Wednesday 25 September 2013

Balls

I awoke early this morning after a pretty poor sleep. I was tired from the get go, but I couldn't get back to sleep (there is a lot of sun in my room) so I rolled out for a coffee and got to work.

For ease of it all, my work is basically split in two, so for the moment I'll talk about it like that. On the one hand is the stuff I've already received feedback on (Chapter 1 and most of Chapter 2) and the other side is the rest.

I began with part 2. I started cutting out a few superfluous sentences, tightened up a few bits here and there and found a couple of spots to insert some Eckersall. But for some reason I couldn't focus on it, so I went back the first part (earlier than I might've liked) and worked though that.

I added a couple of paragraphs, moved a few things and deleted all the 'red ink' (the comments in Word) Larissa had left that I didn't need, like spelling/grammatical errors, which left me with about 6 things to work on. I just kind of wore it down until I got to this one place that had me stumped.

Larissa had written in a pair of sentences that didn't fit where they were in almost any way - as far as I could tell. What did I do? I stared blankly at them for a while before tearing up three paragraphs to force them in. Silent movies? Lucille Ball? Jesus...

I got a little bit into the process before being overcome with proper exhaustion. So I went for a walk around the block, sat back down and worked through some more.

It isn't done, but it isn't too far off either. I can't spend too much more time on that section either, because I have a lot more to take care of, but if I can do the reverse of today tomorrow (knock out part 1 and fire up on part 2) I'll be in a good place, with - ideally - a full draft, partially edited, by Monday.

The point is that no matter how tired you are, you can always squeeze out a little more, and sometimes that little bit puts you in a good place for when you get back into it. The more you put it off, the worse it gets, so just get it done.

The other point is that I am exhausted. Not physically tired or mentally fatigued, but all of the above at once, and I could really use a good rest, so I'm going to watch the rest of this documentary about a guy with a massive scrotum and stop whinging about my relatively small problem.

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