Day 893

I’ve still got some IBS issues today, so writing is going to be a little difficult since I’ll have to push past the pain. However, the discomfort is not as bad as normal, so that’s good. I’m still apparently eating something that’s causing issues, but it’s not in a huge amount, so I can still get my work done while I try to figure out what it is.

I got most of my “frogs” done this morning—exercise, a little Japanese study, my email. I skipped the house chore for now and will try to get to it later, because I wanted to get started on my writing as soon as possible.

I did get to sleep early last night, but still overslept a little. I think my body tends to need more sleep when I’ve had a flareup, and I forget that. However, I was glad I had the self-discipline to get to bed on time, and I hope I’ll have that same self-discipline tonight. I think that I get more done during the day when I go to bed earlier and wake up earlier. It might be because of the daylight hours. I’m going to experiment with that, if I can stop oversleeping and get up at dawn again like I did a few weeks ago, before the bad IBS flareups I was having. I need stricter self-discipline in my bedtime if I’m going to make that happen.

It’s probably no surprise, but getting started on my writing today is a bit harder because of the IBS discomfort. A part of me would really just like to go back to bed and curl up with a hot pad. But I made a personal goal of trying to finish this book by next week Thursday, so I’m going to do my best to get a lot of work done and make my goal.

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I took a break in the middle of writing because the IBS was getting painful, but when I started feeling better after dinner, I decided to have another writing session. I wrote for another 2 hours and I got a little over six hours of work done today! However, it was getting late and I wanted to try to get to sleep earlier today, so I didn’t finish the scene I was working on.

My writing speed was slow because I had a piece of research I needed to do, and it was something that required me to edit some things in other places in the manuscript. It’s always hard for me to fix plot holes when it involves picking up threads in past chapters I’ve already written, and since I had those threads already organized in my head, I went ahead and fixed it right then rather than just leaving a note for myself. I’m glad I did, because I had written my character into a situation that I wasn’t entirely comfortable with. I ended up deleting some of what I’d written, but I’m happier with the way the scene flows after it was cut and the plot hole fixed.

If I had simply left a note for myself, and kept writing as if I’d already fixed it, I probably would have finished the scene tonight. It’s a tossup whether that would have been better to do, or if it was better for me to fix the plot hole now so that the manuscript is cleaner when I have to do the final editing pass later. My self-editing tends to be more detailed and thorough if the manuscript is already cleaner, but I know I kind of stalled my creative process a bit. I’m still not sure what’s better, to write messy and fix it later, or try to write clean so my self-editing is better. Ultimately, I probably just don’t trust my self-editing enough, and I’m not sure how to fix that.

Writing streak: 372 days

My takeaway for today: Try to get to bed earlier so you can get up at dawn like you did before, because you might get more done during the day when you have that sleep schedule.