Through My Veins

For three days now, I've been writing. Not new writing, but I've been editing and revising. 

On Wednesday, I suddenly opened one of my unfinished manuscripts and started working toward finishing it. This book is the closest to being a finished draft of all 9 of my manuscripts. I have a couple of others that almost as close. If I can get this edit done and fill in any holes, I can start a real edit. 

The process feels great, but I'm battling pain, fatigue, and depression. Typical day for me. 

But I'm working. Writing. I'm tired of not being able to think or use my hands. I know there's dictation, but it isn't the same. I've tried it a few times and I still have to use a keyboard to edit. And it is so slow. 

I remember when I was 11 and started writing. I loved using my pen and scratching those words onto paper. I didn't own a typewriter and couldn't have used it if I did. They hadn't invented computers yet. Pen or pencil were the only way to write. 

When I moved to the typewriter, I had to relearn to write because there is something visceral about using pen and paper. They're an extension to your body when you write. What you think pours out onto the paper through a pen. The way blood flows through my veins. I learned to type, and the words flowed out at 70 words per minute. 

Then, I got a computer when I was in my mid-20s. The pen and paper fell by way, to be used only for notes or when I had no access to the computer. Doing NaNoWriMo I learned to write faster and at last count, in NaNo alone I'd written over 465,712 words over 11 years! It's ridiculous to not have a finished novel to show for all that. 

I haven't given up, even though it feels I'm running out of time. This week I'm trying to make headway. I can tell that the longer I'm at it, the more I want to do, but my body has betrayed me so long. My neck hurts badly as I finish this post. My back hurts. My hands have hurt for days and a couple of fingers are reaching the end of their lifespan, I think. The pain of not finishing is worse. 

Living in a Mental & Social Drought

 I don't want to admit it but I've done so little writing in the last year that you could probably count the page totals on your hands. It is so stressful!

No matter how many deadlines I set, how much I commit to writing, I don't get it done. That sets the tone for my day. I worry I'm wasting time. I tell myself it is important to no one but me. Obviously that's not true. I don't even appear to care!

More than once in recent months, I've thought about whether I should just give up. Toss it all out, clean out the computer, shred my files and give up. How do you do that? The very idea sounds insane. If I did that, the aftermath would be a disaster. 

There is some encouragement when I read that writers around the world are dealing with a similar issue. Isolation destroys creativity. Looks like socializing, real socializing, is critical to creativity after all. All those stories of writers and painters suffering in garrets for their art aren't exactly accurate. We have to have visual and mental stimulation that isn't focused on the end of the world day in and day out. We need to have conversations that provoke thought and generate ideas. We require human interaction to stimulate our synapses and send a current of impressions, feelings, thoughts, and emotions through our bodies. We have to experience life to create art.

So, I'm not alone is this dry spell, apparently. I wonder if they'll have interventions and workshops to jumpstart us?

If I can just get my body not to hurt and my brain to cooperate by generating clarity, I might make progress. I wouldn't need an intervention.

Review: Before I Wake

Before I Wake by Dee Henderson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars



View all my reviews

A New Year! A New Year?

 

Happy New Year, Writers! And Wannabe Writers! I hope you began it with good health, happiness, and a desire to write more this year.

I had COVID-19 in October. If you read my other blogs or you're on my FB page, you probably already know about that. There's even a video on YouTube where I look like a groaning hag. 

I wish I could say that 2020 was a productive writing year. It was anything but. To save time and save boring you, my attention span has been pretty disrupted. I'm not sure why, but once I caught the virus, it got much worse. Two and a half months later, I am still struggling and I can't seem to get over the cough. 

BUT! I did some writing in December. Not really writing, but I started working on an old mostly complete NANOWRIMO story from 2010 with a plotted ending. I read thru it again and it surprised me how much I liked it. I began writing chapter summaries to organize it in my head. I can print these summaries out in Scrivener and have them handy as I write the ending. I need several chapters to get the ending finished. I suspect it will be below 80K words, maybe below 70K, but I don't think I care at this point.

There is a second NANOWRIMO novel that is nearly as complete as this one, so perhaps they will serve as a catalyst to get me moving. 

I have two more chapters to edit for my friend's book, and that seems to focus my mind more. I enjoy editing but it is a long arduous process. I do some line edits if I see something it needs, but I lean toward developmental editing. 

So, there's writing in my future, but my health will determine how much I get done. My RA appears to be under control at the moment and the fibro isn't raging. The virus playing havoc with my system insured that my immune system was too busy to bother with those issues. I need to get back to the gym. I gained back the weight I had lost, and I can tell I'm weaker because I'm not moving. 

I need to plan my days to incorporate my morning devotionals, the gym, and the writing and worry about the rest afterward. 

Please have a wonderful new year. Keep using a mask and keeping your hands clean. This virus isn't just a cold. I had a very mild case, but I have a close friend who is seriously affected by it. She failed an eye test, has neurological issues, neuropathy, and is forgetting simple things like which toothbrush is her's. This is not just a potentially deadly virus, it is disabling for some. One moderate case of it, and I do not want to catch it again. 

May God's grace and mercy keep you and bring you through a blessed year.

A Cold, Wet, Dark Street

Cold, wet, and dark, well, except for the security light above my head. As I pulled my collar up around my neck, I realized I should have brought a heavier jacket.

Thunder rumbled somewhere in the dark, rattling the door behind me, and the rain increased. A sudden gust pushed the drops horizontal, slapping me in the face, and I swiped at it with the back of my hand. 

The street beyond the wide sidewalk was void of traffic and I watched debris rush along the gutter, carried on swift currents, toward the drain somewhere in the dark. The waiting vortex would suck it down, into a cold spiral to a subterranean pool and from there to wherever useless things go. I suppose the ocean eventually. Someplace exotic? A fish's belly? A subduction zone, crushed and roiled into a mix of molten rock?

Thunder exploded with a blinding flash that blew out the sensor on the light and cast me in to utter darkness. The rain became a deluge. I stepped back toward the doorway, trying to shelter against the building. The light struggled back to life after a few moments. Once restored, the glaring light made it nearly impossible to see beyond its circle. I felt trapped by it, like some bug in a glass.

Yeah, that's what it felt like. Someone had dropped me in a glass and put a light over it. Where it was warm and dry and light reigned. They were probably sitting in a chair with a cup of coffee, feet on the desk, watching me in my damp, dark test tube.

I sighed. Too much imagination.

We measure our life by our success, and if we do not perceive any, we deem ourselves a failure. But perception can be flawed. Only we won't realize that until, well, until we're standing in a cold rain on a dark street, drowning.

I'd sort of considered myself a failure at many things, but not the things that mattered. A job well done, a happy family. They were marks of success, right? I didn't have any plaques. Just a lot of photos that showed smiling success. But photos are an imperfect view of success. They're what you see at the moment. And sometimes the smiles aren't real.

The wedding photos, filled with lots of laughing, smiling people, were a prime example. Everyone there had a secret pain. A failure. Or would have before the day was out, before the week was out, before the month... you get it.

Why is disappointment a requirement to everything? Do we really expect so much of ourselves that even a slight bump of it totally derails us? Or is it we expect so much from our successes, more than they can deliver? And when they don't, we blame ourselves.

A streak of lightening flashed across the sky, turning the street an inky black moments later. I closed my eyes. It felt safer than that dark street. I blew out a deep sigh and opened them. The light over my head flashed and came back on. I wonder why closing my eyes felt safer.

I sighed. Too much imagination.

Stepping away from the wall, I stuck my collapsed umbrella out and popped up the canopy and raised the cover of bright cherry blossoms over my head, cutting off the downpour. The street seemed to lighten as the umbrella dimmed the glare from the security light. I turned and started my walk back to the real world at the end of the street. I could see the lights, cars dashing back and forth, people crossing the end of the street, not turning down this long dark one. The sounds of horns were faint but grew louder as I approached the intersection.

Didn't seem to matter much now if I was a success or failure. I was the only one who knew the truth. Others might surmise but smiles hide many things. If you looked happy, people believed you were. If you looked successful, people believed you were. You had to walk down cold, wet, dark streets to know for sure. Most people never make that trip. They don't want to know. I was a rebel, I suppose. My laughter echoed against the buildings, a laughing audience mocking me. Well, them's the breaks.

I stepped from the dark alley, onto the brightly lit sidewalk of the boulevard, the lights reflecting around me from the rain like a pageant catwalk, as if someone wanted to make me feel special. Maybe I was. I smiled.


**  Published on my Life on the Ledge blog in error. So, I'm just sharing here, too!