My Blood Pressure's Telling Me Something

Okay, maybe switching between projects as I've been doing isn't that good of an idea. A check of my blood pressure today revealed it is out of control. For now, I'm putting it down to too much caffeine. (I like Mountain Dew a little too much.) Of course, quitting is going to be a headache, literally and figuratively, and then I'm going to be sleepy as hell all the time for about a month. It might be a bit worse than that, too. I also might be using too much salt. It's easy to get careless about those things. I should be getting more exercise, but that's really the first thing that goes if I'm behind schedule that day.

I've had to stop going to the writers' group. Until my productivity problem is solved, getting critique is of little good. I have to immerse myself in producing things now and try to get faster. At least now I have some initial estimate as to how long a project takes from first draft to final according to pages. The time is appalling, but consistent with how much time overruns I have. Writing the first draft is easy. Two hours per page at most. Editing and rewriting it are terrible. Add five more hours per page to go from first-to-final draft, if I don't have any setbacks, such as finding a scene conceptually isn't working. That always means creating a whole other scene from scratch, which generally takes longer than an ordinary first draft, because it wasn't the easiest thought I had.

Therefore, without setbacks, I can now expect a twenty page story to take 140 hours. Three-and-a-half work weeks. Then, I'd better add about a week for possible setbacks. Twenty pages would take 180 hours. That's a few days over a month. That is painfully slow.

If those measures fail, I might just have to concentrate on one project rather than switching between several. The problem is, and has always been, I'm not fast enough. I'm getting frustrated at not getting anything done.

For troubles outside writing: I have a friend who's in hardship right now and I might have to share my apartment for a while. I'm not as concerned about this now as I was yesterday. It looks like it won't happen. Still I offered, even though I like my privacy.

Then the situation with my Dad is not looking good. I have to go to his place now and then to help out, and when I do, it depresses me. More about my Dad will follow later. An autobiographical post is one of the big projects I've been working on.