from underneath the rubble sing a rebel song

I'm in serious trouble. Half of today was bleak, rotten, miserable, the kind of misery that eats away like acid at one's heart and mind, until all one's faith and hope are burnt to ash. The other half was awesome, perfect, transcendent, where all the words come in just the right order and every character lives and breathes and feels so powerfully that they etch themselves on the page.

From that you might guess that I'm in serious trouble because I'm bipolar, but no (or rather, who knows, but that's not the problem). I'm in serious trouble because I have four days until my self-selected deadline for finishing this draft, and I have more than four days' worth of work left to do (particularly since I've got plans every day of those four days, including flying to Iowa). If the deadline slips by a day or two, the consequence is that I have less time for my beta readers to read it and give me feedback before my ultimate deadline, which is currently two and a half weeks away. And I care too much about writing the perfect book to be happy with whatever I can knock out in the next four days, even though my honors thesis experience would argue that I'm certainly capable of finishing in time.

Anyway, today was extremely hermity. I only left the house for three minutes (to stock up on diet mountain dew from the corner shop), and I spent the rest of the time locked in my room, either working or procrastinating (mostly procrastinating in the morning, almost entirely working from 3:30ish until midnight, with a break for dinner). When I'm in procrastinating/stress/work mode, I tend to cook more than I otherwise would, and so my late breakfast/lunch was some applewood smoked bacon and some scrambled eggs with peppers, onions, and cheese, and my supper was the last of my leftover risotto with a freshly-cooked porkchop (which I wasn't entirely in the mood for, but it had to be cooked tonight, and it turned out deliciously enough that I didn't mind it). I also drank some truly excellent coffee from my French press, in addition to two bottles of diet mountain dew, and yet I feel confident that I'll be able to sleep tonight.

Somewhere along the way, I wrote ten pages from scratch (2200 words) and revised several scenes (which involved writing lots of snippets from scratch, but I didn't count up those words), so I'm making forward progress. And all I can say is onward -- it will happen, and all I can do is make it happen as fast as possible. Now I shall sleep, so that I can go see Alyssa in the morning before continuing to work like the devil is gnawing on my heels. Actually, that wouldn't be particularly motivating, but you get the drift. Goodnight!