I had been wrestling with a complex scenario for some weeks; the main issue was in trying to keep it all realistic. Solving the problem in one part would lead to a problem in another. Finally, I thought I had it all buttoned down, when I came to realize that even the lead-in would have to be revised. Resigned to the fact that it was all my own doing, I set to work, spending all of March on the re-write. Then, on April 1st, of all days, my re-write disappeared. Well, it didn't disappear so much as revert to the same draft I had saved on March 4th. So I figured I'd just open the backup copy, the one I keep on an external hard drive. But it, too, had reverted to the March 4th document. Have I elicited your sympathy yet?
So I took the problem to Google AI. After some poking around under the AI's tutelage, I was able to find the glitch in my LibreOffice Writer word processing app: a crashed auto-save process. I was able to reboot the process, but not able to recover the month's work. I was discouraged and decided to step away for a few days.
Even so, I began to feel guilty for delaying the completion of the promised story. And then I realized that a guilt trip had no place in the fun I normally enjoyed from writing. And, as I've said many times, I write for fun. Even this blog entry is written out of guilt.
So, here I sit, on the horns of a dilemma. I do want the fun of continuing to write this story, but resent the feeling of obligation to do so, which drains it of fun. Go figure.