Nothing really to report today that I didn’t say yesterday. I talk a lot about my goal of exercising more and I think that’s because it’s the one goal I find hardest to work on. They’re all hard, but for whatever reason that one in particular is the hardest.

Writing is hard too, but I can do it without leaving my apartment, so I don’t think about it as much. I wrote a book, or rather I’m still writing a book. Editing away. Day after day after day. Some days I make more headway than others.

When I started writing it was all stops and starts, but then I realized that I find targets really helpful. I set up my little word counter in my writing program and it has a little bar that turns from red to orange to green as the number of words you write goes up. Then – Ding Ding! – and 500 words later I was all done! (Yes, there was a literal ding ding. It’s the reward signal.)

I find editing much harder than writing. Writing flows out of my fingers pours out onto the page, but editing is like getting into the weeds. Everything needs to be pulled out and redone – whole chapters, whole paragraphs, turns of phrase, adjectives.  Everything is wrong. Maybe something is almost right, or could be right, but most things need fixing. It’s hard. But I found a solution,

I downloaded a timer called Be Focused. It’s a Chrome extension and is one of the many timer apps which is supposed to help you utilize the Pomodoro technique. That’s twenty-five minutes on and the a five minute break. Twenty-five minutes isn’t so daunting as 250 pages. Although it can be a little daunting. More on that later.

Until tomorrow.