Saturday, January 06, 2007

On being a sick author

Maybe I should have said "ill," but it was more fun that way ;) I've had this sore throat for 3 weeks, and it was getting worse again instead of better. So I went to the docs yesterday and she said I wasn't getting myself enough rest to recover. She asked me if I could take a couple of days off, and get more sleep. I just stared at her. The voice in my head was saying "Nooooo!" LOL She knows what I do, so she gave me one of those looks, and pointed out she’d just had to have two weeks off herself with the same thing! The weird thing is I know she’s right because I feel better in the mornings but by evening I can barely speak. In my head, though, I believe sitting pootling on a laptop isn’t strenuous, but we all know (or should do,) that mental work is just as hard on the body, especially if you’re trying to heal yourself. So yesterday afternoon I took off to bed with Stephen King’s On Writing, and rested up. The read was excellent, I got extra sleep, and I do feel a lot better today. I wonder if I can manage it again?

In general, it’s been one of those weeks… Isn’t it funny how life conspires to throw multiple cr@p at you when you’re feeling icky? The local council recently made our street resident parking only. We’d been campaigning for this for years, because a local business use the area as their car park during the week. So they put the signs up, the business cars disappeared and we all cheered. It was looking good, except we haven’t received the parking permits as yet, and a bunch of us went out to parking tickets on our cars yesterday. Ironic, or what? The best (worst?) part is that because of my wonky leg I’m registered disabled and I have an official disabled badge on my vehicle. It takes a special kind of traffic warden to slap a ticket on a disabled person’s vehicle outside their own home, rather than knocking on the door to give a warning first, eh?! The Real Life hero will be giving them hell on Monday.

And did I mention the hole in the roof after the recent storms? LOL Yes it truly has been one of those weeks. The good thing is I’m not hugely under pressure with multiple deadlines this month, so I am resting up a bit and my voice is coming back. Generally my spirits are high. I’m still buzzing from the new year, hitching up with friends I’d lost touch with via My space, and having my agent tell me the partial I wrote in December was “a truly amazing proposal.” I’m smiling away! I just hope the editor likes it as much as my agent did. Fingers crossed!!!