What doesn't kill you

Advantage, no one

Closer to a novel...

It is gratifying to read my last post in August 2010 and know that the book is much further along now than it was then. I spend several hours a day, often seven days a week immersed in the novel and it sometimes feels like I'm in a casino - there are no clocks, no windows and no way to know exactly where I am because it all looks the same. For those hours there is no life outside my book and my characters.

This morning I drank coffee and and line edited/re-wrote/read. I completed only six pages in two hours. It is like moving through treacle towards a distant shore I know is there but I can't see it through the sugar fog.

Faith carries me through. Not faith in God, or even in a higher power. This is a faith that I am exactly where I'm supposed to be and where I'm going is where I need to be. I must believe this or the treacle turns hard and I am stuck, bewildered and bewitched.

The last three nights I have dreamed of losing things or having them stolen. Last night it was my Ipod. I managed to get it back from the girl who took it. A few nights ago it was my purse and I found it again, although all my money was gone.

I have tinnitus and I've had ringing in my eyes for almost a year now. It varies in intensity. Sometimes it is quiet, other times it is exhausting in volume and duration. I wake up in the night to the high pitched ringing, fear quickly following the thought that it may never go away. That there is no end. I hate it. I hate that I have this and there is no reason for it. It hounds me like a curse, never letting up, only diminishing to return later at full strength. Lately I've had the insane thought that it might go away if I start playing the piano again.

I must write now. I must keep moving through the treacle so I don't drown and wind up dead on the bank, my lungs full of syrup and my ears deaf.