Fumbling for threads
Oct. 14th, 2008 11:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desperanceIt's tricky, picking up threads again even after only a few days away. I spent the weekend at NewCon 4 in Northampton (a four-day weekend for a two-day con, simply because Northampton is so extraordinarily difficult to get to - or away from - although it sits in the very heart of England), so much of me is still all jangled up by Input: new people, new projects, new quarrels, you know how it goes. Alan Moore was in and out all weekend: that was nice. A friend and I spoke, perhaps seriously, about doing something wonderful together. I want to be speaking more about that. I read books, on the endless trains both ways; I want to be reading more books. Settling to the mundane tasks of writing my own again is hard: who are these people, where are they, what are they doing and why? How much have I forgotten, what have I mislaid? For sure nothing new will come to me today, it's all about recovery. Luckily I did break off in mid-scene and I do remember roughly where I thought it was going, so I have something to work towards. But.
And it's not just the books. I was in the middle of doctory things, which I have to pick up again: phone calls, hospital appointments, like that. Under our Wonderful New System (TM) the NHS is obliged to offer me a choice of hospitals; unfortunately, the one two minutes' walk from my door is being slowly turned into a car park with a supermarket option, so my choice is limited to the one the other side of the city, or else somewhere else altogether. Yay for choice.
And I have to wait in for a delivery, which tried to come yesterday: the first-pass proofs of My Next Book, which are of course going to get thoroughly in the way of picking up my worky-threads again. I keep telling myself it will be Really Useful to read through vol one while I am marching vol two towards its conclusion - but, alas, I fear my capitals are properly ironic. (All together, children - how do we distinguish Greek Revival architecture? Ironic Capitals!)
So. I have made extra coffee, and am tentatively prodding all those things that were living when I left (does this include the cats, you ask? Why, yes! Cat-prodding is an amusing pastime, resulting as it does in blood-loss and other fascinations of biology). Including, apparently, LJ. It's another of those things that are easy to maintain with momentum, when it is a daily habit; take a few days away, and - oh, what do I have to say? My mind is not so much blank as muddled past extrication of anything useful. You know.
And it's not just the books. I was in the middle of doctory things, which I have to pick up again: phone calls, hospital appointments, like that. Under our Wonderful New System (TM) the NHS is obliged to offer me a choice of hospitals; unfortunately, the one two minutes' walk from my door is being slowly turned into a car park with a supermarket option, so my choice is limited to the one the other side of the city, or else somewhere else altogether. Yay for choice.
And I have to wait in for a delivery, which tried to come yesterday: the first-pass proofs of My Next Book, which are of course going to get thoroughly in the way of picking up my worky-threads again. I keep telling myself it will be Really Useful to read through vol one while I am marching vol two towards its conclusion - but, alas, I fear my capitals are properly ironic. (All together, children - how do we distinguish Greek Revival architecture? Ironic Capitals!)
So. I have made extra coffee, and am tentatively prodding all those things that were living when I left (does this include the cats, you ask? Why, yes! Cat-prodding is an amusing pastime, resulting as it does in blood-loss and other fascinations of biology). Including, apparently, LJ. It's another of those things that are easy to maintain with momentum, when it is a daily habit; take a few days away, and - oh, what do I have to say? My mind is not so much blank as muddled past extrication of anything useful. You know.