It's almost everything I need

I worked head-down to finish the first novel of my time here. It was one that I liked, and it has merit, but it wasn't the one that I came here to write.

So now I'm trying, with the time that's slipping away here, to write the one that I've been failing to do for a couple of years. It's almost painful. No, it is painful. There's nothing that flies off the page about it. It never really moves by itself at all. I am shoving with my shoulder braced against it, and the full weight of my pushing-self pressing into it. I feel it pressing back. Pressing down on me. This is the last time I'll try to make this book work.

I've pulled together all of the separate segments I had, and typed them up together, which brings me to about a third of the way through the book. I had a brainwave about the ways that the storylines need to be connected together, and I've put that in, but now everything hangs in the balance of me figuring out the details of that connection, and making it work. I feel like I'm trying to chip off wall-paint with my fingernails. I'm revealing tiny little details bit by bit, and it takes a huge amount of work in order to be able to see any progress. And it fucking hurts.

This song feels right to me today: