On Broken Chains . . .

"Las cadenas se cortan por el eslabón ma" (CC BY-SA 2.0) by hernanpba

Last week, I posted about scheduling. As of the time of my post, I had written every day for forty days without breaking my chain. (You will begin to get a sense of foreboding, here, based on the title of this blog post.) Two days after I posted that, I came down with an illness. I had gone home to visit my mother for her birthday, and that night, I started feeling really unwell. Recognizing it as the early stages of a recurring illness that I haven’t had to deal with for almost three years(!), I quickly got in touch with my doctor via his web portal and requested an ’emergency prescription’ of the usual antibiotics be sent to my mother’s local pharmacy. His office isn’t open on weekends, but I gambled that he’s like most doctors: unable to leave work at work.

My gamble paid off. :) He came through, and the next morning, I had antibiotics waiting for me at a pharmacy near my mother. Antibiotics that have . . . certain side effects. Not the least of which, in the first day or two, is extreme drowsiness. But even with that, I managed to get my words in even through the pain and discomfort on Friday night and through pain, discomfort, and nausea on Saturday. And then came Sunday.

I had to drive several hours and remember to take my antibiotics, one of which causes nausea (and, being an antibiotic, doesn’t permit me to take antacids with calcium) and causes my mouth to taste like I’ve been sucking on a moldy penny. And the other of which causes a couple of other interesting bodily side effects I won’t go into. LET’S JUST SAY that by the time I arrived home around midnight, I was just not having any of it, for all values of ‘it’ that didn’t involve my immediately going to bed and sleeping. I did try to write. I really did. But all I could think of was how much I hurt and how awful the taste of antibiotic is and how tired I was and how much I didn’t want to go to work on Monday . . .

So I broke my chain after day 43.

But! I didn’t let that get in my way. I felt immensely better (by several metrics, if not by all of them) on Monday (on which I did not go to work), and on Tuesday (on which I also did not go to work, nor to my weekly critique session), so I was able to get some words in. I also have a couple more sites to add to my ‘turn it off at 10 pm’ list. I told you: I know me. :)

So, this is day three of my current chain. Which, if I don’t break it again before then, will reach 43 days on November 13th. By which time, I hope to finally be out of chapter 2 (this chapter . . . OMG) and on to later sections of the novel.

I had one of those ‘really comfortable in bed, just before sleep’ ideas last night, and, luckily (knowing myself as I do), I did not listen to the little voice in my head that whispered, “Oh, just drift off to sleeeeeep. You don’t have to write it doooooowwwwwwn. I’ll remember it fooooooor yooooouuuuuuu.” Uh-huh. Liar.

I believe this is the voice responsible for Skullcosm ‘Nough said.

So I got up and, through bleary eyes fogged by ointment, wrote down the idea, with some thoughts on how it might play out in the novel.

And lo! when I arose this morning, it was mostly coherent (mostly) and still good, so I will incorporate it wholly into my novel.

And there was much rejoicing.

(yaaaaay)

1. I suppose I could have just written, “I’m sick and tired and my mouth tastes like dead weasel and I want to go to bed and sleep forever,” 15 times, but it seemed like cheating.