I completely forgot to include a postmortem on my first day of timed writing here.
Hm. Note to future self: Do not assume that a given proportion of work time to break time is right for you without evidence. You may not have many opportunities to use this advice, but you should nonetheless heed it if you can.
Let’s do a little bit of simple math here. I exaggerated yesterday when I implied that I write a sentence or paragraph on average between breaks. It’s really closer to 300-500 words or so. Typing out a scene of 500 words or so usually takes me, say, fifteen to twenty minutes (if it’s going slow). Then I need a break. As I said yesterday, these breaks should be right around ten minutes, as far as I can tell. (I actually suspect 7-8 minutes might be better now. That’s one of the benefits of having a timer.)
Anyway . . . that math does not work out to 90 minutes of work and 30 minutes of break. It’s closer to 45/30, which sounds worse but shhhh, I’m getting stuff done. The times I locked up worst today were when I tried to force myself to work through the long periods when I’d already used up my 30-minute break. About halfway through my writing time (total, not block) I punched myself in the face and changed what I was doing, because, as it wasn’t helping, it needed to change. In short, I think I can safely throw out two of my three timers, and just keep the 10-minute one I use to keep track of my breaks. I’ll probably still run stopwatches to see how much time I use total in actual writing vs breaks, out of curiosity and because the knowledge might help me, but I’m putting 90/30 to the side for now.
This may all change tomorrow. I mean heck, it did last time.