Little Big C

I've copied this off my professional writing site to be able to share it with family. I got a large number of comments and responses on the email chain where it was first introduced as well as on Twitter.

----------------

I’m writing this for me. Usually when I write, it’s for you, but I need to get this out, somehow. Sorry.

I’ve been beating my brains out rewriting the book, and I was feeling good, so good I finally squeezed in my annual trip to the doctor and listened while she told me everything I was doing wrong, and a few things I was doing right. After she looked over my skin and zapped a few ugly little lumps off, she started to peer at my face, making me nervous. Now I’m sure everyone at some time or another has had the feeling that the little zit on your nose is about the size of the starship Enterprise, but this time she spent a while examining it.

“I don’t like the way that looks.”

Truth be told, I didn’t either, but wishing wasn’t doing much, and eating right didn’t seem to be helping either. Even cutting down on chocolate.

“I’ll send you to the dermatologist and let him decide.”

I view all these little skin bumps as the price of living in sunny California and I figured okay, how bad could it be? So I walked into his office a week or so later (never thinking about how quickly I got an appointment) and sat. He looked at me and smiled.

“I’ll be operating this morning to remove your cancer.”

Umm. Me? It took a while until I could breathe. Or swallow. All I could do was nod dumbly and try not to fall off that frumpy little half-bed.

Now I’m not so stupid that I don’t realize I don’t have one of the biggies. In the greater cosmic scheme of things it’s pretty small. In fact, it’s just barely big enough to rate the big C. An inordinate number of our friends have had far worse, and we’ve lost several, and we lost a dear older relative because he ignored skin cancer until it metastasized and took his life. I don’t care. It’s my body and I... just didn’t know, I guess. Or expect it. I always thought if something was wrong with me, I’d sense it. I was absolutely blindsided. I had no clue. All I knew was if the diagnosis contains those six letters, it was frightening no matter how tiny the spot is.

Somehow I pulled myself together without drama, and sat there while he competently wielded his scalpel – do you know how big the blade looks when it’s right in front of your eyes? Something a Highlander would swing… Anyway, after an amazingly short time we were through. He’d call me if it was anything serious. In the meantime keep a band aid the size of a horse blanket on your nose, change it often, put tribiotic ointment on it… Yes, nurse. Oh, and we want you back to look at every place on your body. We worry about other sites…

Soulmate was… well, matter of fact. It isn’t life-threatening. It isn’t serious, nothing to worry about. You’ll be fine. The love of my life cared, but what I needed was reassurance, not facts. Yes, even me, for those of you who know me in real life. Sometimes you need that no matter who you are.

I got another appointment in record time – by this time I’m getting smart enough to be suspicious. I did get a lovely letter letting me know the biopsy from my nose was fine, nothing to worry about, and I figured this would be just more of the same. The Physician’s Assistant was a really nice, personable guy (at least it wasn’t an all-up doctor), and he looked at every place either of us was the slightest bit concerned about. I do have this little thing on my ear – it just never seems to heal right, hasn’t for years, but it’s tiny, I always thought it was just a recurring zit, but now that you mention it…

It took one look before he was calling for the nurse and his scalpel – I never knew a PA could do that but I guess they can, and they can sure move pretty fast too. What I needed was removal and a biopsy. Same thing, nothing to worry about, I’ll call you if it needs further work, but it’s pretty unlikely, here are a couple of brochures…

He called yesterday. In a month or two I go in for outpatient surgery – they work through a microscope to make sure they get everything. It’s not malignant, it doesn’t grow very fast, it shouldn’t invade the rest of your body, but there isn’t a way in the world he could convince me it was good. It was a long time after I dropped the cell phone before I could do anything but stare at the wall. It’s an inch from my brain, if that. What if…

That way leads to madness. You don’t have a choice. Stop it. Don’t even think about it.

We all carry our experiences into our writing, and this one – being scared out of all proportion to reality – is something I’ll use sometime. It gives you tremendous respect for anyone who’s had to deal with little big C’s more threatening brothers and sisters. I needed to share with you all – if you haven’t had the experience I don’t recommend it, but then you may be able to see it coming.

I sure didn’t.

----------------------

They caught this early because I take care of myself and go in for regular check-ups. No matter how busy you are, make sure you do too.

---------------------

Included in the emails I got when I posted was the following link - just to back up my urging that you all get checked...

Skin Cancer

Please watch it. Thanks Kathy.

2011 NaNoWriMo

Okay, so this year things haven't gone as well. I barely finished moving (Redwood City to Grass Valley to Marina Del Rey) before the first of November and the new day job is, well, pushing a little more than the last two times. I've had two days with nothing, zip, zilch, and two days with low (1000 more or less) word counts, although one of those the writing was tough - I was working on a tender sex scene that just needed to be right. Even so...

2009 - by November 10th I had 23, 749 - that book finished out at 77K by the 30th, I think.
2010 - by November 10th I had 37, 675 - around 65 K more or less...

Umm, by the end of yesterday (at 3:15 AM according to the timestamp) I had a grand total of...

12, 940 words... I'm 3,730 words behind the 1,667 words a day needed to finish. My current estimate of the book length is 62,800, but then this early it's pretty hard to tell. The other book in the series (this is part of a romantic erotica series I plan to indie-pub) is at 52K so this represents a little growth.

I'll be staying down here for the next two weekends. The lonely novelist, typing away in his garret. Or I guess that's artists.... we just toil away on our laptops.

Better get moving....

NaNo 2010 - the end

OK - I always like to check in my stuff a day early, just in case something doesn't work. I got my winners badge - total was 65,555 according to the word count gadget. I have a lot to do to make a reasonable book out of it all - I like parts of it; it was, for me, a grand experiment to see if I could do something outside of my comfort zone - kind of a Steven King-ish, paranormal-fantasy effort. I like the way it worked out. It was fun.

Life has been somewhat chaotic the last few weeks - I had the 50K words on November 15th, and the story itself was done last week, but I was experimenting with adding a section of the heroine's journal after each chapter - it took a while, kind of like writing a mini-snopsis only in her own mindset/words. Also, Thanksgiving took its toll. All-in-all, though, I'm happy with what I did.

Good luck to you last minute scribblers - keep at it.

NaNo 2010 Day 19

Well, the week kind of went to hell after the last post. On Tuesday a pipe burst where I work, and several days of chaos followed. Come in, dont come in, come in. Plus, due to NaNo and writing in general I had errands backed up for quite some time. I rarely get time off in the middle of the week like this, and even more rarely in blocks, so... NaNo had to take a back seat. Somehow, over a very chaotic Tuesday, Wednesday , and Thursday I added 2,354 words, getting to a total of 52,383. I'm not even sure what got added which day - like I say, it was chaos. Today, back in the saddle again, the discipline of a working environmemnt, etc, and I got things moving. At the end of today we added 5,407 words for a total of 57,790.

Today, though, I had to do some clever things with POV. I had plotted everything out, but the outline didn't make me realize that most of the last four chapters will be from a POV other than the heroine. So I had to reorganize it, select who got to tell the end of the story, and then start writing it that way. I have three chapters yet to go, so this NaNo may include some revising, although I do have some inserts to be added.

Keep going everybody. Almost there.

NaNo 2010 Day 15

Yes, there are several days missing. When last we left our hero... oh wait, that belongs in the book. Well, we last posted on Thursday. Friday was scheduled to be a down-time day, both work and writing. Soulmate was down here for the weekend (most of it) and we had the chance to spend time together. Much of the time we are apart, so this was a real treat. So I planned not to write on Friday at all, and writing on Saturday would be a target of opportunity. Sunday I should be able to make up for everything. Went to bed early Saturday night, with nothing new in the book. Something woke me up in the middle of the night, and , after staring at the ceiling for an hour and a half I crept out to the computer room. Not my computer room, my hostess's. So I am working my way through the work and sipping on Rum and Cokes - I just didn't feel like any more wine (unlike tonight) I managed 1632 words - a little short of my minimum acceptable level. Finally got tired enough to sleep, and was awakened by soulmate who wanted me out of there so she could leave. So much for sleeping in.

On the way out we had a somewhat nasty discussion, leaving me in a foul mood. On top of that, when I become suddenly alone I get my Celtic depression on. So Sunday became a total loss, zero. An unplanned zero. Just lay curled up in a ball all day. My muse had long since departed. Mutter mutter...

Monday I kind of got everything together. I am a spoiled adult who can take his time getting his life together (sometmes) and finally late in the day everything started working again - work, food, and novel. Ah, novel. The muse decided to put in an appearance and I typed along. Not merrily, but still... forward. Onward, as my ex used to say. By the end of the day,. I had managed 6,611 words, several chapters, and a grand total of... 50, 039. Yes, I am a NaNo winner, again. But...

It really doesn't matter. I am on chapter 16 of 24 - more correctly I thnk I'm on 22 of 30 - I have a 1A and 1B and... I have another 22K or so to finish, and the spirit of NaNo is to finish the damn thing, so I must keep charging along, ignoring the 50K boundary. We shall overcome. Or something.

Good luck to you all. I wish you all happiness with what you've written. Thus far, although there are many areas I expect to rewrite, there are a few jewels I really like in mine. Do well, the rest of you.

NaNo 2010 Day 11

Well, I don't know why I was so prolific today, but I managed to get through two chapters (most of, anyway), one of them pretty dramatic. I felt pretty good about what I wrote, although I had to stop towards the end and go do some research. Tomorrow and Saturday will be a just barely, I suspect. I'll be spending Friday evening and all day Saturday with soulmate.

Anyway, today we wrote 4,121 words, for a total of 41,796. Let me tell you, smashing across the 40K barrier did feel pretty good, until I thought about the fact that I've got to get another 30,000 words in place by the end of the month.

Keeep on truckin', everyone. That end is out there.

NaNo 2010 Day 10

Really tired last night so I didn't post until morning (Real morning, not virtual morning).

Work in Marina Del Rey is mostly done on a windoze 7 laptop and, because it was new, I left it in auto-update mode and what a wonderful discovery. Sometime after I fell asleep and the end of Tueday's exercise it updated, causing a reboot, and surprise, surprise, I'd forgotten to save the last little spurt I typed. !@#$&! the evil empire, anyway.

But, pleasant surprise, Word offered to repair the file and I got back everything except sixty mysterious words which somehow evaporated. And it was in the middle - I know where they were because there is a jump from the middle of one sentance to another paragraph. Now if I could only resurrect those sixty words of deathless prose...

Also, in a fit of pique, the system removed all the inter-chapter page breaks - well, it might not be so bad, but there are at least sixteen of them. Mutter mutter. So, after typing and reaching my goal I finally brought up things to standard - switch the font to Times New Roman from whatever weird thing Word liked, real chapter breaks, double spacing, a header with page numbers (this was motivated because I gave soulmate a printed copy to look over and had to warn her not to drop it since there were no page numbers) and all that jazz. Not that it's ready for prime time - it isn't finished, for petes sake - but at least that's out of the way.

So - total for the day is 3,013 words, for a total of 37,675 words.

Keep on truckn'