Day 13

07:30

Up and about. Determined to do better today, though I'm realising I might have to be more realistic about my goals while I'm working.

19:45

Back at the hotel. Sit down in front of the word processor. Three days of doing less than normal, and I already feel rusty and apprehensive. Still, no time like the present.

21:15

So tired I can’t think. I have to have a nap: I can’t help it.

23:45

Awake and demoralised. Another night without writing – only a few hundred words. I’ll work for another half an hour, I just have to.

It’s amazing, just 8 or 10 hours of regular work, and when you sit down to write, you can’t think you’re so tired.

For the first time, I can see why so many writers with day jobs write in the early morning. I’ve always hated getting up early, but I understand: it’s impossible to put more than your haziest, least-focussed and most dissatisfying efforts in at the end of a day’s work – even if that day wasn’t particularly hard.

Still, back to work.

02:45

Well, I might have fucked myself for work tomorrow, but I made my hours and my word limit, and this makes me feel much better about myself and the project.

If I don’t get any more work done here this week, at least I know I worked hard when I could, and that I’m still trying my best.

I don’t know if it’s just that I’m getting closer to the end, or that I’m writing in a hotel room instead of the cosy nook I’d developed for myself over the last week, but I don’t feel like I’m writing as well as I have done. I’ve had the luxury of spending as much time as needed on the bits I felt were poorer, and not moving on until they were fixed.

Here, time is a luxury and I feel the constant need to move on: as a result, writing here is more like the old experience – a chore, something I make myself do. But then, maybe, it’s nearly 3am in the morning and I am making myself do it.

We’ll see how it looks when I read it back.

Word count: 2,487
Hours writing: 4.5