Doing Things I Don’t Want to Do, Reading All Day, and Feeling a Bit Plaguey

Highlights

  1. Every month, I have to write a Dead Darlings post. Every month, I curse myself for signing up for monthly posts. Every month, I complain that my creative well has run dry. Every month, I struggle to find a topic and vow to repost instead of create another post. Every month, I wring my hands that I have no practical advice to offer other writers other than how to GSD (Get Shit Done) because who am I? I’m just another novelist trying to publish a book. But somehow, every month I manage to get over myself, buckle down, and write a new post.
  2. Last Saturday, I took a sick day. I have a bad habit of treating every day like a work day (must produce! must be useful!). I didn’t have it in me to write through a sore throat and congestion. So I piled all the covers on top of me and burrowed down with my friend Stephanie Gayle’s book, Idyll Threats, which was incredibly fun to read. It’s a mystery about a Police Chief who decides to keep his knowledge about an active murder case secret or his new department and the town’s citizens will learn that he’s gay, which is not such a good thing in 1997 (and some towns in 2016, sadly). I haven’t stayed in bed to read all day in a long time. I should do that more often (if only I could avoid the guilt of not feeling productive when I do so).

Lowlights

  1. Lots of mucus this week. Lots of uttering “excuse me” and “sorry” because I sound like I have the plague and will infect others.

Image credit: “Masks worn during experiments with Plague. Philippines, probably around 1912”
Creative Commons Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic License  by Otis Historical Archives National Museum of Health and Medicine

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