NaNoWriMo 2013, Day 15 (The Halfway Point!)
I’m charting my daily progress on NaNoWriMo. Since you may or may not care, I’ll kindly hide it. Thanks for taking the time. :)
| NaNoWriMo Progress: MCU Case Files: Death Scene | ||
| Actual | Required | |
|---|---|---|
| Progress | ||
| New Words Today | 2157 | 1667 |
| Daily Average | 1765 | 1667 |
| Remaining Req’d Daily Avg |
1470 | 1667 |
| Expected Total | 50000 | 50000 |
Notes:
- Yeah. I totally skipped yesterday. Didn’t quite make up for it, today, but I’m still where I should be or a little ahead, so I’m not going to beat myself up.
- In my defense, I tore my cornea yesterday and could not focus my eyes on anything except far distances (so driving was OK), but work and writing? Yeah, those didn’t happen so much. I went to work, but didn’t get a lot done. :) Then I went to physical therapy and they did mean things to my arm and it hurt. And at some point in the last few days, I threw my back out. So . . . I’m basically saying I deserve a day off, dammit. :)
- Had one of Those Things™ happen today. Sat down to write a scene to introduce a new-to-this-book character, Monique, my TV journalist character. I was going to have her approached by one of my other characters . . . but who should appear on the page but the evasive witness girl everyone’s been looking for. She’s a . . . “lady of the evening,” and was afraid the cops or feds would arrest her, so she decided to talk to the reporter instead. Not her brightest move, but Monique was nice enough to her. Now just have to figure out how to make that fit in with the rest of the scenes.
- I’m basically writing it out of order at this point. Anhy scene that strikes me as interesting, I write.
- Favorite thing I had to look up: what restaurants are near the Fox Theater in Atlanta.
Gary Henderson
Gary Henderson is an amateur author who lives in the Greater Atlanta Metropolitan Area with a chef housemate. By day he is a mild-mannered software developer working for a major health-care company. By night and on weekends, he occasionally creates and destroys worlds.
3 Comments
Talya Tate Boerner
Ouch! How did you tear your cornea?
Gary Henderson
It is A Thing Which Happens™ from time to time. Usually about once per month. I put ointment in my eyes every night, or it would happen a lot more often.
We’re not precisely sure what causes it, although the three prevailing theories I’ve heard from optometrists and ophthalmologists over the years are:
1. My eyes are exceptionally dry. There’s a duct that drains tears from the eyes into the nasal passage (hence your nose runs when you cry), and apparently mine are large. It has been suggested that if I have these ducts plugged, my eyes would not be so dry. Combine the dryness with the fact that I habitually stay up too late, causing my eyes to get itchy and scratchy, thereby forcing me to rub them, and you get tiny abrasions on the surface of the cornea (the clear skin over the surface of the eye). To which my eyelids then adhere because of dry eyes, and when I open my eyes in the morning, the adhesion pulls a tiny bit of the cornea off. Pain. Searing pain.
2. I have at some point in the past damaged my corneas (see ‘dry eyes; too late; rubbing’ above). The skin grew back over the damaged areas loosely, like the skin of a blister: connected on the sides, but not over the affected area, so it forms a little ‘air bubble,’ which is all a blister is. So my eyelids stick to that loose skin and yank it off when I awaken. Pain. Searing pain.
3. I don’t necessarily keep my eyes completely closed all night long. So, at some point during the night, I might roll over, face down, with my eyes slightly open. Which abrades my cornea against the pillowcase. I don’t notice until I open my eyes and that air hits the freshly exposed, raw skin. Pain. Searing pain.
Personally, I think some combination of these is probably the answer. The third one explains why I would still get tears (as in ‘rips’) while using the ointment. The first one would explain why, if I take a nap without using the ointment, I almost always tear both corneas when I wake up. The second one would explain how it all started.
ANYhoo…that’s a way longer answer than you were probably expecting, but there you have it. :)
I get blurry vision for a day, maybe two, depending on the severity of the tear. During that day, every point source of light (tail lights, LED lights, traffic lights, etc.) has a halo around it in the rough shape of the tear. Usually, it’s rather Nevada-shaped, although sometimes it’s shaped more like a backwards numeral “3,” tilted at about 30° to the right.
Gary Henderson
Did I mention the pain? The searing pain?