Juiced On Writing

Apologies, as I slowly move back to the living (although still don’t feel like I belong here). Ten days straight, basically in bed. The U.K. has been hit with both a lingering flu virus and a winter vomitting and sickness virus, just leading up to Christmas. I got the former, and I got it bad. Ten days in bed, and I’ve still not shaken it.Planning for such eventualities suddenly seems much more important now that a New Year beckons.

My great influenza private pandemic came at the wrong time of year – I’ve had to cancel shakily out of eye examinations, hair appointments (for that all important Christmas hair-do), and work Christmas parties. I’ve missed several parties, but did manage one all-important one – seeing my daughter in her somewhat disappointing school nativity play this week. Half the classes and school was off sick anyway, with the rest of us as an audience, trying to hold back the hacking coughs until we’d at least heard the precious one-liner our progeny have been gifted with (or in my daughter’s case – a few simple dance steps).

Today I sit here with a cold-filled headache, wondering if it would be an allowable idea to return back to bed for another couple of hours, to give me the energy to do the school run later today without fainting on the footpath on the way there. It’s the last day of school today for the term, and year. Despite my cough and snot (sorry for the picture), I’m quite proud to announce that I’ve managed to get my way through the roughly 1000 plus emails I found in my in-boxes today. This was relatively stress-free, as it involved basically selecting everything one by one, and hitting the delete key. Most was mailing list items – internet marketers are in full force nowadays, leading up to Christmas – despite the economic recession. New promotions here, offers I simply can’t refuse (oh yes I can, said in best pantomine voice) there, and freebie Christmas gifts which involve yet more signups and spam mails in my inboxes. And I admit, I probably deleted some emails I really should have read, and have missed out on some opportunities I may regret – if I’d only known of them – which I don’t. Ignorance (and the delete key) is bliss.

My ten days of flu-inflicted pergatory taught me how much I enjoyed being away from the virtual world of the internet however, and how little I missed it. I was so cold-filled that I couldn’t concentrate on anything – not even a half hour game show on television, not even reading a magazine. It grounded me back into the realer world, of Christmas lights, and wrapping presents for under the tree (admittedly, an odd real world at this time of the year). And on the few occasions where I could get through the cottonwool head, I let my mind swirl around random ideas for future writing works, and that is all.

Because I couldn’t work over the last couple of weeks, I haven’t earned any money either. So, although the coffers might be very bare leading up to Christmas, the open-ness of such an existance seems to be promising more for the New Year, as though I’m going through some kind of spring cleaning exercise and getting down to basics. There is no sick-pay for wannabe writers like me. If I’m not producing (and boy, am I NOT producing at the moment), then I’m not earning. My existance, because I’m lucky, rests on the shoulders of my poor husband’s earning potential at the moment. I don’t like that. Time to think about some kind of business plan for my 2009 writing, no more mucking around.

Business Plans for fiction writing – is that even possible without a signed two-book deal with targetted delivery dates and publishers and agents breathing down my back? Well, we should see. 2009 Writing Goals, here I come – just once I go blow my nose and taken some more antibiotics for this chest infection, okay?

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