Bash script syncronizing yaml and asciidoc headers using sed

I have a bash script that fixes or creates, and syncs the asciidoc attributes and yaml header for blog posts. It does what it is supposed to. But notice I have put sleep commands in between the sed -i insert commands. This is because I was getting unusual error messages such as:

sed: -e expression #1, char 40: unknown command: `Y'

But there is no command or any expression containing a Y in the file. I figured it was perhaps some kind of race condition, and wanted to 'slow' sed down. This sees to solve the problem but is there a better way to do this?

#!/usr/bin/bash      
#Before runing this script ensure the doc has a valid asciidoctor title    
#then set the type lang and author defaults    
    
export sectnumlevels=2    
export toc="true"    
export includedir="include"    
    
[[ -z "$1" ]] && { echo "need a file" ; exit 1 ; }    
sed -n '/^=\s/q1' "$1" && { echo "this looks like it doesn't have a title" ; exit 1 ; }    
export file=$1    
#delete blank lines    
sed -i '10,19{/^[[:space:]]*$/d}' "$1"-    
    
export title=`sed -n /^\=\ .*/p "$1"`-    
export author=`awk /author:/{'first = $1; $1=""; print $0'} "$1" |sed 's/^ //g'`    
export categories=`awk /categories:/{'first = $1; $1=""; print $0'} "$1" |sed 's/^ //g'`    
export tags=`awk /tags:/{'first = $1; $1=""; print $0'} "$1" |sed 's/^ //g'`    
    
[[ -z $author ]] && author="Name AUTHOR"    
export date=`awk '/date:/{print $2}' "$1" | uniq`-    
[[ -z "$date" ]] && date=`date -Im`    
export type="post"    
export lang="fr"    
export draft="true"    
[[ -z $categories ]] && categories="[]"    
[[ -z $tags ]] && tags="[]"    

function yaml {
  sed -i '1 i ---' "$file"
  sed -i "/^---/a title: $title" "$file"
  sed -i "/^title:/a author: $author" "$file"
  sed -i "/^author:/a date: $date" "$file"   
  sed -i "/^date:/a type: $type" "$file"     
  sed -i "/^type:/a draft: $draft" "$file"   
  sed -i "/^draft:/a categories: $categories" "$file"
  sed -i "/^categories:/a tags: $tags" "$file"
  sed -i '/^tags:/a ---' "$file"
  #this is the weirdest hack    
  sed -i '9 a #;' "$file" && sed -i 's/^#;//g' "$file"
}


#call yaml function if no yaml header
sed -r -n '/^---(\s|$)/q1' "$1" &&  yaml-

#but if there is already a header it may be missing stuff
#needs to take care of when the key exists but no value...
sed -n '/^title:\s/q1' "$1" &&  sed -i "/^---/a title: $title" "$file"
sed -n '/^author:\s/q1' "$1" &&  sed -i "/^title:/a author: $author" "$file"
[[ ! $(awk '/^date:/{print $2}' "$1") ]] &&  sed -i "/^author:/a date: $date" "$file"
sed -n '/^type:\s/q1' "$1" &&  sed -i "/^date:/a type: $post" "$file"



#start the asciidoctor attributes
sed -i '/^:author:.*/d' "$1" &&  sed -i "/^=\s/a :author: $author" "$1"
#[[ ! $(awk '/^:date:/{print $2}' "$1") ]] && sed -i "/^:author:/a :date: $date" "$1"
sleep 0.25-
sed -i '/^:date:.*/d' "$1" &&  sed -i "/^:author:/a :date: $date" "$1"
sleep 0.25-
sed -i '/^:type:.*/d' "$1" && sed -i "/^:date:/a :type: $type" "$1"
sleep 0.25-
sed -i '/^:toc:.*/d' "$1" &&  sed -i "/^:type:/a :toc: $toc" "$1"-
sleep 0.25-
sed -i '/^:experimental:.*/d' "$1" &&  sed -i '/^:toc:/a :experimental:' "$1"-
sleep 0.25-
sed -i '/^:sectnums:.*/d' "$1" && sed -i '/^:experimental:/a :sectnums:' "$1"
sleep 0.25-
sed -i '/^:sectnumlevels:.*/d' "$1" &&  sed -i "/^:sectnums:/a :sectnumlevels: $sectnumlevels" "$1"-

if [ ! $lang = "en" ]; then
  sed -n '/^:lang:\s/q1' "$1" &&  sed -i "/^:sectnumlevels:/a :lang: $lang" "$1"-
sleep 0.25-
  sed -i '/:includedir:.*/d' "$1" && sed -i "/^:lang:/i :includedir: content/$lang/$includedir" "$1"
sleep 0.25-
  sed -i '/include::locale/d' "$1" &&  sed -i '/^:lang:/a include::locale/attributes.adoc[]' "$1"-
sleep 0.25-
  sed -i "/^include::locale/a #;" "$1" && sed -i 's/^#;//g' "$1"
fi