Writing and other nonsuch

[outsdr]

I saw my cardiologist a week ago Tuesday, and he was pleased with my progress. My ribcage is nice and firm (and honestly, you don't know what a huge thing that is until you experience it loose and flexible!) and the scar is healing well. The area under my secondary belly button is still sore, but it has stopped seeping and has a massive, deep scab. I was wearing bandages over it just for protection, but don't any longer (the physicians assistant speculated that there may be a small hematova under it.) Best of all- he said that yes, I can return to work at the beginning of March! He warned me, however, that even if my chest feels better, it's not better yet; the bones still need to heal and regrow, and that's going to take a full six to eight weeks. This week will mark the fourth week of healing come Wednesday, so just to be safe I'm requesting light, desk-only duty once I return to work, which should not be a problem. Neither I nor my cardiologist want to go through this again!

I'm obviously not allowed to lift anything over five pounds yet, and won't be until April. I need to wear my chest vest until the end of February, not only for protection but also as a reminder that I can't lift anything heavy. I was really concerned last night that I was having trouble breathing and catching my breath ... turns out I had the vest on too tightly! I wonder if this is how a bra feels ...

Two weeks ago I set a goal for myself to write 1,000 words per day of something, anything. The first week went well. I finished my docmentation of the "other universe" experiences I had while in my coma, and worked on another project as well. That second project was not coming along like I wanted, and last week I really started slacking, writing a couple of hundread words per day, if that, even. I was unhappy with what I was writing, and it wasn't until this past weekend that I realized this.

I tend to expect my writing to be as close to a finished piece as possible when I write it down, mainly because I tend to work the words over in my head first, and then micro-edit the writing as I go along, doing whatever small, quick edits are necessary (to my mind, at least! I have a feeling that a real editor would rip me apart.)

This latest work I've been, urm, working on has been significantly different in process, and is full of passive-voice and telling-not-showing and make-outsider-unhappy-structure. My big realization was that I'm not unhappy with what I'm writing and writing about; I just haven't recognized it for what it is - a rough, first draft. It's a brain dump to get the gist of the story down, and once that's finished, I'll go back and take this structure and add the meat and dialogue and discussion and description that it needs. I haven't done something like this in so long, I'd completely forgotten what it's like.

In other words, stopped being so critical of myself and start writing as if no one is reading.

Comments

[outsdr.livejournal.com]

I'm currently writing in Open Office to track my daily word output, which I then transfer to my master document on Google Drive. A few months ago, Scrivener (http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php) was on sale (http://www.writersstore.com/scrivener?cid=1820&CAPCID=54542085968&cadevice=c&gclid=CjwKEAiA0uGmBRDwj7mE1v-LlCYSJADxH16OWMxa8SmM_2jhdvGrlBzo8TOOO9_KkwOsW_fUAMJxOhoCkpvw_wcB&CA_6C15C=400008350000430168) for $40 (looks like it still is). I bought it and will probably use it for my final document.

[dreamer-easy.livejournal.com]

I typically write making it up as I go along, but the second novel (horribly stalled right now due to other paying projects) was written in my head while drifting off to sleep night after night over a period of a couple of years; I know just about every word of it). Those are two very different experiences of writing.