Too Little Time

Last week I struggled for 4 days to write a chapter of my WIP.  I would look at what I had written, and reword it, and delete it (don't worry- I save each days work in a new file name, so it wasn't really gone!)  And I still wasn't happy with it, but I decided to move on to the next chapter (which was much easier to write.)

I'm not sure what the problem was with the first chapter-- Was I trying to make my character do something they wouldn't?  Was I using the wrong point of view?  Whatever it was, I was certain it was horrible and my critique partners would rip it apart.

When I sent it out to them, I told them to take a close look at that chapter as something was off.  Then I waited to hear back from them.

Interestingly, not one of them saw it as I did.  Sure there were things I need to develop a bit more (it is a first draft, after all), but they didn't see what I was talking about (and had expected it to be really bad, based on my perceptions.)

After we talked about it, I realized it wasn't my writing that had been giving me problems last week (as the chapter I wrote fit where it was, and moved the story along), but it was more that I had been forcing myself to write and get it down in a limited amount of time.

Has this ever happened to you?  Have you ever had so much going on that you try to make time for all of it, and feel that your writing isn't moving the way you think it should, even when there's nothing wrong with it?  How do you balance it all?