Adara VS Streaming On Twitch ~ Write With Me! Sep 24
Today I talk about how I stepped into the world of live streaming my writing, and how my debut live write-in went.
Visual Description:
Shows a desk, with a laptop and monitor on a stand. 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 a windowsill and on the desk. Intermittent generic backgrounds including an old fashioned black and white computers and close ups of Adara typing at the 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]
Did I get a lot done in September? It depends on your definition in terms of writing. Did I write? Eventually. There's been a lot of illness. A lot of life events going on... I decided, "Right, okay! I do want to knuckle down and get back to writing in a good good type of habit." So I became a streamer!
It is the 30th of September as I record this, and it is my debut stream day! The VOD will be going up on my channel. I spent the majority of the month learning how to use all the tools, OBS, all that jazz. So what did I actually get out of hosting the live writing and was it worth it?
I was exhausted that day. I'd had very little sleep. A cough had kept me up for most of the night, but regardless, I went and I streamed for one and a half hours, which is what I'm aiming for on those. Every other weekday.
Total time worked across three sprints for Drawing Red's sequel was 40 minutes. That was comprised of a 10-minute writing sprint and two 15 minute writing sprints. There was gaps in the middle. I swapped over to my romantic comedy angels and demons project for 12 and 1/2 minutes, to have some kind of banter at the end. New words written for Drawing Red's sequel: 622 words across the 40 minutes. I will take that! That's kind of on the road to getting to 1,000 in an hour. I didn't write for an hour. I wanted to swap to the other project because we're getting into October. That project is Halloween themed. I use that as a reward for getting back into writing the sequel, because the sequel's been on hold, it's coming along drips and drabs, so yeah...
So the total for what I'm calling project Angel was 12 and 1/2 minutes, for research plotting time, and I used that to explore comedy. And there is an entire science behind comedy.
Did I do any work on my secret work in progress? Not a jot! Am I going to work on the secret project? Probably not. That one can be put on a shelf for now until I feel like picking it up. There's no time limit on that. There's no real inspiration for it at this point, and I don't think it'll see the light of day, or if not now then not for a very long time.
That has been my month in a nutshell. A lot of not working on writing. A lot of not working on my projects. But finding ways to make this little animated character come to life as I talk, and to broadcast it over the internet.
Now, I like writing in writ-ins. Most of the time I lurk as an observer. The odd times I have said, "Hey, I'm here blah blah." It depends if I'm up for a chat or not, but I really really wanted to give it a go myself, so that I could be in control and I could do sprints that weren't that long. I also put in the background some lo-fi kind of piano music. I know a lot of people prefer to write in silence. They can always turn that off if they want; that's up to them. But otherwise, it's a nice chill stream to have on the background.
Hello. Editing Adara here! I also want to point out that one of the reasons I'm so keen to keep on with these live writing sprints and... to push myself to do them is because with my many chronic illnesses I'm essentially housebound. Other than talking to my husband and medical professionals, I never really talk to anyone and I'm kind of starting to lose the practice of speaking out loud. It sounds bizarre, but with things like POTS and brain fog, and not being able to reach for words in my head... That's kind of getting worse, and I don't really want to lose the ability to talk as eloquently as I used to be able to. I used to be a very very good public speaker, and those skills are getting less and less, so this is in a way also forcing me to practice those skills while also getting me into the habit of writing, and enjoying other people's company.
For my first time, I think it went pretty well. I am running on British Summer Time at the moment in terms of a time zone, so that was from 9 until 10:45am (Monday). On Wednesdays and Fridays I'm aiming for 11:30am to 1:00pm for anyone who wants to write during their lunch hours, or if they have any other work they need to get on with then they can feel free. I might be chatting about writing with other writers in the chat, but you can feel free to get on with whatever. Hopefully with this I can find a balance.
Which comes to the exciting part which is the revival of the star giving ceremony! Now, I had originally set out that for every 20 minutes that I work I would get a star. Now this can be done of one of two ways. Normally it's writing related. If I did that, I would earn two stars for 40 minutes worked on Drawing Red's sequel. I don't get a star for Project Angel but I do get myself a smiley face.
Now, here's the kicker. A combined monthly total time worked: 52.5 minutes. Time writing: 40 minutes. New words written: 622. Research and plotting time: 12 and 1/2 minutes. Video and streaming work: 3,516 minutes. That is over 50 hours it took me to get used to the setup for the backgrounds, how to get chat working, how to actually make it so I can work how to install a timer, all those things. I learned from scratch. This is either a very very very good way of keeping me committed to writing in little drips and drabs and getting me back into it, or it's the world's biggest procrastination that there's ever been. Take your pick!
I don't think it's fair to give myself that many stars every 20 minutes in a 3,516 minutes. That's just not fair. So maybe I'll give myself one star for every 500 that I put into that, so that would be seven stars, which would give me a total of nine. And since I've now got a total of nine, that still does not meet my threshold. My threshold? I give myself a little rewards tariff: is for every 10 stars I get, I can reward myself with the ability to buy myself a new book .I still have a bunch left that I need to read. I'm okay reaching nine.
What did you get up to in September? Let me know in the comments and I look forward to seeing how things go in October and towards Halloween, as I start more plotting of the Halloween novel, and I get back into writing and creativity. See you in the next stream, the next VOD, or the next video.
[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
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
