The dialogue with the antagonist is finally finished, sort of. I’m not quite 100% happy with it just yet, but I’m already behind on schedule and there’s a limit to how much editing I can feasibly do, so it will have to pass muster for now.
Progress
Remember when Past Me neatly divided the amount of work I had to do into scenes? I’m so deep in the weeds I don’t even know what a scene looks like any more. This single dialogue at the beginning of Day Four is arguably longer than the entire surgery in the prologue. I don’t know how many “scenes” I finished this week but I’m honestly just happy to be over the hurdle so I can move on to other sections of the game.
Finishing the writing on schedule is looking increasingly dire, so I may have to push back my deadline again and cut more stuff. But it’s a little early to worry about that. Right now my plan is just to forge ahead as much as I can and figure out where I stand on January 15 before making a decision.
Health Issues
As an aside, I haven’t been doing very well this week.
Every day I feel like crap and I don’t really want to write, so I have to force myself to put something down on the page. I stop after an hour or two because my head starts to feel like it’s stuffed with wool. But I can’t help but ask myself: Could I be spending more hours in a day writing? Am I handicapping my project if I only write for an hour or two every day?
This week I had more trouble sleeping and lost almost a day’s worth of productivity as a result. I took it pretty hard and had a mini breakdown in the wee hours of the morning, until I realized that mini breakdowns are even less productive.
It’s at times like this that I have to tell myself again that my mental health is important to finishing this project. I worked a little slower this week so I could focus on getting back to a healthy, regular sleep schedule. I still feel horrible about slipping so many deadlines but honestly, I don’t know what I can do other than take it in stride and move on.
Chin Kee Yong 