In passing
I have been bedridden for three days now with an illness best described as Upper Respiratory HELL. Those three days have involved sleep, hacking, sleeping, coughing, watching Schwarzenegger movies, sleeping, drinking orange juice and delicious water, and more coughing. In between all of that, I've been thinking long thoughts, the sort that only someone half-delirious can think after months of little to no social activity.
This is my favorite time of year, see, when the fall-blooming plants start showing off, and I go to all the Back to School Sales to fight with soccer moms over bundles of paper and pens. Because? I am an office-supplies demon, can't ever get enough of them, have an entire room of my house devoted to crates full of paper and writing utensils. Is it a sickness if I actually use them? Or am I justifying any way I can? I do have an office job, now, where I get to surround myself with office supplies and do office work with them. I like that. I've been at the job over a year now, I think I can tell if I actually like it or if it's just euphoria over the paycheck--but no, I really like it. I hated to call in sick again this morning because I actually wanted to go back. It is good times.
The other good thing? I have a finished first draft of the Story that Would Not Die. I started writing backstory to it back in 2007, early, before all the fan-hitting began. And it was all set to be a short story. I was excited, thinking, "Oh boy, I can get back to the reason I got started writing in the first place--my favorite form! Short fiction! Rawk!" And then after five pages became fifteen, and twenty became fifty, I threw my head onto the desk in despair. After writing that novel a couple years back, the novel that "needed some work," the same way you'd look at a derelict house and say, "Well, at least the plumbing's still good," provided there are no hobos in the neighborhood mining for copper, I was more than a little reluctant to try again. But it seems this story had a mind of its own, and it's sitting on my hard drive and in a binder. But, good sign, writing this did not cause the hard drive in my computer to fry, kind of like the last one did. Ahem. And I've been writing on short stories that are right in line with my usual brand, whatever that was. Researching mags to submit to, as well. It's like the person I was went into hiding and now she's back, only not as much of a jerk. Clear goals and determination, man. It is what's for breakfast.