Adara VS Not Writing Every Day ~ October 24
In an attempt to revive my writing I stopped writing every day, and started streaming it all.
Visual Description:
Shows a desk, with a laptop and monitor on stands. There is an anime avatar representing Adara. Adara has short purple hair and light blue bangs. She has white feathers covering the ears, a black collar with a heart emblem, and a dark green/blue checkered shirt with white t-shirt. Periodically shows black cats on the desk and on Adara's desk. The ending screen shows a banner advertising Drawing Red, with a link to www.adaraspence.com/books. The paperback and ebook cover of Drawing Red shows a teenage girl drawing in a notebook with a large protective red and white wolf standing protectively behind her. It's set in a moonlit forest. The hardback cover is black with a grey outline of a tree on it.
Transcript
[Music starts]
Hello readers and writers! In October I started my foray into live streaming writing sprints. It was nice to have the focus, company and accountability.
I start small with a 10-minute sprint, building them up to 20 then to 25 minute sprints, so I'm streaming for approximately 90 minutes per session, 3 times a week.
Getting used to a new platform was tough, and I still haven't worked out all the kinks. For example, I've worked out that even if I mute my physical microphone on the live stream, the channel on OBS (the open broadcasting software) still gets recorded into the VOD afterwards. I only realized that after the fact hence why the vods on my channel up until this point have disappeared. But as I work my way through the problem they should now start to be up and running.
I'm also trying to incorporate things like alerts but they will take time. Writing is a solitary activity and writers tend to be quiet and keep to themselves, so I'm also looking into how to turn on anonymous following, but for now my main focus is to continue to make progress with the first draft of Drawing Red's sequel. So let's check the numbers!
To begin I got ambitious and decided to attempt writing two projects at once. That didn't last long and I was quickly frustrated with my progress. You can tell by my times where I eventually chose the sequel as my main goal.
Overall I spent 375 minutes on writing. That equates to 12 and a quarter hours of writing sprints, and a little bit of typo checking. I finished six scenes and four chapters. However, now we get to the good bit!
I always set myself a rewards tariff that for every 20 minutes I work I get one gold star, then for every 10 gold stars I earn I can trade them in to myself for the right to buy myself a new book. This month I got a grand total of 36 stars meaning I can treat myself to three new books! This month I had to have a hard conversation with myself about what I was capable of, on top of health issues and life events. Going from the tried and tested mantra of, "Write every day," especially knowing it was leading up to November when so many daily writing challenges are taking place, I was admitting that I couldn't keep up. Psychologically taking that step back was tough, but I'm a lot more productive because of it.
It's working for me at a pace I can keep up with three times a week where I'm not getting burnt out or running out of ideas instead of dreading another grind tomorrow. I look forward to the next writing session in 2 days time. I got a total of 10,711 new words even with taking a week off at the end of October for house renovations and health improvements.
I stream Monday Wednesday and Friday. All vods will eventually be uploaded to YouTube for time travelers wishing to join in to write with some live, assuming I can get the sound issues fixed in the meantime. I'll be uploading short clips every week of stream highlights to give you a taste.
I hope to see you there on the platform beginning with T and ending in H. I'd say it out loud but I'd get buried by the YouTube algorithm.
Good luck with your writing and enjoy reading as well in November.
[Piano Music]
Credits:
Credit: Picrew avatar by Faelions on X/Twitter
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_official
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
