Guilt and Drugs

Made the appointment to see my regular doctor today at a little after 3. Feeling guilt for leaving work to see the doctor, but wanting the drugs and maybe an MRI to make sure I don't have a herniated disk. That would be bad.

The past two days haven't been as bad as the previous. TMI warning. However, having been taking massive amounts of tylenol for over a week has caught up with me and now my stool isn't exactly all together these days. Also, spent approximately 2am-3am this morning either on the crapper or trying to find a comfortable position after downing 2000mg of ibuprofin. Alternating between "Okay, I can handle this," and "OMFG, give me the medication and stop this pain now" today. This is not a fun way to live. Plus, trying to keep shoulders back, but at work computer monitor is low (beneath a cabinet) and temp set to "coolish" all conspiring to keep me hunched over.

Most people I've worked with don't seem to have this problem of leaving work to see a doctor. WTF is wrong with me that I do have a problem with it? My wife seems to think it's related to being laid-off of work too many times (first time within one year of being hired). I don't think I'm that much of an A-Type personality. I know I have workaholic tendencies (which I'm working on, ha! get it). But I really am in serious pain, why can't I let myself have this time (in my professional life, only one year have I used all my sick leave, and that's when I broke my leg, and for most jobs I typically have only 1 or 2 sick days). It's something I know that isn't rational (hell, when I told my boss I'd have to leave early, he's all "do what you need to"). Okay, I guess I could write a whole chapter on this. I was raised that if I wasn't throwing up, and I could get out of bed (even if I had to crawl), I wasn't sick enough to skip school or work. My guess is a lot of my adult life has been colored by that fact.

What about you. How do you all handle these kinds of things?

Edit And the result is aggravated arthritis of the neck. Or in other words, I got my Old Fart Card validated. So percocet for pain, muscle relaxants, and a course of anti-inflammatory (5 days).

Feeling like an adult, and it only took until being 43

Spent part of today behaving like I was a grownup and buying real furniture. We've needed a new couch for years. Today we found a nice laz-y-boy recliner that should work. Then we spent a sizable sum on it that also made me feel older.

We've decorated in early-American poor for most of our lives. Most of our furniture is either used, self assembled, or fished out. In fact the amount we've spent on the custom shelves is greater than all of our furniture put together, including our beds.

Arm still hurts, although last night I did sleep a little better. Hopefully tomorrow will be better.

A moment of not-so-much pain

I don't know if I've over-dosed on ibuprofin or not, but at the moment there's only a little pain. Of course, I'm tired as all get out. But while the moment was here, I thought I'd take advantage of it.

This pain thing sucks. And just for the record, it's my right arm. Which coming from a family with heart problems is doubly more concerning (oh look, massive pain in my upper right arm with tingling sensation in the hand, I wonder what that could be?). Yet another appointment this afternoon. I have a feeling it will be accompanied by x-rays. Wednesday we had a long conversation and he did some quick tests. No weakness, no restricted movement, no major damage. Just pinched nerves. Joy.

And to add to the aggravation, there's the typical "start up of the year" problems with the village stuff. Hmm. Maybe if I take enough ibuprofin, it'll deactivate that duty-bone and I'll be able to resign. Nah, probably won't work.

12 Drummers Drumming

Jeff VanderMeer on novel openings which also relate to how to set the scene and get a story going. He's doing it as a discussion, so go and have at (of course he's also using his latest novel "Finch" as the example - no, you don't have to have read it to participate).

Cathy Clamp talks about the differences between distributor and wholesaler over on Writer Beware. Go and learn.

Jim Hines is spilling the beans on comparative sales info and 2009 writing income.

Lightspeed is now open for submissions.

I was going to do more, but my arm is killing me. Last sentence took 2 breaks to rub arm. If I'm scarce for a bit, you know why.

Eleven Pipers Pipping

Okay, I wanted to do this post in a Lovecraftian way honoring those mad pipers of the Arctic, the shoggoths. But that isn't going to happen today. Mostly because I'm still in pain. Went to the chiropractor yesterday and was so bound up he couldn't move me at all. So instead he worked on "pressure points" to get fluids moving. Normally when he does this there's just one point. Last night he had his choice of them along my right shoulder. I felt only marginally better when I left and then felt a little better as the night went on.

Then I went to sleep. Only to wake up around 3am feeling like someone what poured ice-water through my arm after whacking on it with a baseball bat. And we're talking swinging for the cheap seats, not bunting. Fun that wasn't. I eventually hit a position with my right arm up between two pillows and was able to get back to sleep.

Today it's more of a throbbing pain in the shoulder and upper arm. Although the lower arm gets that "iced" feeling every now and then. And all this typing is making it worse. While the pain is bad in and of itself, it's that it's sticking around for so long that really gets me.

So, how are you surviving the snowpocalypse? (did I mention it's snowing again)

Represent!

Viable Paradise is open for applications again. And it appears to be a re-do of this past year's instructors including John Scalzi, Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden, Jim Macdonald and Debra Doyle, Steven Gould and Laura Mixon, and Elizabeth Bear.

As a writer, you could do much worse than being instructed by this crowd. And they all had their areas of expertise which sometimes overlapped, but all had good things to share. Those areas of expertise covered the full gamut of being a working writer in genre fiction (research, plot, structure, exposition, business savvy, and industry knowledge). Much of it you may know, have seen in various places, but for me it certainly helped to have it all pulled together and made relevant to each other. Hell, the cost of admission to have Uncle Jim's plot lecture and see Teresa Nielsen Hayden's party trick is worth it, IMHO. And you get all the extra stuff for free. Plus, you know, glowing jellyfish.

I had my trepidations about going. The cost, time, and if it would be worth it. Let me just say that my only regret is that I ended up going exhausted and probably didn't get everything I should have out of the experience. If you feel you don't do well in crowds, well at least half the class of VP XIII felt the same way. You'll work your brains out and have a great time doing it. Just one hint if you go, help out the staff. They're also writers and can use the breaks.

Ten Lords a-Leaping

How not to start the new year.

1) In so much pain the only comfortable sleeping position is on my back. Which I hate as it leads to poor breathing and dreams I'm being buried alive. But last night the drugs weren't good enough to make sleeping on my side not excruciating.

2) Leave the house a half an hour early, because you want to leave work early to go to the chiropractor, only to arrive a half hour late. Snowpocolypse and idiot, inconsiderate drivers. Seriously people, consider other people on the road, pay attention, use your accelerator.

3) Forget your lunch at home.

4) Take drugs that make you insanely drowsy after a night of little sleep.

5) Two grapefruit do not a satisfying lunch make (although mug of fresh squeezed grapefruit juice - yum).

6) Hear bad news about client who contributes greatly to workload.

7) Try to hold you arm in such a way that you don't stress any muscles and feel a lot of pain, only to find out that such a position doesn't exist and is contradictory.

8) Unable to get an Abba song out of your head.

9) Figure out that you moved a prescription to another pharmacy because it would be more convenient, except when you need to refill it soon and aren't going that way (but will pass old pharmacy)

10) Want to go home halfway through morning commute, which may have been faster than continuing morning commute.

But on the positive side, I heard that I had won one of the book contests. So, we start off the year with free books! And it's about zombies. We love our zombies.

Ten Drummers Drumming

Today I am sadly disappointed in our information age. One of the nephews is at Peak and Peak for the day and overhears some people talking about I-90 (the major interstate along the easter shore of Lake Erie, main connector to NY from Ohio) being closed. So, what does he do. Does he go to the manager or concierge there at PnP? Why no, he calls his Mom who is two states away. Who then calls us because we're slightly closer. So then I start into searching because the Weather Channel is into their afternoon hours of "Storm Stories" (really, don't need documentaries on Weather, I want to know the Weather, that's what the Weather Channel is for). I try Ohio's highway reporting site, which doesn't want to work with Safari (only Explorer and Firefox - note to Ohio Governmental Webmasters, bits is bits and we're in the 21st Century, might want to check out this concept of browser neutral design, I hear it's all the rage). Then I go to the PA State Police, which, since they're the ones who would close the interstate (which I eventually did find out they had) I think they would have something on their website. Nope. But they have a 511 site, which doesn't work very well with my slow connection, and doesn't have, say, something that says "The State Police have closed I-90 on account of weather." Nope, have to go look at maps, and then select to see weather related alerts, which then don't want to function barfing out errors left and right (see comment about Ohio Governmental Webmasters). Then I check Erie, PA television stations, all of which haven't updated since yesterday. Great. So finally I get a story from a Pittsburgh news station that, yes, the state patrol had closed all of I-90.

It shouldn't be this hard.

In other news, today was the snowpocalypse here in NE Ohio. We've got a metric boat load of lake effect dumping across the region.

And did I mention I'm in pain. My whole right side is killing me (thank Xenu I have some good painkillers left over from prior pain sessions). I'm pretty sure I just need a good adjustment (and that the pain is from all the sitting and typing I've done this weekend). My chiropractor has extended hours tomorrow and I think I'll be taking advantage of those. Now it remains to be seen if I can get to sleep tonight (had problems last night with the pain, I started the painkillers around 2am).

So Bette was good enough to go shovel for me. Hopefully tomorrow I can get to work okay, and then leave a little early to make it to the chiropractor and get snapped and rolled (oh man how I love that roller bed, if they weren't a few thousand I'd have one myself).

But now, with just this typing I'm hurting again, so I think I'll stop and go get dinner. How are you surviving the snowpocalypse? I did take photos this morning, so I'll try and share soon.

WIPped into Rejection

I think I have what Bette had before. I feel like crap and hurt all over.

What I thought would be two chapters got condensed into one. Which is okay as I felt two chapters would be a bit long for the denouement. Chapter 41 came in at 1705 words, which feels about right.

On the other side, it's done. I'm not very happy with the ending. While the ending of the action I think should work, I'm not sure people will accept the emotional tone of the overall story ending. It's not so much a "they all lived happily ever after" as it's more of a "coming to grips with who they are and what they have to do." Well, that can be fixed in the rewrite. That's what rewrites are for, aren't they.

But, hey, it's done. I wrote a novel. Now I need to get back to work and fix it. So, as you can see, I know have a second progress bar to track rewrites. I'm not sure how I'll do this, but I'll try. I'm sure that number will go up and down. And the new target of 85000 is a rough guess. That might change as well. I know I want to be over 60000 and under 100000.

So now I'm only two days over my third deadline. The path forward from this point? Some writers feel you should let the first draft sit for a time before starting. I'm not sure that's my process. There's that novel critique I need to get done for a friend. I'll need to go through all the critique notes from Viable Paradise (which I have been avoiding to keep me going forward). There's a few short stories I've been wanting to work on. I don't know. My brain is kind of fuzzy at the moment.

And finally, checking in tonight brings word from Weird Tales that they're passing on "Prince Wanted." Well, it was sort of a long shot as well for that market. Ann says it's not what she's looking for, which I think is part of her boilerplate. At least the last few rejections have had that line. So part of tomorrow will be looking for a new home for that one.

Nine Ladies Dancing

I hurt. My shoulders are killing me and I'm in desperate need of an adjustment. So that makes today an aspirin day. This is the result of too many days sitting in a broken down couch typing. Add in that this afternoon I decided to reward myself by starting up one of the games Bette got me for Xmas, Force Unleashed.

Yeah, yeah, you all got done playing this like five years ago. So, now my whole upper body hurts. I kept trying to beat that damn first rogue jedi. Note to game developers, rotating camera angles are not your friend. Really, quit screwing around with them. If I lock the camera on an opponent, the camera should make a third point in a direct line between my opponent, me, and the camera, and it should always remain fixed looking at my opponent. No, I don't care about "cinematic" crap. I'm trying to win a game here. If I can't see WTF I'm doing, I can't do that.

It looks like this year we're going to have a discussion on e-books and pirating. Several people have posted their pontifications on it, and most of them miss the mark, IMHO. Again, they're making the same mistakes as the RIAA and MPAA did in thinking it was all about them. Clue to everybody, if music had been as effected by piracy as much as the RIAA would like you to believe, considering they under-estimated the amount of piracy by at least a hundred percent, they wouldn't be making any money at all. Piracy is a much bigger problem that what they ever expected, and it's mostly inconsequential. And unfortunately the book publishing industry is probably going to go down the same rabbit hole (although some seem to have a clue, paranoid authors and their agents will force some issues). Because, unless you think it's a bad idea that people share books, go to libraries, used bookstores, and all the other secondary markets, book piracy isn't as big a deal as people think it is. Is it an issue? Yes, it is a real issue that needs to be addressed. However, it isn't an apocalyptic issue people are making it out to be. The software industry has been dealing with this issue since the 80s, and they've been losing. They're still making money, and still producing new software. A much bigger issue in publishing, IMHO, that completely dwarves the piracy flap, is the distribution models and metrics (how collected, and definitely how used).

Enough playing hooky, time to get back to work. How's your new year going so far?

Oh, and I'm going to experiment taking the captcha off. We'll see how it goes. edit with the first Anon comment, it appears that the comment tracking function broke right after that. So, sorry folks. I don't want to leave the blog open to spamming overnight. We'll try again soon. If anyone wants to own up to the first Anon comment, I'll be glad to reconsider. I definitely don't want to remove the anonymous commenting, but I also don't want to become a link farm for spammers.

WIP it all night long

Chapter 40 came in at a whopping 2875 words. I have a feeling in rewrite I'll break that into two chapters although right now I can't think of how I would do that. Okay, maybe I have an idea, but it doesn't feel as natural as the other two times I've had to do that. There's very little dialog, which is unusual compared to the rest of the book. And with it being so late I'm not sure if the chapter is entirely cohesive. Although I do like how it ends (I'm not sure how other people will react to it though). This is the chapter that ends the action in the book. It's all down hill for the last two chapters (or what I thought might be two chapters, that part of my brain that helps me estimate these things is now quibbling over that). So we now have a total of 71525. Not bad. Looks like I planned that out pretty well. My guess is I'll go a little over the 73000 mark, but not by much (and this is why I listen to that part of my brain that helps with the estimating). I'll also redo the math on my totals. Not like I haven't screwed those up before.

I started a little way into 41. Just so I wouldn't have a dead end tomorrow.

And now, it being way too late, I'm to bed.

Eight Maids a-Milking

The snow is so thick in the air it's sometimes difficult to see to the road. The wind drives the snow hard in cross directions. And then the wind loses it's bite and the snow hangs in the air like someone who opens the door to the refrigerator only to forget what they were looking for. So they hang there in limbo, waiting to remember their purpose.

A New Year in the western tradition. The snow seems to have remembered it's winter and continues to pile up. In the eastern tradition, precipitation on auspicious days is considered good luck. In the new year we must be going to have several inches of good luck then.