Before I got serious about writing I used to wish for a broken leg. I thought it would be the perfect way to write a book. I figured it was the kind of incident that, while painful, would usually not be fatal or even crippling. It would require one to be still and bored. A captive to the muse. I envisioned myself kind of like the Sigourney Weaver character in Working Girl, but not a total see you next tuesday.
In short, I thought it would force me to write a book. I do know, honestly, how stupid this sounds. And I managed to start writing without so much as an ingrown toenail, but I couldn't quite shake the idea that convalescing will lead to getting things done.
This is a fallacy. Duh, when you are recovering you are on crack, or some other medicine. I was on percocet for a week (third hernia operation in three years. I make big babies, what can I say?). When I wasn't slipping in and out of weird dreams I was cranky. Not in unbearable pain, just uncomfy and itchy and annoyed and tired. None of these things is what you want in your writing. I couldn't get my wits together enough to even try to revise until the second week. I even tried to hit one of the two beta reader projects I'm doing but finally gave up thinking that I might accidentally say something enormously stupid or hurtful.
So, here's the short list of things I wanted to do during my recuperation time but didn't:
1) Finish revising BookEnd
Here's a longer list of things I did do:
1) Re-read the Abhorsen trilogy by Garth Nix. So awesome.
2) Watched Let's Make a Deal - think that was the percocet talking.
3) Watched Room With a View (Julian Sands *sigh*) and Sense and Sensibility
4) Watched new version of Jane Eyre
5) Started to read and then abandoned 5 different books
6) Did not wear makeup.
7) Trawled the internet A LOT.
Which brings us to three links to things I found and liked. They're kinda related, but not really at all. I can't blame that on the percocet. So happy to be back in the land of the writing.
Watching Julian Sands in Room With a View made me look him up on IMBD. Doing so lead to finding that he'd done a movie in 2006 with Robert Pattinson based on a book by one of my husband's favorite author, Dennis Wheatley. We got this movie out of the library and watched it during my recovery. It is so gob-smackingly bad that both husband and I were at a loss for words. Luckily we found a review of it on this neat UK site, The Medium is Not Enough TV Blog, that says it all. I especially like the bit about a jar of stunt spiders.
Review: The Haunted Airman
The New Yorker's Adam Gopnik, as always, has a great take on young adult fantasy and what makes it compelling. It may not be what you think. Read The Dragon's Egg.
Finally, I've been playing Aragorn's Quest. A LOT. Slashing orcs is just soothing when you're laid up. That got me in a Viggo Mortensen frame of mind (it doesn't take much) and I love this article in the New York Times T Magazine about him.
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| Photo: Cass Bird |
