Set backs & energies

This was not supposed to be the next post on my blog.  My next post was/is going to be all about working incrementally day by day to complete a revision of one of my novels, and announce it being posted on my website!
 
Two days ago I had a setback in the progress I'd been making revising The Bedroom Window.  In moving drafts from my old, barely functioning laptop to my newer, better functioning loaner, I somehow missed the most recent draft. Keep in mind, I began this novel four years ago, and have made previous efforts to tackle the revision in spurts and starts.  It was when making some of the current revisions on the draft I've been working on so far this summer, that I discovered some different wording and turns of phrase from the printed manuscript I have been working from.  I exclaimed a few choice words and turns of phrase upon this discovery.

I knew what I needed to do, but I felt so deflated.  Yesterday, I couldn't work up the energy to do anything; get in the bike ride I'd missed the day before, read another chapter of the book I'm currently reading, or face the task of figuring out what revisions I'd missed in my novel.  I kept telling myself that it was good I'd realized before I am even quite half-way through the process, but I was most annoyed at how I had done this to myself.  I hate it when I am my own worst enemy.  I literally felt drugged, devoid of energy, and slept a fair portion of the day away.  This when there are precious few days of summer, when I don't have to be at work all day, to devote to my own writing.

Today, I gave myself a tutorial on using the compare and combine features in Word.  Figuring out which version to compare with the other made my head spin.  Seeing that one way had 702 revisions and the other had 805 made me tremble.  It didn't take long for my former English-teacher essay-grading mathematics to kick in and make me realize it would take me hours to go through each of those edits individually.  I did my best to combine both drafts and create a new document to work from. I've probably lost something that I'm sure was the perfect, Noble-Prize winning excerpt, ;)  but I am ready to continue on with the painstaking work now. I even did a little reading, and I took an awesome bike ride.  It's amazing to me how energy can shift like that.  I won't question it, and just be grateful it did. 

I do hope my novel will be more interesting to read than this blog update. I will continue to plug away!