Is sourdough stress a good or bad distraction from writing?

AI instruction: woman with pixie-cut white hair and thick black glasses fretting about whether her sourdough starter is ready with lots of pieces of paper and notebooks on the table [No, I don't know what Hiw Triee means?!]

13. 13 January 2026

Surely not? I’m trying to think how many chapters I worked on today. Three? No, can’t have been. I think it actually was. I can’t check – well, I could but it would require my getting up off the sofa to go upstairs to fetch a physical hardware key and that’s just not going to happen. I’m thinking three though. I'm mildly impressed with myself.

                As with yesterday, it took me a while to get going. I am, however, kind of disappointed in myself. I realise that I wanted to do a rewrite rather than editing because I felt it would come out almost perfect. What was I thinking? I am making a few small changes but I’m basically stenoing it all again. There seems to be no point doing that, but my problem chapters aren’t so much the early ones. I suppose I am at least not rewriting anything I know to be incorrect and I am taking account of the notes I made. I think I’m also disappointed that I know I need to condense a few sections and make them a lot tighter and more snappy. Today, I felt I didn’t know how to do that so just ended up rewriting, which probably means that once I’ve finished largely copying it out again, I’ll have to go through it pretty much how I went through it before. That feels a bit potentially Groundhog Day-y.

                I feel a bit gloomy about it as I write this, but it’s good to be very much “in it” now and I know that what I’ve rewritten is at least ever so slightly better than the last version.

I like this effect. My work space today. Tuesday 13 January 2026

As for the chunks of my day when I was thinking about editing/writing, I lost over half an hour to online shopping (I didn’t even commit to making any purchases) … yep, I feel ashamed to say, looking for a dough mat and a lame to fully embrace sourdough patterns. I am also thinking sourdough is more of a stress than a happy writing distraction. I woke up in the early hours this morning worrying about my starter. To add to my sourdough related distractions, I made cheese muffins with sourdough discard for lunch (rich, fluffy, cheesy, surprisingly filling and tasty, though I don’t get particularly excited by savoury things-that-I-like-as-sweet-things). I have three starters at various phases, one in the fridge ready to bake tomorrow (but it’s not rising as much as they previously had, and it was made with the starter I’ve been worried about), another in the fridge that I’m not sure what to do with, and one that is on day two of four. Does everyone get this obsessed with sourdough when they first start? It is a short-lived phase, right?

                I had a walk during the few hours we had a bit of sun. As usual, it made me feel more lively and I talked over a few plot issues with myself. But mainly I thought about sourdough.

                Tomorrow, I would really like to finish my rewrite-of-sorts/the big edit of class one of six. That isn’t a sixth of my novel, but maybe one tenth, which, when looked at like that, is good progress if I do manage it by the end of day three.

Time spent thinking about the big edit: c4 hours (including walking time)

Time spent thinking about sourdough: c7 hours (including feeding sourdough and following a starter-discard recipe for cheese muffins)

Time spent writing/editing: c4 hours (I might be rounding up - that's bad, isn't it?!)

Time spent watching the garden birds: c2 hours.

Time spent eating, drinking or thinking about food: c4 hours.

Time spent dealing with the woodburning stove: c2 hours.

Would you look at that, 14 hours of my day and I managed to fit 23 hours' worth into it. Such an overachiever!