In the early days of the pandemic, when the uncertainty and newness of the situation was bearing down on me in full force, I talked about here on several occasions how it had been killing my productivity. I wrote almost nothing for the entire month of March and felt only spurious signs that I would ever get out of this funk.

Months have passed, and I’m happy to say the writing funk has not only passed, but transformed itself into a frenzy, as evidenced by the last four months of my bullet journal productivity tracker:

This productivity tracker is one my favourites, obviously not because it’s pretty or elegant, but because it gives me such a good bird’s eye view snapshot of how much I’ve accomplished. I’ve introduced it in more detail in an earlier entry, but the basic summary of how it works is: the little numbers on the left-hand side represent the day of the month, and each column is devoted to a type of writing activity. The dots in the boxes means that I didn’t do that particular activity that day, a checkmark means I did, and a number represents the specific word count, if applicable.

As you can see, April was still a recovery month from the doldrums of March. The later months are much stronger, while the heavy stretch in July represents some of the best writing weeks of my life. Those last couple of weeks, I routinely hit more than a thousand words per day, which I know for some writers is the bare minimum goal, but for me is a relatively rare occurrence. I don’t really have set goals per day though I have an idea of how many words I want to hit based on how busy the day is going to be or the headspace I’m at. I’ve talked before how I’m not really a believer in daily word counts as I think there’s a risk that they become counterproductive for a writer. As you can see from the bujo spread – I usually take weekends off, and even though I have discovered time to write on the weekends, they tend not to be my most productive days.

I did however, recently implement weekly writing goals for my specific projects. Since I’m juggling so many at once, I find that tracking a reasonable weekly goal helps me make sure that none of them slip through the cracks, so I find these, on a balance, to be more of a motivator than a demotivator. Not to mention that it also helps me to keep on top of the buffer for The Bloodlet Sun, since I promised myself I won’t be dropping the ball on its updates this time.

The previous time I talked about this particular bullet journal tracker – I didn’t include word counts and the whole thing was checkmarks. Switching to word counts had actually helped me immensely with my weekly word count goals. I made a few attempts to track my weekly goals in my Moleskine notebook instead, but they were too disorganized to stick. Instead, looking at the word count in the project columns of my bujo tracker gives me a real quick look into which projects have reached their goals and which ones need more work, allowing me to prioritize and vary throughout the week, something that has helped me immensely with writer’s block.

One last thing I want to mention about this particular spread, is that in June you will see I added a new column for “Dad Project”. I lost my dad three years ago to cancer, and we had a complicated relationship, so I’m using this for now to reflect and I’m still experimenting with how it will develop.
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So as you can see, the tracker is also customizable in terms of projects as these can be added and dropped every time you fill in the columns for each month. This is just one way to track writing productivity, and I hope you might be able to take some inspiration from it.

I’ve had a recent infatuation with voice memos to aid my writing process. I’m a firm believer that a writer’s experience is not measured strictly in the number of words they write. Any amount of our day may be spent consuming other content, whether that be media, news, or simply living, which would then be absorbed into our creative process. For this, boredom is a writer’s great friend, but how many of you had a good idea for a sentence, a scene or a bit of dialogue, and the next time you’re on the computer, it’s gone? It’s not bad enough that you’ve missed out on a potentially good idea, but remembering that there had been an idea in the first place is what really hurts.

In order to try to avoid this problem, I carry around a little black Moleskine notebook wherever I go. I’ve accumulated a whole mass of these which I’m sure will be valuable collector’s items when I inevitably (delusions of grandeur incoming) become a world-famous celebrity author who donates mementos of his career to charity auctions. I still stand by my little books, but recently I’ve found that voice memos are also an excellent option.

The biggest challenge in using memos is having to listen to the sound of your own voice, which probably for some people will be a show-stopper and honestly, I don’t blame you. That guy sounds effing weird. However, once I got over this particular hurdle and accepted that I don’t have a career in radio (or in podcasts, to use a more contemporary equivalent), voice memos have quickly become a staple of my writing process.
 
The Equipment

Many years ago I used to own a handheld dictation machine. I came into possession of such an item to try to deal with a bullying problem I experienced when I first arrived in Canada, which is a long story in and of itself but suffice it to say, having it in my pocket only worsened my bullying. In the years that followed, I occasionally dusted it off and tried to use it for my writing, but having to rewind the tape back and forth, and the aforementioned hang-up about hearing my own voice which I didn’t quite get over until I stopped giving a shit sometime in my thirties, it never caught on.

Now we’re living in an age far removed from my quaint magnetic tape dictation device. I don’t know about Android phones, but my iPhone comes with a handy Voice Memos app. It doesn’t do much, but it gets the job done. Scrolling through the recording is easy, as is recording over parts you’ve already recorded.
I wish it also came with the option of slowed-down replay, and I’m sure there’s other apps out there that can do just that, so I’m open to suggestions.
 
The Process

The When

Best part of using voice memos is that so many of your daily activities can be co-opted into the service of your writing. A common time for me to do this is while I’m washing the dishes in the evening – not exactly the most stimulating task, so my brain often goes into creative mode. Having a phone nearby to record thoughts makes sure that creative churning doesn’t go to waste.

A car is another place where the mind often wonders. Once I get to my destination, I spend a minute or two dictating everything I thought of on my way there before getting out of the car, and boom, writing done during a time that would otherwise have nothing to do with it.

Normally, when I go on my morning runs, I listen to audiobooks, but I imagine someone else might find it helpful to run these notes during exercise too.

The limits here are convenience of accessing a phone and your imagination, so make the best of it.
 
The How

I found that there’s two ways of using voice dictation to assist later writing: actual sentences and broad strokes.

Creating actual sentences is pretty self-explanatory – the writing is developed in my head, sometimes going through several iterations or part-sentences before it fully forms, and once I have the actual sentence, I record it with the voice memo, and move on to the next sentence.

Broad strokes, by contrast, doesn’t contain any usable writing. It sets the motions of the scene, the gist of what has to be said, but otherwise the actual writing process would need to occur at a later time.

Of course, what ends up happening is a bit of a mix. Sometimes a sentence doesn’t quite fall into place while the next one is bursting to come out, so I dictate a placeholder note. And sometimes when I intend to do a broader outline, a sentence just comes to me so I dictate it verbatim to not waste that little spark of creativity.
 
The Transcription

Depending on which method you use above, the transcription process is going to look different. With actual sentences, your role is pretty much just type out what you said, maybe editing here and there if you feel that with the benefit of hindsight that the writing could be better. This is perfect for those times when your muse is snoozing – might as well use your writing time productively without worrying what’s coming out onto the page. I’m a fairly decent typist, though I can’t keep up with my spoken speech – I tend to slow down my dictation if I have the opportunity, but sometimes I want to get it out fast and, in any case, I can never slow myself down enough.

For a broad strokes outline, the writing process itself will necessarily be a bit more involved – with creative writing being built on top of what was dictated earlier. In this case, speed of dictation matters less. Usually I play a prompt in its entirety and then set down to fleshing out the writing.

All-in-all, this method allows me to maximize the time I spend on writing activities and use my day more efficiently, especially since between a full-time day job and kids, those writing moments are precious and few.
 

Having extolled the virtues of voice memos, they will never fully replace my precious little black notebooks. Sometimes, you’re just not in a spot to whip out a phone and start talking into it. I may have less hang-ups about hearing my own voice but no one’s going to be listening to me dictate my creative writing on a busy bus, especially when it’s dialogue and it will look like I’m either trying to cover up that I’m talking to myself, or having a super weird conversation on the phone. Pulling a small notebook out of your pocket is far more discreet, even if I’ve been asked multiple times why I’m writing in my passport.

Also, writing in a notebook is far more user-friendly when you’ve got a random assortment of sentences and ideas that just need to be put down, rather than a single block of writing. These would be far easier to navigate in written form than in voice memos, and it also makes it easier to manage several projects at the same time.

As I was writing this entry, I was met with a cautionary tale that I feel obligated to share – I sat down to transcribe a four-minute voice memo, and discovered that it had somehow become corrupted, and all its content was erased. That was about an evening’s chores worth of ideas blasted out of existence. I managed to scrape out of my memory the gist of what I wanted to lay down, but not only was this an unnecessary double effort and therefore waste of time, but I know there were a few choice sentences there that were lost forever.
So I stand by everything I said above, but technology is technology and is often unreliable in the worst ways. Again, if there’s perhaps a more reliable voice memo app out there, I’m open to your suggestions.

I’m happy and excited to announce that my sci-fi web serial, The Bloodlet Sun, is returning for regular weekday updates on Thursday, September 10th.

I released a short inaugural chapter on here last year, but a lack of buffer and writing production derailed the project into a prolonged hiatus. I toyed with the idea of re-releasing that first chapter as part of the refresh and in the end decided that I would sooner focus on the way forward instead of looking too far back. So after more than a year-long break, the next segment that will be released will be the first part of Chapter 2, which will be posted in 7 weekly segments.

I have a good feeling about this second attempt at a regular run for The Bloodlet Sun. By the time it launches in September, I should be sitting on a 20-week buffer, and my writing production has never been better. Chapters will follow different POV characters and will be divided into segments of 850-1100 words. I wish I could release bigger chunks, but between having a day job and being a dad, I simply can’t ramp up my writing activity any higher right now. So it would be a choice between larger segments, and a bi-weekly update. And since I think waiting two weeks for an update is too much “out of sight, out of mind” I opted for the shorter interval. Comparing the content though to a comic that releases weekly, I think I have enough there to satisfy readers from update to update.

Ideally, I would switch to maybe somewhat smaller segments with a twice-a-week schedule, but these are future goals and I’m taking this one step at a time to try not to overwhelm myself.

Those of you that have been following, you would have seen that I’d been very busy on this project. I’ve been brainstorming character names, worldbuilding like crazy, and about a month ago the whole work had undergone a name change. It’s still growing on me, which is not much of a surprise since the obsolete name had been with me for so long and what’s helped the process is coming up with a spiffy new title card for The Bloodlet Sun:

This was my own rudimentary photoshop skills at work, so don’t laugh. I’m permitting myself to be proud of it regardless and it should be enough to help me to promote the serial on Twitter and elsewhere.

And before anyone else says it, I’m very well aware that spellcheck is not entirely happy with the word “Bloodlet”, even though it is, as they say, a perfectly cromulent word, which itself is not flagged by spellcheck, a fact that makes me very happy.
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As you can imagine, I’m bursting to share more of the story itself and talk about the characters and other elements of the story. That said, I want to wait before the story releases to get into any details. So stay tuned for September 10th and hope to see you all here when it comes out.

Despite the fact that I don’t bring it up here all that often, I’m still very much working on my first novel. The reason it doesn’t really come up is that it has been undergoing an editing process for more years than I’m willing to count. It may not be as glamorous as using Google Street View to explore the streets of Moscow, or coming up with character names for a sci-fi setting, but it’s honest work.

I feel writers generally steer clear of discussing editing or even acknowledging its existence. Sure, there are those strange creatures that profess to actually enjoy it, but those people are either lying, or are gluttons for punishment. Editing is grinding work; it’s tedious and sometimes mentally crushing. It’s where all the self-doubt and self-criticism that I would normally block out come to roost and become an essential part of the craft. Was that the right word? Does this sentence make sense? Is the pacing of this chapter off? Is there even a point to this novel or should I send it to the proverbial trash bin and take up knitting instead? (I should take up knitting anyway, but that’s a different story).

I share insights into my editing process here and there – from general advice to how I use word clouds to clean up my writing, but beyond that, I have a hard time describing the process. You just dive into your work and comb through it, over and over until all the tangles have disappeared and it’s as perfectly coiffed as Tan France’s hair (if you don’t get this reference I recommend binging “Queer Eye” on Netflix, or if you're that short on time, at the least check out the following few seconds of Taylor Swift’s “You Need to Calm Down” music video). For me, I find I have too focus on the blemishes too much and it becomes too easy to lose sight of how my work can ever reach the stage when I’m satisfied with it.

When it comes to Wake the Drowned, I currently only have one chapter left before I complete the fifth draft. In terms of next steps, I already have one wonderful friend who provided me with detailed beta reader comments, with more hopefully drifting in. As far as I can tell, though it’s hard to predict with these things, I’ll need another three edits at most, ideally two, so either way, the job is well more than halfway done. That said, at my pace that could still be another two years.

I’ve got some mixed feelings about this edit. Some stretches are turning out really well – two or three pages can go by with only a few minor revisions. Other sections are still giving me serious pacing concerns. I think one of the main focuses of the next edit should be aggressive deleting, which may put me in trouble with the word count, but I can solve that problem when I come to it.
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I’ve been with this project for so long it’s hard to conceive that one day, win or lose, it will be set aside as the best I can do for this story. My sincerest hope is that I will be able to share it with the world, but if not, at least it will live on in the rest of my writing through the lessons I learned along the way.