Flu Memories

Happy to report this post is long over-due. Getting better meant getting busy and this blog got lost in the bowels of my hard drive. But here it is...

Day 6 of the dreaded flu. The one I was urged to get a shot for.

This is the first day I am upright in a chair, spurred on by an e-mail about insufficient funds in my checking account. Another worry to being sick means no work and no income so that $34 means a lot right now. Weakness couples with wariness. My body ached in a way I have never experienced in my 42 years and never having been 42 before I suppose age may have tweaked this issue

Mark fell victim first. He complained of a naggy cough that I attributed to an earlier hike, knowing down deep if it was the flu I was next. No quarter. Black flag flapping over my head.

I went through Monday unscathed. Tuesday dawned and as I plotted my work for the week, a cough cropped up. Nothing special. Almost passable as an allergy. It followed me through the day, deepening, growing insistent. I cancelled my Tuesday plans, describing the symptoms to one friend who groaned; “Oh no, Laura, that’s how the flu started with me.”

And for me as well.

Sleep was broken and I am not sure if the weird visions were the result of actual REM or lucid thinking (all were freaky Yellow Submarine-esque). Fever followed with chills and sweats but I was so sick I could not muster the energy to kick blankets off . Even my ankle bones hurt. The worst part was the cough. You never know how much you need abdomen muscles until you have to hack. I feel like I have been working out to Abs of Steel when in reality the only position I can manage is supine on my couch with my eyes closed listening to the Jodi Arias trial. That was a big deal too. I know how sick I am when I absolutely don’t care what’s on TV—much to Mark’s delight. He recovered faster and was able to rejoin the living but I am still firmly planted on the couch, too fearful of relapse. Because only this morning I woke up with a temperature and a high fever and segued into feeling almost (dare I say) good this late afternoon. Relapse is high and I don’t care for a repeat performance. At all.

But the flu also has (eeep!) blessings. Being sick forces indulgence. Read. Watch some bad TV. Read. Let others take care of you. Read. Contemplate the things you take for granted, daily walks, coffee with friends, writing on a whim. Read. And rest to your heart’s content.

 

And read.

Even this 500 word blog is tiring me out.

Advice For the Gentle Reader

 

 

A few words of advice. 500 words. Or 475 to be exact.

Advice is flung from all directions when you’re a writer. Some is good. Most mediocre. Vaster amounts are bad. Here goes my twisted version of it.

Gentle Reader, (that’s how one of my rejection letters started), to be a writer, you must read. As much as you can. Get into a book. Read classics. Read graphic novels. Re-read the books you should have read in high school. Read new books. Read old. Read crappy books (up to page 100 and if it still sucks toss it. That’s what Oscar Wilde told me.)

Second: Blog. Personally I have a love/hate thing with blogging. My life is not that exciting to relay on a regular basis. Friends plead for a blog about my job but I still need the money so I’m not doing that today. Blogs should be short and full of content, if not for you, Gentle Reader, than for me. The practice of blogging regularly puts you out there. Hell, you might get discovered by an agent via blog, just like I thought I might get noticed by a French modeling agency strolling the Santa Anita mall as a zitty teenager, but it could happen.

Thirdly: Get into a writer’s group. Groups shatter the bubbles you ensconce in while writing but it needs to be an arena of support and a safe dry run for your work. If you don’t experience this then find another group. There is nothing worse than writer’s groups where one jerk usurps all the time with their hideous prose and talks smack about other peoples. It took time to find my current cadre and I’ve been with them over 4 years now. Yeah, I felt weird joining a group called Moms Write because my kids are the hairy 4-legged variety. But we meet on days I don’t work, at human hours in the morning and seriously, all the women in Moms Write completely rock. I am never bored with their readings. And maybe because my ego’s a bit on the tender side, they like my work too, enough to tell me when to tweak it or toss something out.

Fourth: Send your darlings to slaughter, a.k.a. submit. This advice I received from an author as she signed her book for me; ‘the difference between a writer and published writer is persistence.’ So since I am wrapping up a novel, it might be nice to have some work published. Or I can wait for a bored literary agent to troll this blog and believe me worthy of ink and paper. Those first stings of rejection suck but that doesn’t mean your work does.

So there you have it. We’ll depart on this last bit of very useful advice and I will leave you alone.

Gentle Reader: Go write.

 

Noon Girl

I miss getting up early. A simple enough problem with an easy solution;

Get up early.

Here is my first world dilemma:

 

Lately I have lounged in bed anywhere up to 10, 11, even 12 o’clock. My body’s demand for 8 hour slumber muffles alarm clocks and has serendipitously drained my cell phone of battery. Getting up at 8 a.m. is a feat right now. My bones protest. Coffee prods movement but the brain is lackluster and here is why I am whiny.

 

I am a writer who likes to write in the morning. The best sentences are milled before the sun is up.

 

The cause is my bread and butter job. My shift ends at 2:30 a.m. I do not get into an actual supine position until after 3 a.m. and to lull my noisy brainwaves I need to read. I'm lucky there (as my knuckles drub a piece of nearby wood). Reading rapidly thickens my lids no matter how good or bad the material maybe. Same with movies. It doesn't matter the content. But I don't watch too many movies anymore.

 

I long for the days when work forced me up at 4 a.m. to make my 6 a.m. shift but the flip side, for the writer, was the adjustment to my bio rhythms. My blood was geared for the same bat time same bat channel every day. There was satisfaction rising with the sun, a mug of strong coffee and a fresh screen/page that I gleefully speared for hours.

 

Those mornings are very far away right now.

 

I have tried to fool myself into thinking that when I wake up (it's almost 10 a.m. by the way) it is actually the same magical dawn hour when my words were ready for harvest. Unlike dawn, however, the day is already under way. Appointments to keep. Friends to lunch with. Laundry room vacant (got to get my stuff in there quick living in an apartment). But it’s all wrong for writing.

 

I have also tried the vampiric approach. Mining for words in the wee hours. Somehow, it’s not registering. Night distractions are worse than days. Cats perform their somnambulistic routines. Husband snores from the bedroom. More laundry glares undone from the corner. And this is the time I like to read.

 

Don’t worry. As soon as I change shifts I’ll be whining about how I can’t write in the mornings. I can repeat this blog and insert ‘night’ for ‘day’, sick cycle that this is.

 

The only temporary cure I can come up with for this blip on my creative radar is to keep doing what I am doing.

 

Which is writing…