See, here I was, dumfounded as to why oh why I seemed to be so freaking exhausted these past few days. It just didn’t make sense. I wasn’t really doing anything all that crazy, after all. Why was I so tired?
Today, it all made sense…I was fighting off getting sick.
Well, that shit hit me full-blown today. Mild fever, aches, etc.
The really ironic part? I got almost a full work day in today. Hells yeah. Now, granted, if this cold or whatever it is were any worse, that would not have happened. But, it’s been mild enough that I was both able to get a ton of work done, AND take a massive three hour nap in the middle of my day.
Thanks go to the Ho, for sure, for taking care of the pups on their evening walk. They’re currently snuggled up against my legs as I write this. I know I mention that almost every night, but *every night* they do it like this, and I *every night* I just think it’s kind of magical.
I had an epiphany today about my pilot. An idea about how to end it. I hope it turns out to be as good an usable as I hope it is. It’s actually an idea that I’d had quite a long time ago, but I discounted it at the time. Now, with less happening the way that it is, it might actually be a perfect fix. A twist, if you will. A secret, revealed. I’m not going to tell the Ho about it, I don’t think. Just put it in and see what she thinks. There are LOTS of secrets in this world that I’m creating, and I really have to decide how many of them should be revealed in this pilot, and how many should be left. It’s a balance, really, between “I want to see more” and “this is the only part of this story that is likely to ever be told, so I want to put as much in as I can.” And, I’ve received advice to both effects from those who have written pilots. We’ll see how it goes.
I’m also cooking again with the novel. Didn’t take long, and ironic that it happened in the last two days when I was actually getting sick…but, hey. I’m not complaining. A couple characters came to life today, and that was very exciting. Sitting here, thinking about this novel right now, I’m struck by how very much the characters really make a break a story. If you don’t love them, even the ones you hate, you really have nothing happening. You don’t care. I honestly grew up on Star Trek story-telling, and those characters were so well-defined, I always took that for granted. My earliest stories that I wrote were Trek stories, working with those characters. I didn’t do much creating on my own. Over the years, obviously, I have…but it seems very very clear tonight, after writing a paragraph describing one particular character that I’m especially happy with, does it dawn on me how important that all is. Creating characters that you just love. Oftentimes, it’s the characters whose first impressions are bad ones that we fall in love with the most eventually.
Anyway, it was an easy five or six pages written tonight, which is great. I think I’m behind by a couple pages, maybe four or five, so the couple extra pages was nice. Especially satisfying given that I was sick all day.
Speaking of, it’s time to stop being awake and sleep. Get better. More to do tomorrow.
I must also add before going that I feel totally spaced out. Have all day. Like I’m floating and just kind of bumping into things. It’s weird and hard to explain. I just don’t feel grounded and like I’m myself and things are under control. It’s because I’m feeling sick, I know, and not totally following a plan each day. I’m just trying to get as much work done as I can in between passing out. Hopefully it won’t last long, this feeling. But, I can say (obviously from tonight’s blog) that good things are still coming from these days, spaced out as I may feel.
Till tomorrow!