Bam in the face!

I’m still struggling on with editing my next novel. I don’t know why it has been such a chore. Could I blame lockdown? Surely having all that empty time would have been ideal for polishing off the book. Maybe that drifting time was worse though, vast acres of empty hours, staring from my writing room window at a world I couldn’t access. Yes, we could after a while go out for a daily one-hour walk, then we could venture further afield still within our portable bubble, and then we could meet others at a distance. So why in all that time could I not have ploughed on, relishing being on a virtual desert island, free from any interruptions?  I was able to write other things, I wrote my 100 word pieces for a straight hundred days, I wrote for my two virtual writing groups, zooming them over t’internet, I wrote other things, but the story, the novel, crawled out in haiku length episodes – actually not so much episodes as minisodes, better still microsodes.

We were fortunate, that when we got the dreaded virus we only knew we had it because the test strip told us so. We spent the morning reading in bed as we thought we might be ill, but by lunch time we were bored so got up. We were very lucky. Last year however I was ambushed by something which for me was much, much worse – the varicella-zoster virus struck me, bam in the face! Gosh I was poorly. Big shout out to husband who was marvellous, and big shout out for the Witch Hazel Experts and their soothing, wonderful calamine, tea tree & witch hazel cream which he bought me. If you ever have a skin flare up of any kind, this cream is what you need. Luckily the shingles (aka varicella-zoster) didn’t last long on my skin but it absolutely knocked my energy, concentration and energy, and left me even more muddled and forgetful than usual! I think it took a good six months to get back to anything like my normal (whatever that is ( 😀 )

These are my excuses, but really they are no excuse. I shall plod on and really hope that I can proclaim good news soon about dates and arrivals!

One other thing, the next book was going to be called ‘Undertow’; now that doesn’t seem to fit, so more inspiration needed on that one.