sick and on vacation, and going through withdrawals!

I have not been writing as much over the holiday break. It is mostly due to the fact that we have been traveling a lot, and I don't usually get to keep my husband all to myself this much. School will start up again Monday, and I will get back to the writing goals I have - at least 2,500 words on the rough draft, and 2,500 words typed up on the project I am revising. Since I am considering J's vacation time as my vacation time as well, I don't want to think of this as flubbing with my goal. In fact, I am thinking that this new schedule might count as an early new year's resolution for me - to pursue writing more. I am also looking into the possibilities for me going back to school at some point, but that is still very much up in the air. it will be a stretch to see if I can write and study all at the same time. I only have so much room in my little brain!
My other major hang-up for writing is that I seem to be coming down with a cold or flu or something. It has mostly just got me tired and dehydrated - I have slept a LOT and had a lot of fluids to drink. Stuff like excessive fatigue makes me nervous - afraid it is time to adjust anti-seizure meds or something like that, but I have been taking it easy, and I have not been as tired today, although the cough has gotten a little bit worse. It has been all about drinking lots of fluids and resting for now. Gotta love being sick!

brain out of gear for the holidays

     I finished the gift projects for Christmas, which is reassuring.  I can sit back and try to enjoy all the festivities now.  I will be traveling a lot in the next few days.  J and I will be heading up to the temple to celebrate our anniversary, then doing Christmas with my family, then heading back and doing Christmas with his family.  I have a writing book called "The Right to Write" by Julia Cameron - one of my favorites - and in one chapter she mentions that things like holidays and long periods of unscheduled time tend to make it harder to write.  Routines are good.  I can attest that this is true.  I have resigned myself to the fact that I probably won't get much writing done until after the holiday celebrations are over.  I have gotten a lot of sewing and knitting done, so I have had some creative outlet options.  I feel fairly certain that when January rolls around, I will be very ready to get back into a regular writing routine.  I think one of my New Year's resolutions will be the one I started early - to write more regularly and prolifically, and to record that in this blog.
     As J and I have been discussing what to do to keep our financial heads above water, we have started discussing the possibility of me going back to school yet again - a two year vocational program this time.  We have started looking at what options are out there and what might work well for me.  I am at the point where I am not sure what I can and cannot do, and I am willing to try anything that might work.  I do have a good feeling about getting some more training.  I still have a lot to do to look into it further, and that will have to wait until after the holidays, when people are back to their regularly scheduled routines again.

holiday time

I haven't been able to write as much because I am getting ready for Christmas.  I have been sewing and knitting presents.  I am almost done with the second to last project.  This blog is break time.  I am also thinking a lot right now.  Yesterday, J and I had a talk about what I should do next.  He suggested that I consider going back to school to study something vocational.  I mentioned it to the vocational rehab people I am working with, and we are going to look into it further.  It will involve waiting until after Christmas and New Year's, and it will also involve the neurologist giving me the okay to drive again.  That will be strange; I haven't driven more than a few feet in the driveway for over a year!  Still, I haven't had a seizure, or even an aura in over a year, and the last round I had was caused by the need to adjust my medication levels.  That happens periodically.  If I go back to school, it looks like it will be a two year endeavor.  I would have to talk to someone at the community college to figure out more than that - if I still have to take any general education courses included in the program.  I am intimidated at the prospect of going to school again, but at the same time, I want to know if this would be a possibility.  I still need to talk to my lawyer and see how this would affect my disability case.  I don't know how all of that works.  I wonder if I could still get back pay or anything like that.  The program I am looking at most is the occupational therapy assistant one.  I feel like I would be able to relate well to the patients or clients or whatever they are called in that setting.  I have had to adjust a lot after my illness.  I would need to learn a lot about anatomy, from what I can see on the course schedule.  I don't know how that would work for me.  All I can do is try.  When I mentioned it to the vocational rehab people, they mentioned possibly being able to provide extra funding to make up the difference for whatever FAFSA doesn't cover.  That would be really helpful.  I wonder how we would handle things like textbooks.  We will see what we can figure out.  From what I can see, it is a competitive program, and I will need to apply by february.  I also need to get CPR and first aid certified to qualify.  I will have to look into doing that.  I wonder how going to school will affect my writing.  I want to keep on writing.  I hope I can keep up a decent writing schedule, and even find more writing ideas in these new possibilities for endeavors.  I need to be committed to writing to be able to do that.

seeing how i have grown

I started out today working on the rough draft of the novel.  I got 2,500 words written today - accomplished my goal there.  Things were flowing decently well.  I feel like I have an idea of where I want to go with the writing tomorrow.  After I finished the rough draft, I turned to typing up the nonfiction piece I am revising.  I got 2,500 words typed up on it as well.  Typing it back up leaves me amazed at how much I have grown as a writer.  I don't remember for sure how long ago I wrote that piece, but I can see loose spots that need tightening and empty spots that need something more.  Looking at it now, I can see why that manuscript got rejected by the publisher.  It was the best I could do at the time, but it really was not up to snuff.  I am starting to think about how I want to revise it.  I know I have a lot of work to do there.  I have ideas of what I want to do, but for now I focusing on re-familiarizing myself with the piece.  It has been a few years since I have worked on it.  Something random that I have noticed in working so much more on writing is that my forearms are getting sore.  I think all of the extra typing is doing a number on them!  So far, it just feels like muscle soreness.  I don't want to fiddle with tendonitis or anything like that!

In a way, it is reassuring to go back through an old piece of writing and see how much I have progressed.  I have a lot of work to do if I want to resubmit that piece for publication, but I will work on it little by little.  I will get there.  The biggest thing I have noticed so far is that it sounds really preachy.  I want to make it more personable and real, less preachy.  I will work on that.

My other major project of the day had absolutely nothing to do with creativity.  It was joy in the form of bathroom cleaning today.  Still, when you are working on a mundane task, you give your brain a chance to simmer like a crock pot, developing the ideas you have rolling around in there.  We'll see how the ideas in my  head turn out when this batch of brain crock pot switches to warm, I guess!

cooking and "i think i can" writing

i did not get any sewing done today, nor did i knit.  i made a big crock pot full of chicken chili, which involved four rounds of cooking stuff in the pressure cooker first - black beans, pinto beans, and then chicken.  after the chicken was cooked and cooled, i picked the meat off the bones and put the bones back in the pressure cooker to make chicken broth.  now the chili is happily simmering in the crock pot.  i just finished the 2,500 word goal for the virus novel.  today was one of those days where the words and ideas were flowing rather slowly.  i guess you could call it a molasses writing day.  i got it done, though.  i just have to keep telling myself that i need to dump the ideas out onto the page first, then sort them out later.   i can't put the puzzle together without looking at the pieces first.  i also got some work done on revising the nonfiction book i have written.  right now i am working on just retyping it - i got another 2,500 words typed up and revised it a little bit as i went along.  it has been so long since i have worked on it, i feel the need to just get the ideas back into my head before i do much else with it.  it is all over the place as far as the writing style goes.  i really do need to tighten it up a lot.  the ideas are in there; i just need to organize and refine them.  it is a strange feeling to switch gears like that - switch from nonfiction to fiction as i write each day.  i think it works well, though.  i don't do well trying to work on two different fiction pieces at the same time.  i caught myself calling the main character of the novel i am working on by the name of the main character of another novel that is on the back burner right now!  this is when i am grateful for the "find and replace" feature on word processing programs!  i feel like 2,500 is a good goal to shoot for each day - not too much, but a stretch.  i will stick with that for now.

getting started

I am forever trying to piece things together.  My favorite hobbies include things like writing, knitting, and sewing.  I want to learn more about quilting and tatting, and I am working on getting that going.  Right now, I am working on making Christmas presents for the family gift exchanges in both my family and my husband's.  My knitting and sewing skills are coming into play there, but I won't say any more than that for fear of spoiling the surprise of someone's present!  In knitting and sewing both, you take something and put it together in a useful fashion.  You take a swatch of fabric, cut it into pieces, and sew it into something useful - a shirt, a skirt, a pair of pants - whatever.  Knitting involves taking a long, winding strand and tying it in slip knots over and over again until you have a hat, a toy, a scarf, a blanket, a sweater - whatever!  When I write, I take the bits and pieces of ideas that have accumulated in my mind and try to weave and piece them into a greater whole that others will find useful.

I have started this blog because of the suggestion of a vocational rehabilitation specialist.  Because of an unexplained illness that happened almost nine years ago, I have both short term memory problems and epilepsy.  The initial illness included a fever high enough to put scar tissue on the part of my brain in charge of short term memory.  I am the queen of sticky notes, and very much addicted to writing things down in my planner to try to keep them straight in my mind.  I do spend a lot of time trying to piece things together based upon what I can remember, and sometimes I do so much piecing together that I end up believing that something I have worked so hard to remember is true, when really I have just gotten something confused.  My world is an odd mix of fiction and reality as I double-check things I believe I remember with my husband to verify their truth.  The purpose of this blog is to be my creative glue as I strive to find things I can still do and make the most of them.

One of the creative endeavors I intend to pursue and write about on this blog is knitting.  Knitting is something I remember watching my mother do when I was a child.  It was ordinary, and even soothing, to hear the clock-like clicking of her knitting needles as the family watched a movie together in the evening.  I have an afghan on my couch that she knitted, and some sweaters and socks in my dresser that she made for me.  I have not achieved such large projects yet.  I am just starting on a patchwork afghan, and also knitting smaller projects on the side.  Knitting is something I learned to do after I got sick.  I did not learn it alone.  My husband, J, learned how from a book, then taught me and showed me over and over again until I got it into long term memory.  The repetition of one stitch after another, and the opportunity to have any changes in the repetition written out in a pattern before me left me feeling more in control than a great many other things in my life.  I could knit when many other things were out of control.  I could still cause the stitches to be regular and predictable.  As I said, the major project I have in the works is the patchwork afghan.  I am knitting a series of squares in blues, yellows, and greens with the same pattern of stitch.  When I have enough knitted, I will piece them together into an afghan - a new bedspread for my husband and me to cuddle under.  I am using a lot of scrap yarn to make it - taking the pieces and trying to work them into something beautiful.  I feel like I have to try to do that with a lot of aspects of my life.  It feels broken and disjointed, and I have to try to piece things back together again.

Another creative endeavor I want to showcase on this blog is sewing.  I learned a little bit about sewing when I was in high school, but I did not get into it very seriously until after I got sick.  I have been learning more about sewing thanks to my friend, R, my mom-in-law, and my mom.  I have made some simple items of clothing, and learned enough to be able to patch clothing better.  This is a useful skill, since my husband and I are both tall and difficult to fit as far as clothing goes.  I am saving fabric scraps from sewing projects as I go, waiting until I have the chance to try my hand at quilting and see what sorts of things I can make with that.

The creative endeavor that is closest to my heart is writing.  I have written since I was a child - I remember showing my older sister something that I referred to as a philosophy - something I had written - and she informed me that it was poetry, and that I was a poet.  I have been writing ever since - poetry from that time forth, stage plays in high school, and novels and nonfiction books more recently.  I am trying to figure out the best writing routine for me to assist me in my goals as a writer.  I want to become prolific, proficient, and published.  That is a lot to do all in one fell swoop.  I have been working on it in every way I can think of - the biggest issue is working past the feeling that I don't have the skills to be able to do it.  I am constantly reminding myself that it doesn't have to come out of me perfect - that I am allowed to write a ROUGH draft and then revise it.  That is the way life is in general.  We don't always do things perfectly, but in most cases, we have the opportunity to apologize, revise, and set things right when we need to.  I have a book that I wrote a while ago - my very first attempt at a full length book - that has been sitting and gathering dust for a while now.  It got a rejection letter from a publisher when I tried to submit it.  It was a harsh blow to me - deflating my dreams significantly.  Still, with some encouragement from friends, I am finding the courage to try to revisit and revise it with the goal of seeking other venues for publication after I have tightened it up.

The other piece I want to work on is an unfinished novel.  I started it in November for National Novel Writing Month 2011 (see www.nanowrimo.org)  I got the requisite 50,000 words written for the contest, but only began to skim the surface of the story line my husband helped me to plot out.  (He is great with coming up with story lines, but doesn't have the patience to sit and write them out.  I have a harder time coming up with the initial idea, but once I have it, I can go to town.  He is good about letting me pick his brain for ideas!)  I have one other novel part of the way written, but I am thinking it gets to sit on the back burner for a little while - three novels at once might be too much for my little brain to handle.

So my plot for the writing is to work on revising the nonfiction piece that has been gathering dust, and to keep on working on the rough draft of the novel.  Since writing is something I do still feel like I can do, I want to try doing it as a full-time job type of endeavor.  I don't know if I will end up getting paid for this or not.  I have a long while yet to wait before I find anything out along those lines.  Still, I have been feeling very strongly that this is what I am meant to do.  I need to get myself in gear and actually do it.  It will not happen all at once.  It will be a daily trudging along, not one glorious flight across the world.  But if I keep on going, I believe I can get there.  I can piece all of the ideas in my head and all of the experiences I have had into useful and beautiful things.  I can make a novel, a non-fiction book, an afghan, and some clothing, and feel more like my life wasn't completely lost when I got sick.  I can use the creative glue to work on piecing myself back together again.