I wouldn't be truly sharing my writing story if I didn't share some of my obstacles as I try to get published. Seems how I am smack dab in the middle of a few of them, I figured it's the perfect time to share.
If you haven't noticed, I haven't written much since mid November. That is because Nanowrimo killed my computer. I guess it couldn't take another 50,000 plus words. Actually, I think it was just old. I have come to the conclusion that computers don't live in human years, they live in dog years. Our computer was around 5-6 human years old which after talking to the Best Buy computer service people means it was ancient (that's worse than dog years). During nano there were several times when I was working on my story that I would look up, and low and behold, the screen would be black. I would have to reboot it and rewrite. In December, it came to a point where every other day it wouldn't turn on anymore. It was a little frightening, and then finally one cold morning it didn't turn on, and hasn't since then.
I had just finished the fifth rewrite of my entire book, and was five chapters away from having it completed on my computer. Five chapters away and it would be ready for my final test read. I was on the last lap. Then my computer died and wasn't coming back to life. (To add to it, our second vehicle died too, but that is another story). It's funny how sometimes you can be so close to the end, yet so far away.
We have the dead computer part, so now to the failed nervous system. That has to do with cancer and everything it has thrown off in my life. When I woke up after my surgery in the ICU there were a lot of things going on and a lot of things swirling through my mind. One thing I noticed right away was that I couldn't feel my right arm, my hand, my fingers. When my surgeon asked me how I felt I told him that I was numb and tingling on the right side of my body. He pursed his lips and was quiet a moment. It was one of those moments that seems to take a lifetime. I waited, and finally he spoke. They had to cut through nerves and damaged hundreds of neurons to get to my lungs. The damage could be temporary or permanent, only time would tell. I remember thinking, "But, that's my writing arm."
Fast forward a few months and I am sitting with my physical therapist working on the right side of my body; my neck, my shoulders, my back, my wrist, my fingers. My body switches now from numbness to tingling to intense pain. My insurance won't cover anymore visits. The therapist tells me I can write, but only ten minutes a day. I leave discouraged, but I promised myself the day that I was diagnosed with cancer that if I lived through it, I would finish. I go home, I cry, and then I start writing.
Now it has been a year and a half since my surgery. The numbness has left and replaced itself with pain that keeps me up at night and causes my hand and arm to seize up and contort into odd shapes on almost a daily basis. That sounds bad, but the pain means my nerves are healing. I haven't been able to return to physical therapy, but hope to go again this spring. Writing hurts my arm and hand, but makes my heart to soar. I decided a long time ago that cancer wasn't going to take it away from me, so daily I don't listen to my doctor and I write, and normally it's for more than ten minutes.
Whatever goal or dream you are pursuing, there will be tough paths. Right when you are almost there, life might shift and there you go tumbling backwards again away from your dream. I often wonder why things like this happen and I know as a writer that if you give your characters the perfect path and everything turned out right, the book would be boring and your characters would have "no character" if you will. They couldn't learn and change and develop. You wouldn't have a reason to feel for them and cheer them on. No one could relate with them, because no one has a perfect life without disappointments and hard falls.
When life feels tough sometimes my husband and I turn to lamentations and read. Lamentations 3:13- "He pierced my heart with arrows from his quiver." Who hasn't gone through something where they literally felt their heart break to pieces? Lamentations 3:17a "I have been deprived of peace..." Who hasn't thought that life was going well only to have been blindsided by something that shook up everything and stolen their peace?Lamentations 3:21-23, "Because of the Lord's great love, we are not consumed, for his compassion's never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness."
