Dept. of Chagrin

[kaffy_r]

 A fandom_stocking  Apology

Folks, for the first time since 2011, when  I fell in love with fandom_stocking  - the only "-athon" I write for, and the one that has given me such joy - I am most probably not going to be able to fill anyone's stocking. 

When I signed up myself, I was full of plans; I'd just finished the last two promised 2015 stocking stuffers, and I'd thought that had primed my creative pump. And, as I always do each season, I thought perhaps this was the year that I could focus on drabbles, or at least shorter stories. Plus, I had my vacation coming up, and I'd be able to write something every day ....

Yeah. Didn't happen. I can't even figure out definitively why, although last night I told BB it might be that finishing up those 2015 stories had, instead of priming the pump, run the well dry. God knows, this has been a terrible writing year for me; it's the first time since 2007 that I haven't been able to get at least one chapter of Hearts & Moons completed. 

The events of November also have affected me, perhaps more deeply than even I thought. 

Yesterday, the day before my vacation ended, I suddenly wrote two paragraphs of something, and I thought, "Aha! Adrenaline junkie time! You can at least get two stories done before my vacation, and perhaps a third one before the stockings go live ....

And then this morning, I burned my left index finger, ironing a shirt. It's bandaged up now, and doesn't hurt too much, but the bandage makes typing incredibly frustrating. I'm down from 80-plus words a minute to, I don't know, 30-40, what with having to fix up mistakes. GAAAAAAaarrrhh!

tl;dr - after burbling about fandom_stocking , and looking forward to it, I don't think I can take part. I don't say it can't happen. Anything can happen, of course, and one never shuts the door, but - and there's an end to the sentence. 

Perhaps next year more of us can hang stockings, and I can fill all of them. 

*sighs, heads off to the grocery store*

Comments

[kaffy_r]

Thanks - right now, it's bandaged so completely that I'm not feeling any pain. Just frustration at my slow typing. I'm going to change the bandage later, to something less cumbersome. We'll see if I can balance typing facility with freedom from pain.

[eaweek.livejournal.com]

Slow typing sucks. I still have horrible memories, thankfully now more than 15 years ago, of not being able to type in the worst days of my wrist tendonitis. I could barely work. I couldn't do any "recreational" typing, including fiction. I felt like a critical part of my body had been ripped right out of me. It took several years of proper ergonomic supports, voice dictation software, occupational and physical therapy, ice, rest, and pain medications, before I got back to semi-normal. And even now, it flares up if I do something stupid, like try to lift objects that are too heavy for me.

So I feel your pain.

[kaffy_r]

Oh lord, that sounds horrible! I've tried working with voice dictation (Dragon Naturally Speaking), and even though it was pretty good, I'm so used to working fast and essentially "thinking" with my fingers first (and not my brain, which could lead to a lot of jokes, but I digress) that voice dictation didn't help me with fic writing.

I'm glad you're largely back to fighting weight, as it were, but the fact that you still have problems from time to time sucks.