I haven’t managed to get back to my usual morning schedule of writing yet. Dayjobbery filled most of the day, until I realized that the stack of tissues piling up beside me and the general malaise that I felt was part of a deeper issue. I’m not sure if it’s some weird combination of a head cold, flu, a fibro flare, or accidental glutening but I spent a chunk of the afternoon in bed and the first few hours of the evening just trying to focus.

I knocked out the first 800 words fairly quickly, and had another hour to write from the coffee shop when I took Andrea to work. I was pretty sure I could pull off another 800. Headphones on, I’m just starting in and I glance up to see the manager flagging me down and waving me to the back of the store. Andrea’s co-worker on the midnight shift passed out. They helped her to the back, where she completely blacked out. I helped her from there — made sure it wasn’t low blood sugar, made her drink orange juice anyways, and took her home.

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Project: Black Mirror

New words written: 1076

Reason for stopping: Hit midnight

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My big lesson from writing today is that I’m still dealing with structural issues. I’ve got multiple points of view, plots and sub-plots, but only a vague sense of how I should organize it as far as chapter go. In a free fall sort of way, it’s nice to just write without worrying about the deeper structure, knowing that I will puzzle together the lattice of this spiderweb later.

I’ve fallen a little shy of the daily average, but it’s only day three. I’m going to get a jumpstart on tomorrow’s numbers tonight, and plan to make some big numbers on the weekend while Andrea’s sleeping. There’s this wall when I’m writing, but it’s kind of soft. I can feel give when I push against it. I know that it’s close to crumbling and when it does, words are going to spill out like they used to, when I used to sit and drop a thousand words an hour without really trying.