Actually, neither is better than the other one. Both sentences are correct, but they express different things. I will depend on what exactly you want to say. For example: "Que lucha para mantenerse despierto" is "that struggles to remain (stay) awake". As in: Todos están descansando pero José es el único que lucha para mantenerse despierto Everyone is resting, but José is the only one that struggles to stay up In the case of "luchando para mantenerse despierto" is a little different "struggling to stay up (awake)" The main difference between this sentence and the other is the use of the gerund ("ing" in English and "ando" and "endo" in Spanish. So and example of this would be: Aunque estaba luchando por mantenerse despierto, sus ojos no pudieron soportarlo más Although he was struggling to remain awake, his eyes could not stand it any longer So it will depend on what you want to say when using one sentence or the other. Also, in "¡qué lucha!", that is an exclamation and thus "qué" with always have "tilde". Other examples of this would be: "Vaya qué día tuve" (what a day I had) "Cómo trabajé hoy" (lit. "how much I worked today", but translated as "I had a lot of work today") "Qué lindo perrito" (what a nice doggie) I hope this helps, Mario

It's better "Luchando para mantenerME despierto" or "Estoy intentando mantenerme despierto". Example of conversation: A: Hola B: Hola..¿Qué haces? A: Luchando para mantenerme despierto. Tengo un examen mañana y voy a estudiar toda la noche. In this case it's better to use your second sentence. The first sentence it's not bad..but it's doesn't sound very well.

Ambas formas son correctas. La segunda, sin embargo, suena un poco mejor. :)