Creative disposal and recycling

I'm working hard to reach my deadline on August 21st. I've canceled almost everything I can (well, I am going to my Writers' Group this week.) Today, I took to getting up from the desk every hour and walking. I wrap my ankle. My foot pain's no longer too bad. I use a weight belt for my back. So patched and rigged, I was able to walk for an hour total. I didn't snack: too busy walking. If I could keep this up, I will start to lose weight, and I need that so badly.

Writing feels good but also raises my stress level with how slow it is. On a read through, I decided a particular scene wouldn't work, although it does have important set pieces. So, I cut the scene and dropped into an outtakes document. I dissected it, keeping everything I could use and dropping everything else. Tomorrow, when I write the replacement scene, I'll have that outtakes document to one side of the screen so I can drop and adapt stuff into the new scene.

Meanwhile, I decided that a character I need later should be introduced sooner. So, I'm writing her into the first scene, giving her most of another character's lines. And I decided that part of the first scene needs to be explained better.

So, I'm rewriting, not writing. It's getting stuck in these details that ruined my prospects of getting this done before. But something is different this time. I'm more immersed in it. It seems to me that plotting takes this kind of attention.