Q: Why did Humpty Dumpty have a great fall?
A: To make up for a lousy summer.
-some kids’ magazine from the 70’s
Well, if I’m to follow in Mr. Dumpty’s footsteps, I’m due for an awesome fall – because this summer was, in fact, rather sucky.
July was okay, just hectic – but in August, things went downhill in a hurry. In early August I had stomach surgery, which is all well and good. At first, the recovery went great. They sent me home with a large bottle of opiated syrup, and that was just fine. However, about a week and a half after the surgery I got hit with a GI bug, and it cleaned my clock. I’ll spare you the gory details, but it was a strong and persistent bug that laid me quite low for five freakin’ weeks. It wasn’t just nasty, it was dag nasty.
I didn’t make a big deal of this on social media, partly because I don’t like sharing personal details online*. Also, I didn’t want to unduly worry my legion of insanely-devoted fans, at least until I felt I was out of the woods. I’m sure I spared many rendings of garments, not to mention much wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Naturally, my writing suffered. I did get some feedback expressing the expectation that I was doing wonderful writing during my recuperation. There are two reasons for this: initially, large bottle of opiated syrup; then, 24-7 vomit-o-rama. Neither is conducive to authorial motivation. Robert Louis Stevenson may have written wonders from his sick bed, but I was either giggling at the cracks in the ceiling or clutching my spasming belly and moaning piteously.
It was a bit of a chore to finally shake the rust of and get back down to writing the sequel to Fester. I managed to fake my way through a few writers’ groups with chapters I had already completed before the surgery. Soon enough, I had to get cranking again. It was tough at first, but pretty soon the thoughts began to outpace the fingers and the word count continued to ratchet up.
I’ve gotten to the point now where I’m developing new characters – or rather, they’re developing themselves. The characters from the original book have already revealed their personalities to me, but these three new Schmidts (Ronald, Ophelia and Thelma Louise) are just starting to become more than cardboard cutouts, which is always fascinating to experience. Of course, there’s plenty of fun in seeing what the old characters are up to. For example, Billy Snyder is working on a restoration project that is really batshit crazy.
Enough for now. I don’t want to give too much away – especially since it might all change by Draft 2. Suffice to say that I’m well on my way to recovery and cranking on the word count.
*I’m only sharing this info here because I’m pretty sure hardly anyone will read it.
