Goodbye, Brain Fog!

In previous posts, I’ve indicated that I’ve had some health issues over recent months which caused - among other things - the dreaded Brain Fog.

Well. I’m happy to report that at long last, it seems to have lifted.

I have done SO much work on Tilda#5 in the last two weeks, you wouldn’t believe. I think I last reported that I had around 20K words of very rough story down. What I hadn’t realised as I was writing them though, was that I had written several key scenes at least twice. So a good chunk of that work was unnecessary duplication…or so I thought.

When I first discovered what I’d done, I was really cross with myself. What a plonker, wasting time and effort on essentially repeating myself. I spent a very intense day going through what I had so far, cutting and pasting all the repeated work into the single most relevant place for it in the story so far, and then colour coding it with digital highlighter to indicate all that had to be - somehow - pulled together into one final, cohesive scene.

I’ve still not quite finished this process and able to move on beyond what I’d written with those first 20K words. And for all the work I’ve done so far, the word count hasn’t increased much, considering I’m adding much more detail as I pull things together. I think I’ve only added a couple of thousand words, if that. But what I now have in that 22K-ish wordcount is definitely of better quality, more cohesive, and the story direction and plotline from here on is much clearer to me.

I can’t believe how addled my brain was in its foggy phase… Looking back, even in my rough notebook, the scenes are a jumbled mess, with no order to them, reflecting my lack of concentration and focus. I think I can safely say this will have begun life as the most brain-dumpy novel I’ve ever written.

But it’s such a relief to know that the fog has finally lifted. I’m on my way again - and so is Tilda, in her final adventure. Long may it continue.

Source: Unsplash