xocobra asked me the other day about how the writing was going, and this morning at Starbucks Nathalie repeated that question.  In both cases, I had to admit that very little writing has taken place over the past two weeks.  Why?  Let me tell you what I told them.

I caught The Plague around Christmas.  In fact, it was Christmas day when I first began feeling that preliminary indicator that something was amiss, that certain something-or-other in mind and body that declares things are not as they should be.  You know how that goes.  It’s the impression that not all the spark plugs are firing, or at least not firing correctly.  It’s the feeling of malaise and dysfunction that is so small that it’s almost inconsequential, but it often serves as a declaration of things to come.  That was Christmas day.

The day after made clear I had in fact caught some terrible oddity, that some evil, malign thing had invaded my body and intended to do me harm.  And it went downhill from there.

When you’re sick—and I mean really sick—you know how your mind seems prone to tripping because it’s unable to get sure footing.  Well, I do anyway.  That’s where I was for that first week, and it’s what I’ve been trying to escape since then.

Therein lies the rub.  I tried to do some writing.  Hell, I wasn’t doing anything else.  I could barely get around the house without bouncing off walls or falling into furniture because weak limbs would collapse beneath me or a feeble mind would falter in its analysis and direction.  If I couldn’t go or do, why not write?  It’s something you can do while wrapped up in a blanket with a cup of hot tea and several cats lounging about, right?

Not!

Amazingly, the fugue state that had beset me served to muddle my mind with confused chaos.  Over the course of the last few weeks, each time I sat in front of the Dreamdarkers manuscript and tried to work, what I ultimately accomplished was to inject gibberish and messy nonsense into an otherwise presentable tale.  I felt embarrassed by what I wrote while in that condition.  Unsightly, unintelligible, and unworthy of mention, each time I tried to focus and make the downtime productive, all I accomplished was making a mess such that I walked away more frustrated than when I sat down.

Yesterday turned out to be the first time since Christmas that I was finally able to develop some constructive prose.  I hope that means my mind is once again able to work on the book without spewing blathered text all over the digital page.

I realize this bump in the road may cause a slight delay in my original schedule for this narrative, but such is life.  If the choice is between making progress at the cost of quality or waiting until the work I do is up to par, I’ll wait.  Not doing so just means more work later when I go back and realize what a mess I’ve made in the meantime.