Website

[erastes]

When I had a scrappy self-designed website I was getting about 10,000 hits a month.  Now I've moved to the Wordpress design (same URL) with a spiffy new design - I'm getting NO traffic!!  What the blazes is going on? according to the stats thingy on Wordpress, the best day I had ever was back in November and that was 21 hits!!  This can't be right can it?  Nothing's really changed - all the same content is there. I'm baffled, and not a little concerned. Halp!

Back to work today - it snowed again overnight, but sadly not the four feet I always hope for, but just another 2-3 inches, so sadly I'll have to go to work.  There's a hold up on the main road according to the local news so looks like a fun journey ahead.  However, most of my team are actually out today, and the sun is shining like mad so there's always something to be thankful for.

I haven't written a word in 2 weeks. I have about 4K words to go on Junction X and I really need to clear the decks for editing that I know will hit my inbox at any minute and I'm stalled horribly.  I thought the end of the book would be hardest to write, so I wrote that fairly early on - but now I realise that it's the scene BEFORE the end of the book is going to be the tough one, and I've been putting it off out of cowardice.  So this week I'm going to try and dig in and work hard on it, even if it only means 500 words a day which is eminently doable.  I get very demotivated when I see writers posting their word counts online. Don't get me wrong, I'm very pleased they do this, because I look at matociquala's blog for example and I see that she works bloody hard. Writes until she has a decent word count, manages to blog at least once (often more) a day, and has bloody LIFE as well.  This is inspiring in one way but depressing in another when I have a week off and do nothing more than stare at the screen... I need to realise that, if I can't have writing as a full-time job, then I need to treat it as a part-time job and allocate TIME to it. There are things to work out...

Comments

[catsintheattic.livejournal.com]

treat it as a part-time job and allocate TIME to it.

Word to that! I started to build up something like regular writing time at the beginning of this year. "Regular" means that on every day when I have no appointment, I do some writing first. I call those days DWD (days without date - or actually, ToT, which is my German equivalent *g*) and they help. Otherwise, I would just do my usual work. But as there is always usual work to do, the important stuff, like writing or working on my vision, would never get done.

I also know that situation of not getting anything done once you have free time. I find it helpful, to make a list first. Alas, that list is usually three times as long as the free time I have. It's so overwhelming that I have no energy left. Lol. So I need a second stage: to determine the minimum tasks I want to get done. And to have some writing exercises or rituals that get me started.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I did a little yesterday. It's a start!

Lists are a good idea - I'll try that, thanks!

[elisa-rolle.livejournal.com]

Maybe Wordpress can't be track by the system stats track? For example, LJ can be track, but not for referrals.

BTW it's months already that I can read the feeds of Speaks its name: I have signed on the syndacate on LJ but I can't see the post on my Friends Page.

Elisa

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Oh they have a good tracking system, Speak Its Name, for example I can tell how many hits, how many unique visitors, where they've come from, but for my own site, I don't know how to do that, I'll have to check out the support.

That's weird about SIN - I don't know why you aren't picking up the feed.

[crawling-angel.livejournal.com]

Website>>> I'll ask Dave about his stats counter thingy. Do you have the same website...I know nought about these things but have you 'moved' ie, got a new one or was the old one rejigged?

Snow>>> I remember snow when it was 'real' snow...when there was enough of the stuff around and it was cold enough for the school boiler to break down and give us an extra few days holiday to make snowmen and snowangels. Those were the days, huh? *happy sigh*

Same here. I have 2K words to do on Say it with Flowers. I reckon I might get back to it next week when we disappear to the Lakes for a couple of days. The first words were conceived there so hopefully the last few will be too! Staring at the screen...you really sound like me, lol.

*pusskat cuddles*

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I haven't moved, the url and the hoster is the same - but some techno wizard used the Wordpress template and put it up on my server. Don't understand the wizardry.

Hope you can get on with your writing, too!

[fiona-glass.livejournal.com]

Don't worry on the word count - everyone works at a different speed. The maximum I can ever manage is around 2,000 a day and I fume at the Barbara Cartland types who can bash out five times that!

Re the website, have you changed url? Could be that folks haven't found it yet... (Or it could just be that Wordpress does something weird with its stats, LOL).

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I'd love to approach 2K a day. I was doing that for Standish - sometimes 5 or 6, but now? I'm lucky if I hit 1000. Part of it is that Junction X is incredibly concentrated and angsty and not free flowing adventure - hopefully "Fleury" will be easier.

No, havent' changed URL - I realised what I had done wrong, I was looking at the stats for my defunt erastes.wordpress.com site and not www.erastes.com. Still don't know how to access the stats for www.erastes.com though.

[volterra.livejournal.com]

No clue about wordpress, but I hear ya on the wordcount thing. I'm hoping once I get this non-writing-related presentation out of the way I can refocus...

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I hope you can get focussed too!

[suryaofvulcan.livejournal.com]

when I have a week off and do nothing more than stare at the screen...

I usually get home from work on a Friday evening and think: "Great! A whole 2 days of writing. I have loads of great ideas ..."

By Saturday morning I'm going: "Blech ... nothing. Let's read this thing Ann sent instead ..."

My most productive time? Between 9pm and midnight on Sunday evenings. And why do I stop at midnight? Because I have to get up for work on Mondays.

In short, the more time I have, the more I don't spend it writing.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Heh - that's exactly like me. *sigh* I just find too many other things to do!

[haydenthorne.livejournal.com]

You'll have to go to the support forums for that, alas. I'm on my own WP setup, too, which is orgasmically fantastic, but I'm on my own with tech shit. Go to Wordpress.org and look for their support forums. The topics are categorized. I'd give you a more specific link, but I'm about to run out the door to mail my tax returns.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I'll do that, thank you hun

Probably don't have a thing to add...

[zamaxfield.livejournal.com]

You know, every time I learn something new that (theoretically) makes me a better writer I write less. I could churn out ten pages a day, a lot more if I ignored the hubby and kids, everyday, when I just thrashed. Now I write less because I'm writing less of the stuff I used to just count on deleting later.

I don't want you to get performance anxiety or anything, but I want you to know I wait breathlessly for whatever you eventually do write. No pressure. Seriously.

Abstractrx

Re: Probably don't have a thing to add...

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I've never done that - several of my friends do, just write and then delete. I should try it!! :)

Thanks hun, it's nice to know, new novella coming in a couple of months!

[markprobst.livejournal.com]

Well if you get demotivated by writers posting their large word counts, perhaps this will motivate you: I haven't written a single bloody word in five whole months! Sure, I've been putting all my energy into promoting my book, but I do have the first three chapters written (unpolished 1st draft) but I really can't go any further because I don't yet have an outline, just a great jumping off point! I can't seem to get myself back into gear, banging out a good plot. Plus, I naturally have the fear that it won't measure up to my first book. I'll just say it's a good thing that writing isn't what pays my bills, otherwise I'd be starving now.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Perhaps put it to one side deliberately and work on something else? That's what I did with Transgressions, got on and wrote a couple of novellas (not knowing that either would sell, and both have) and then went back to it with a fresher eye.

I find brainstorming helps a LOT. I have a few trusted friends on IM and we chat back and forth, and they help me to come up with ideas. Often the ideas are theirs but they don't care - I'm the one who actually has to write the ideas out, and those ideas will help me springboard to new chapters. I don't use an outline. I just know where I'm going to in the end, all the middle is made up as I go along.

I hope that this review encourages you to push on, though.

http://ruth-sims.livejournal.com/4554.html

Yes, we have a problem in the large interface between the chairseat and the keyboad

[nagasvoice.livejournal.com]

The problem is to determine when your subconscious is hiding under the bed with the dustbunnies for a good reason--"You haven't fixed that mess, and we can't go anywhere with it until you do, so not coming out, nonono!"
As opposed to, "Hey, let's see what my flist--interesting and fun and snarky folks like erastes,say--posted today, that's much easier and more fun and you might even pick up some good ideas!" Yeah, right there with the excuses...
Speaking of applying the fanny to the chair, I happened to be sitting in an airport last month with Samuel Delaney's book, "On writing," flipped it open, and sat staring at an essay about two incidents. One was addressing those people who keep turning in the same darn story for critiquing for years on end without progress. They like *having * written. In contrast, the other one was a writer who spent twenty years to fix something and finally got it out there, and it was very good. So the time it took had little bearing on the quality. That's just how long they took. But that person *was* changing it all that time, trying new things. They weren't just pushing the same thing at editors and writing workshops without even fixing the edit marks from the last submission!

I must say it was a salutary kick in the butt (a very impressively educative book , listing all *kinds* of writers worth looking at as classics) but ins pite of that, it's still been quite awhile since I actually did some serious forceful work on my current tome.

I do find it useful sometimes to sneak away to mistress novels when I'm stuck on my main project. I find when it's the worst that ideas will squirt out like toothpaste for other stories. They could be considered a waste of time, except that I've learned that they're often teaching me something I needed to learn for solving the problems on the big one. If I just keep hacking at the jungle, at least.
Boy, gotta get me a sharper machete, really.

Re: Yes, we have a problem in the large interface between the chairseat and the keyboad

[erastes.livejournal.com]

The point about "On writing" is a very good one. I see many writers just churning out stories and although I'm jealous of their output, I don't want to churn. It's strange because that's exactly what I wanted to do when I started out, I wanted to churn out gay romances like Barbara Cartland - but when I got into it, things changed, and Junction X has been a 2 year labour of love and tears.

Thanks hun

Re: Yes, we have a problem in the large interface between the chairseat and the keyboad

[nagasvoice.livejournal.com]

Ahaha! You've been pounced by the Quality Bunneh!
*G!*