breathless

My breathing is not yet coming naturally. I feel a sort of catch and hesitation in it. Let it do as it pleases, though, so long as the sighs aren't heartfelt. -- Seneca, "Asthma"

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So I've been sick now for eleven days. No worries--I'm not going to relate symptoms. (Bleh. I'd never do that to you, I promise.) But I'm pretty sure that I've been walking around with walking pneumonia, which is now an old friend.

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I've entertained it about four times in the last six years, and for each stay, it requires six weeks. Just long enough to catch up on what's been happening since last time. Hey pneumonia, how are you. Me? Can't complain...

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But it's long enough to erase my already-miniature social life. And long enough to make me furiously frustrated at having no energy.

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Last week, as I was revising my diagnosis from "cold" to "uh, this is going to take longer," I started considering something. Or rather, someone. Someone I met years ago, and who gave me some of the best advice of my life. I can't even remember her name, we met so briefly, but I remember her advice all the time.

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Rewind six and a half years: I'm studying in London. With two friends, I've planned an eight day trip over spring break: four days in Venice and Florence, four days in Paris. And then, we ... uh ... oversleep. A lot. And miss the plane to Venice.

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There was weeping and gnashing of teeth. But it was too late to recover, to book another flight. We'd lost so much in deposits, we couldn't spend any more.

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We poured out our tale of woe to the aunt of one of our fellow students. She listened, and I'm sure she was sympathetic, but not overly so. Actually, I doubt I would have been able to hear her advice, if she had showered us with pity. Her sympathy was far more practical. She told us to seize our unexpected days here, and do something with them.

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She said: Do something special, something you wouldn't otherwise have done. So that you'll look back on these days not as "augh, the days we weren't in Venice! or Florence!" But maybe they could be, the days we saw that awesome show at the Old Vic, or saw that exhibit at the National Gallery.

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I loved her advice. I loved it. The money was a problem, but I will remember those days as some of the best weather we had in London. I read all of Hamlet lying out on the bright English grass, eating all my meals outside, and memorizing the views from the school. Four days later, we took a train to Paris, and picked up with the second half of our vacation.

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Okay. Come back to the present, to me, pneumonia, and my six weeks of no strength.

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I usually combat pneumonia by ignoring it. Yes, I'm denial's poster child. That's usually a disastrous strategy, though. There's something about no energy. Pretty hard to whip yourself up to maintain a steep, six-hours-of-writing-a-day pace. Hard to have any pace at all, except one with lots of naps. (Heck, I can only blog because I'm running on coffee.)

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But this time, with that genius aunt's advice in my ears, I took a hard look at things. I thought, oddly enough, Does pneumonia have any good points? Any usefulness at all?

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Well, it's not good, necessarily, but it means I basically hold still for six weeks. I don't run errands, I don't make phone calls, I don't handle business of any kind, I don't attend anything at all. I sleep a lot. There is orange juice. I might read.

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Six weeks, I thought. Hmm. Hmmmm. And I have five of them left.

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And then it hit me. Five weeks. Six days a week, taking Sundays off like usual. That works out to... thirty days? Thirty "working" days. Thirty days of writing. What does that sound like? Where have I heard that before? Oh. Right. Nanowrimo. Thirty days of writing, at approximately 1667 words a day, yields a 50,000 word draft.

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Huh.

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So I grabbed our copy of No Plot? No Problem, Chris Baty's hilarious anyone-can-do-this guide to Nanowrimo. I read and laughed my way through it. And I hatched my brilliant plan:

I'm going to draft my sequel. Before I get well.

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I can do it, too. I'm sure of it. My schedule is completely clear, aside from all those naps. And I've found a huge stack of index cards: I'm going to draft on those. There's something very undaunting about saying "let's just fill in this side of a 3 x 5 card." I mean, anyone can do that, right?

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(I admit, I stole the index card idea from Vladimir Nabokov. I'm not a fan of his, but after seeing a copy of The Original of Laura, and opening it up, the idea hooked me.)

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So there it is. I just have to fill out eight index cards, front and back, by the end of each day. I fill out a card, I nap, I fill half a card, snooze, reach for another. I've managed to stay on track since Tuesday, and I'm hoping to keep it up.

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I feel pretty optimistic about it. And I'm certainly much healthier mentally with this kind of a project. Not working makes me feel like I'm rotting from the inside out. Having a draft to sink my teeth into, even though I have to write it lying down, well. It keeps me mostly happy.

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Now and then, I wonder if I'm sane. Who writes a book with pneumonia? Am I nuts? But mostly I wonder what the next sentence should be.

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I don't mind being feverish, as long as it lets me write feverishly.

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I don't mind being breathless, if it means I'll soon be gasping at a completed draft.