my desk years ago due to POTS, and instead I write using this chaise lounge.
Alongside that with the posture issues and things, I also wanted to add a mouse to my setup, because I've heard that people who use mice with their laptops which is what I primarily use are 33% more productive than people without; so that's a statistic that I can't ignore. So I was definitely willing to take that up.
So I ordered a bunch of stuff, and set about a plan, and Plan A saw me purchase: a laptop tray, a Bluetooth keyboard, mouse, alongside a laptop arm stand which would fit just here on the windowsill and would hold my laptop. Unfortunately even after an hour of assembling it, I was stopped from attaching it by a radiator being under the windowsill. I've not normally had issues clamping things on there before, for example phone stands, but this was somewhat bigger, so in essence that plan went out the window.
So I ended up with this kind of middle ground of just having a laptop tray, with a laptop, and my mouse. And this thing [bluetooth keyboard] kind of was made redundant. So Plan A and a half was to use the laptop tray and the mouse, and then I took my keyboard downstairs to the TV, where I mirrored my laptop over to the TV using an Amazon fire stick, and I could type straight onto the TV. But for that I had to zoom the text into around 200% to read what I was doing, and it was very blurry, and I also wasn't happy with people having spoilers as it were for my writing. So Plan A.5 was out the window, and in came Plan B.
Plan B: I bought myself a bedside table which I'm using with my chaise lounge, and that is essentially like a trolley which will just hang over my legs. It does stand up from the floor and it has wheels, but it takes up a lot more space than the laptop monitor arm which I wanted, but it works. I'm happy with it. Originally it was a bit- tad too high, but I've managed to adjust it down to a good level. I'm hoping it will help me to solve back ache and neck ache - general coat hanger pain, down the neck and shoulders that you tend to get with POTS and EDS. I'm hoping this will help. I kind of think I can already feel it helping.
As for writing, I found myself bouncing between drafting my second novel and making minor edits to my first novel, and this gave me a bit of a dilemma. Until now I've only ever really tracked working on one novel at a time, whereas midway through the month it became very clear that I needed a system to track two instead. So instead of just tracking words or just tracking time, I'm now tracking words for the drafting of Novel 2, and then tracking the time for everything else that I'm doing kind of author-publishing-writing related. Not everything. I don't tend to do a lot of my social media stuff... I don't tend to count that. I don't really count making these videos either. But anything specific about edits, contracts, things like that. So because of that slight delay in coming up with that system, the figures I have for this month for my work are slightly skewed, so I'm missing around the first week's worth of stuff in here. But it's still kind of accurate, but it will be on the lower side compared to where it normally is.
Anyway, I've had the pleasure now of using my new setup to help me make my monthly round-up video. Instead of hitting goals, I tend to set myself a rewards tariff instead. This helps towards motivation in the long run, I think, instead of just having goals and 'will you hit them, will you not?' That's kind of a knock-on effect to your confidence, so I go with the tariff instead, and my process is fairly simple. I track my word count or time that I work on a spreadsheet throughout the month as I go, and then at the end I write it down on a notebook. This one. And before this I had another one. And they tend to last quite a while, and it's just a good way of monitoring what I've done, and it's also a bit of a celebration too. So for every 400 words I write or 20 minutes I work, I can give myself one gold star. Then for every 10 gold stars that I earn, I've passed my- my self-proclaimed announced threshold, which then allows me to trade that in for the right to buy myself new reading material, so one new book.
So let's see how I got on! As the month went on, I also changed how I would achieve my New Year's resolution. That being the 'how to write the first draft of novel two' that is still the goal. How I get there though, is slightly changed. I'd originally said that I would write at least one word every day, but it quickly became apparent that when you live with chronic fatigue, having that sort of goal hanging over you could mentally, feels like just one more arbitrary goal to reach, and is it really adding anything or is it just one more thing on your to-do list that you could really do without? So I've kind of given myself some leeway with that. As long as I keep coming back to work, it should be fine. In the end that was a total of 2383 words worked for novel two, thanks to a lot of household disruption plus the recovery from that disruption. Plus just under four hours worked on other projects. Not the best but still makes 16 stars, so one more book earned for me! And with my new setup I look forward to seeing how much more I can do this month, especially with the new productivity.
I am currently expecting novel one back any day now from a sensitivity reader, and then in April I look forward to sending it to my editor, so I'll be splitting my time in March between implementing those changes from the sensitivity reader and continuing to write novel two. For the moment I'll concentrate on novel 2 until novel one comes back, then I aim on splitting my time, so maybe some days a week I'll work on one project and some days a week I'll work on another one. Interestingly to get my head in gear between the different projects, I'm going to do with them in different locations. So I'll be using this particular writing room and area for my second novel, and I'll be using the downstairs sitting room to focus on the first.
Other changes that happened this month: I had a very exciting meeting with a very motivational arts charity called Skimstone Arts, but more on that to come. Tune in for next month's round up. And also following a prompt from a friend, I responded to an open casting call for a voice actor. I've done something similar before, but not for many many years and that was to help out a friend from university who was doing a radio drama. Will anything come of this? Who knows! Time will tell. I'm hoping the amount of audio books I listen to might give me an edge, but we'll see. I've also had a yearly haircut so it's much shorter again and overall much easier to handle than... yeah... down here. Normally you would think 'oh, someone with chronic illness? Long hair? How on Earth did they deal with that?' It's more a case of not dealing with the haircut, than dealing with the long hair, but eventually this is a lot easier to manage.
Also, I am admitting writing dual POV is difficult. Very difficult. Especially with time frames, and when you realize that you know something may sound better from one character's point of view than another. Realizing how difficult it is hasn't much helped my motivation, because I'm a plotter, and I'm realizing some of my plotting is kind of going to have to be a lot looser - especially with word counts - to get the best out of the story. So I knew I'd have to take some sort of motivational step to keep me going. Number one was the productivity changes, and then creating a motivational poster because why not?
It says:
Revisions exist for a reason. Your job: write the scene in front of you. Finish the first draft! Your story can be tightened, edited down and layered up later.
And I have a couple of these printed off, and I'm going to stick them around, so one may be downstairs, one maybe upstairs. Maybe some, because they're both relating to novel two, just stick up on a wall or maybe one on the wall in here. Maybe one on the door coming in here... Ultimately I don't know how this dual POV is going to go, but I will never know if I don't write the thing. I'm currently up to chapter 5 of 27. It's slow going, but I'm really hoping now that the two main characters have met that things will be rolling from here.
Hopefully during that process I'll be seeing some of you around in live write-ins when I get the chance, so I'll be popping into some of the more UK time friendly write-ins every now and again, so here on YouTube, but also sometimes potentially over on Twitch.tv. There are a handful of writers on there who do sprints. Normally it's used for gaming, but this is quite an exciting little offshoot, so I have an account over there. You can also find me on TikTok where I post periodic updates. For example remarking on the irony of writing the scene where my two main characters meet for the first time, actually writing that on Valentine's Day. Here's hoping that's a bit of a sign that it'll all go okay; considering in my first novel the characters midway... what? Three quarters the way through the first draft? Decided that they liked each other. A lot. that was not part of the plan, but it was part of a major revision after that. I think I'm clued up on that a bit more now. And of course, you can always find me on Twitter @AdaraWrites, where if you follow me I will likely follow you back. And you can also find out more about me and my writing on my website: AdaraSpence.com.
So how is your life or writing changed in February? Let me know in the comments. And that's all from me from this video. I have to go now is I have to continue writing novel two's first draft...
…one day at a time.
Credits:
Thumbnail and ending image created free using canva.com
Music Credit 1: ending theme – Adara Spence
Music Credit 2: Beloved - Sakura Girl https://soundcloud.com/sakuragirl_off...
Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0
Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/3ji1zZc
Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/omTgn4GQcKA
Music Credit 3: Soon We'll Fly by Ghostrifter Official https://bit.ly/ghostrifter-sc
Creative Commons — Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported — CC BY-SA 3.0
Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/35reep7
Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/q2vomZqSJuE
