Wednesday, April 07, 2010

A Month in the Life--April 6,2010


Ah, my life is never dull.

(Yes I know. I missed a day. Keep reading and you'll figure out why.  It's not hard--Monday, I couldn't type.)

At any rate, after an early morning trip to my doctor, an awful, harrowing, long needle-filled hour, I received the news I least wanted to hear.

Bedrest. Ten days. Again.

*sigh*

And, since my shoulder hurts so badly it's hard to type, that means no extensive writing. (I'm cheating with this post, but I'm typing one-handed.  It takes forever) So my initial hopes of having Terella in presentable shape by the RT convention are now endangered.  I did get a huge cortisone shot today, so maybe it'll start working quickly and I can get back to it.  It better, anyway--anytime a needle that damn big goes into my shoulder which is already hurting, I'd better see quick results.

At any rate--between the doctor and the subsequent trip to the Walmart pharmacy and the obligatory waiting forever for new prescriptions to be filled, I lost my entire morning.  I set up camp on the couch in the living room, and with two new books I'd bought for pleasure reading (which I have sorely missed), a couple of cats (they switched out every hour or so) and a big glass of ice water (craving it like a mother) I settled down for an afternoon of absolute brain and body rest while brainless shows on television made a soothing and yet uninteresting noise in the house.

This lasted for an hour.

Then I cracked and opened the laptop.

I spent a couple of hours answering emails, working on proposals, talking to one of my writers (Lizzie T. Leaf--she's a dear lady and we had a lovely and productive conversation), and making one of my infamous lists--something I could type a little at a time.

By four, the roast I'd put in the crockpot was starting to smell fabulous.  I went back to one of the new books and finished it. By the by, it takes me a little over two hours to read your standard romance novel of 350 pages. I picked up a couple of historical romances by popular writers to see what the market was looking like. And then at six, I gave up just a little bit more and started to edit. I figured it wasn't really cheating; after all, most of what I do as an editor is backspace over offending sections and leave little comments, right?

At eleven, when the pain in my shoulder was bad enough that I was ready to cry, I realized I'd been editing for five hours straight.  I took my meds, turned on an old movie (Dragonwyck with Gene Tierney and Vincent Price and Walter Huston) and finally went to sleep a little after twelve thirty.

But what a depressing day--no word count total, only about forty pages edited and nothing really to get excited about as far as productivity.

But what the hey--I got two new books, my friend Gini Koch's new novel was released by DAW (Touched by an Alien--go get a copy now!) and I had roast beef for dinner.  No great loss without some small gains, I guess.

Congratulations, Gini!