I’ve been ridiculously productive this week. I’ve passed the halfway point on Lucky Lexie 4 and have done a ton of work developing another project. I’ve done a lot of things that have probably helped with productivity. Now I’ll need to figure out which ones of them have been the cause — or possibly all of them.

I’m still working in my office, and I do think it helps because I’m in “work” mode when I’m in here and seem to waste less time. I do still take the laptop downstairs in the evenings and do some work, but it’s more “fun” work, not actual writing.

I also made up a new rule. We’ve been having a rainy spell, with it raining at least a little bit every day, so I declared that when it’s raining, I get to have a change of pace, stop working on the current manuscript, and spend time developing another project. That feels like play, and it means my “break” time is still productive work time. I did a lot of work on the main characters this week. Next I’m going to work on figuring out my villains. I may have to figure out a different trigger for these breaks once the rainy spell ends. It needs to be something that can happen at any time during the day and that won’t likely last much longer than an hour or so. I’ve thought about designating certain composers for breaks since I keep the classical radio station on all day. Depending on the work, that can go from five minutes to half an hour. They publish a playlist that lets me know ahead of time when a work is coming up, so doesn’t have that “oh, hey, it’s raining, break!” moment of surprise, but it’s still something I don’t control, so it might work. Or I could attempt to be an adult with self-control and allow myself to take breaks to work on something else for a little while instead of scrolling Twitter, but not abuse it and take breaks when I feel stuck instead of working through the problem.

The other thing I did was make an alteration in my routine. It sometimes takes me forever to actually get to my desk and start working in the morning. I dawdle over my morning tea as I read the newspaper, do some journal writing, and then get sidetracked. I wasn’t sure if I was avoiding work or just lingering over my tea. My normal routine is to finish my tea, then go brush my teeth, get dressed for the day, and then go to work. This week, I got dressed when I got up, then after breakfast if I was still drinking my tea, I took the tea to my desk and worked until I finished my tea, and then went and brushed my teeth and tidied the bedroom and bathroom before going back to work. I ended up getting to my desk about half an hour earlier than usual and got a head start on my work. It seems I wasn’t putting off getting to work. I just was reluctant to stop sipping my tea. This may not apply on the days when it’s nice enough to have my tea on the patio and get some outdoor time, but I can do some planning and outlining out there.

Since I’m making good progress on the book, I don’t think I’m going to take the Memorial Day holiday. I need to keep moving forward. First, though, I’m going to have to figure out how the book is actually going to end. I had something in mind, but now that I’m halfway through the book, I’m less keen on it and may need to rethink it, and I need to come up with the specifics. I sort of know what’s going to happen, but I’m not exactly sure how it will happen.