Despite being sick, yesterday turned out to be a good day for writing. I wrote several blog posts that I backdated to fill in the gaps from the last week--mostly stuff about my health and being sick. That started off the writing wave. Usually doing that and my journal entry here just wears me out mentally so I give up trying to write anything else, but this time I felt more like I was in a groove.
So I opened that fanfic file and decided to finally rewrite chapter 42 that's been giving me so much trouble. Completely from scratch--no using bits of text previously written. And it worked. I managed to fit it into my new timeline and events and the only old text I used was the first paragraph of the next chapter which I moved over because it now made more sense in the new 42. It completely changes the scene so the MC never talks to his friend, but the scene was mostly rehashing stuff from the show and him wallowing in self-pity. The story didn't need any more of that at the moment, lol.
Once I got 42 done, I was on a roll. I moved down to the next unfinished chapter which was 48. I had only ever written about half of it and knew I wanted the MC to go talk to his love interest but couldn't figure out how to segue between the two scenes in the chapter. This time I just... I don't know went for it. It was awkward, but the characters are being awkward as it's a new relationship so I think it worked. Then I moved on to completely writing a new chapter 49 (actually, I don't think I ever had a 49 and moved the old chapter 50 to be the new 51). I breezed through 40 but stalled when I got to 50 because the scenes in this chapter are kind of big, completely new to the outline (I only thought of them recently as opposed to some of the ideas that have been percolating for years) and needs to connect what's going on previously to a big plot point coming up. Ugh. To much pressure.
I took a short break but couldn't shake the bug to write some more. Instead of working on chapter 50, I went back to the first finished but unedited chapter and started doing rewrites and what I call 1st edits (rewrites tend to change large chunks of text along with fixing any spelling/grammar/punctuation mistakes I happen to notice while 1st edits pick up harder to notice errors and fine tune everything for continuity and flow, etc... there are also 2nd and 3rd edits I do).
Anyway, over the course of the day, I managed to do rewrites and 1st edits for chapters 41-43 and rewrites for 44-46. By the time I was done with chapter 46, though, I had taken my meds for the night and they make me very sleepy. I knew I wasn't going to be able to focus for much longer so around 11pm, I closed up shop. But my brain was still buzzing with the story and ideas.
I couldn't sleep. Not at all. It also could have been the two giant cups of coffee I had around 3-5pm because I tried to nap and only gave myself a headache plus I hadn't eaten all day and was in caffeine withdrawal (so not helping the headaches any).
I tossed and turned and dozed a little until 3am when I had to go to the bathroom. I don't think I ever fell asleep after that, or if I did, it wasn't for more than a few minutes at a time. I finally gave up a little before 6am and got up to play on my phone until 7am. Then I had to charge it so it'll be ready for the 10yo to do his Zoom classes at 8.
The other possibility is I'm on the verge of a manic episode. Or already in one. It's hard to tell when you're hypomanic with bipolar depression because you spend so much of your time so depressed that manic isn't really manic--it's just... normal for the most part. You get a normal amount of energy and can do normal things as opposed to bipolar I where you get super crazy (metaphorically speaking) when you're manic.
One of the less thrilling aspects of being manic is the insomnia. I have chronic insomnia to begin with that can last months on end, but when I'm manic, I barely sleep at all. I think my record was 46 hours of being awake--that's two days straight without sleep. And the thing is you don't realize you're doing it. You don't want to and can't sleep. I took my meds last night--the mood stabilizer that usually makes me so drowsy I can barely see straight and my sleeping pill. They did nothing. Ugh.
I wish I could have all the fun stuff about being manic like the super creativity and focus without the bad stuff like insomnia and making stupid decisions.
So here I am, running on about three hours of crappy sleep and wide awake but with no way to get coffee or food. I feel pretty good--illnesswise. My sore throat is gone and I'm breathing fine although I can feel my sinuses clogged up and that ever-present urge to sneeze that is so annoying because you never sneeze. It's time for more Zyrtec, but I only have two doses left. My husband was supposed to get more but didn't. I'm not really coughing either, and I haven't taken any cough syrup since yesterday morning.
If I get over this cold in less than a week it will be a freaking record for me. I always get sick for weeks or months. My husband is always joking about me "milking" my colds even though I normally do all the things I would do if I wasn't sick like cleaning and cooking so not sure what I was milking all those other times. I had walking pneumonia and still cooked (mostly from scratch) every day and kept the kitchen cleaned up despite feeling like I was dying with every breath. They don't appreciate the work I do, I swear.
So, yeah, was a pretty good day yesterday. Not sure about today. Either I'll stay in this (apparent) manic phase and keep writing, maybe even get ahead of schedule or I'll crash. At least I don't have to feel guilty if I crash and just stay in bed all day since I can't leave my room anyway. What else was I going to do? It's not like I have to go cook or something.
Here's hoping I get through chapter 50, rewrites of 47-52, 1st edits of 44-52 and maybe even some 2nd edits (really going through slowly to make sure I got all the mistakes and that everything sounds right and I didn't miss any plot holes--like using a fine tooth comb) of the earlier chapters. After 2nd edits are 3rd edits which is copy/pasting to LibreOffice to fix formatting issues then pasting to a site that strips extra unseen formatting marks and has Grammarly check for stuff I missed (because I still always miss stuff). And then it's on to formatting for AO3 and my blog and tumblr. Ugh. Okay, I'm getting way ahead of myself now.
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