I’m happy to say that my strategy worked. In an effort to get myself writing/editing again, I told myself last week that I just had to work on a single sentence and that would be enough. It took me a day longer than planned to get at it, but the important part is that I did. And, as I’d hoped, I did more than a single sentence. I’ll admit it wasn’t a lot more, but that’s fine. I told myself one sentence is enough and I’m sticking to that. Anything else is a bonus.

Even better than getting that single sentence done, my low-pressure approach paid off in that I also worked on the novel yesterday, writing a whopping 334 words for my rewrite of the first chapter. I also expect to get a bit more done today after I finish this blog entry. That’ll give me three days of writing this week, after weeks of getting nothing done. I’m definitely going to call that a win.

This is not to say that everything is fine and my depression is magically cured. Of course it’s not. I’m still struggling with my energy levels and the trade-off for getting some writing done yesterday was that I didn’t go to my meeting. I’ve still only got so much energy to go around and I have to ration it carefully.

I also wish I could say that once I started writing, the floodgates opened and the words poured out of me. In truth, those 334 words were dragged out of me, kicking and screaming, and kept showing up in the wrong order. I spent a lot of my writing time rearranging sentences, staring at them, and then rearranging them again.

That’s not to say it didn’t feel good to be writing.  It did. There was still a sense of satisfaction when I finished rearranging a particular string of words, and while I’m not convinced that this new opening is fantastic, I do think I’m on the right track. Like the original version, it’s going to need some polishing and that’s fine. The important thing is I’m back at it, at least for the moment. That’s a victory I’ll take.