Sobriquet 52.18

I ended up writing another little bit of the dissertation, but only after I spent the vast majority of the day feeling stressed out over the whole thing. I am so overwhelmed by the size of this chapter. I mean, I've been working on Disgrace for the better part of a year and every single stage of the process seems to take much longer than expected and require more work than anticipated. And that's frustrating. Right now, I am struggling to connect a few dots. There are times when everything sparkles in crystal clarity while, at some other moments, everything looks muddled to me. And that's where the stress really starts to eat away at my desire to work. Plus, the deeper I get into the chapter, the more I feel like I have invested and the more I stand to lose if things don't go together as planned. So, there's a part of me that fretted today. And I fretted all day. Until some time after ten when I told Fretting Erik to get off his fretting ass and start working. Which I did.

But, man. I always seem to hit this point. Once I cross a certain number of pages -- say, twenty or thirty -- everything changes and the dynamic of writing becomes something a bit more painful.

Still, I knew there would be some rough patches when I started this thing and, if this is one of them, so be it. I just hope that, ultimately, days like today will be few and far between.

For tomorrow: Reread a bit or plan some more.