Finished the Lyme Disease med last night–the last few days had indeed shown some gastric disturbance, but it’s over with (the medication–and the disturbance I hope will soon follow.)\u00a0 I have been warned that the photosensitivity the med often causes could last much longer (NOoooooo!!!) and SPF 100 sunscreen does nothing to prevent the reaction.\u00a0 Caution is called for, esp. as Texas sun in summer is a killer anyway.\u00a0 But.\u00a0 Going outside will happen realsoonnow just to find out.\u00a0 (Yes, long sleeves, long pants, AND sunscreen AND hat to prevent the ordinary sunburn, though it may induce heat exhaustion since it’s hot and humid.)\u00a0\u00a0 The initial rash that led to the fortunately quick diagnosis is faded now–not entirely gone, but that’s OK.<\/p>\n
On the very bright side, I’ve been able to write a few coherent, well-structured longer nonfiction things (I recover nonfiction faster than fiction…all I have to do is arrange data, not create stuff)\u00a0 and the fiction plot daemon opened one eye, glared at me, and said “Not quite yet, go away!” before pulling the blanket back over his head.\u00a0\u00a0 (Before that, the lump under the old Army blanket didn’t even stir when poked with a broomstick.)\u00a0 (And yes, the inside of my head has many things in it you don’t know about.\u00a0 Staff, for instance.\u00a0 Plot Daemon, Editor, Research Assistant, Nitpicker, Distractor, Procrastinator (they switch off, those two),\u00a0 Costumer,\u00a0 Fight Manager (who sometimes wanders out of the fiction side of my head…that’s never good), Interrupter,\u00a0 Squirrel-finder Extraordinary.\u00a0 For a start.\u00a0 And Places:\u00a0 Roof, Attic, Cellar, Stables, Farmyard, Lane, at least five different Magic Woods, a variety of Fields (wet, dry, grassy, flat, sloping, plowed) and Fencerows (with and without something in flower or berries of some kind.))\u00a0\u00a0 You may learn about animals and things another time, but there’s always a herd of horses in my head.<\/p>\n
On my own, with the Plot Daemon still snoring away loudly in his bunk, I have been moving around foundational background stuff, like shoving your Scrabble tiles around to make words and even sentences.\u00a0\u00a0 Characters are no longer stiff unmoving dolls refusing to do anything, though they’re still at the stage where all they’ll do is talk.\u00a0 And talk.\u00a0 And get something to eat and sit down with it and talk.\u00a0\u00a0 About the same thing in almost the same words.\u00a0 But off in the distance something’s moving, the way you can see across a field the first branches in the distant woods begin to move and though it’s not here yet, where everything’s dead still, you know a wind is coming.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 To keep mixing metaphors, the trick at this point is not to keep yanking on the pump handle, but let the well fill more before trying to get the water out.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Finished the Lyme Disease med last night–the last few days had indeed shown some gastric disturbance, but it’s over with (the medication–and the disturbance I hope will soon follow.)\u00a0 I have been warned that the photosensitivity the med often causes could last much longer (NOoooooo!!!) and SPF 100 sunscreen does nothing to prevent the reaction.\u00a0 Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[7],"class_list":["post-166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-writing-life","tag-the-writing-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":167,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166\/revisions\/167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}