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Friday, May 30, 2014

I am the Zombies

Follow me, if you will, through a little experiment.

First, take a towel. The cleanest, whitest one you have. Then go outside and find the muddiest patch you can. Use the towel to wipe it up. Stray cat leave a hairball on your doorstep? Use the towel. Neighbor forgot the doggie bag in your yard? Towel. Clean up the entirety of the outdoors with that towel. Now look at your handiwork. Not the clean yard, the towel.

That towel represents how I felt last week, which is why there hasn't been a post until now.

There are stories everywhere you look. Every experience is research. As a writer, it's part of my job to pay extra attention to these experiences. And from my experience, I can now write a story about the ER of a hospital in Myrtle Beach. For the record, I do not live in Myrtle Beach.

On top of terrible sickness, I also realized I'd drained myself writing. Both my muse and myself needed a break. Luckily, I'd decided on that BEFORE my functional level was closer to zombie-buried-in-a-steel-coffin-before-the-apocalypse than human (and let me tell you, that's one grumpy zombie,) so I was able to avoid arguing with myself over getting my daily allotment done. I've allowed myself a break to heal physically and mentally, and that included the blog too. Over the past two weeks, I have recovered both and put the zombie away.

So maybe that whole "write every day" thing isn't for me. I can manage it during NaNos, but at the cost of my sanity for a month. Evidently, this is the way I am whether the word count is 1,667 or 250. So now I get to figure out a new schedule, a new plan to keep me working without slacking off. Find out a little bit more about me as a writer. You'd think after so many years, I'd know myself inside and out, and yet I still feel like such a beginner at times. As long as I keep at it, though, I'll keep learning. Eventually I'll know what I'd doing. For now, I just have to "do." 

2 comments:

  1. Oh, Maggie, I hope you're feeling better now! Maybe the emergency room experience will make it into a story sometime.

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