My Broken Leg

Daily writing prompt

Have you ever broken a bone?

When I was in graduate school, I got hit by a car. I was a pedestrian crossing a street with a friend, and the car merged into traffic — or, rather, merged into me. I had stepped forward when I saw her coming toward me, and I stepped back, but not in time. I rolled over the hood of the car and ended up in a sitting position on the pavement.

“Is your hip okay?” my friend screeched.

“My hip is fine. My leg is broken.” I exuded an eerie sense of calm.

“How do you know?”

“Because when I lift my leg, my foot feels like it’s not going anywhere.”

The woman who hit me had a cell phone (an amazing thing in 1991) and called the ambulance. When they arrived, they bundled me onto a stretcher. “Which hospital do you want to go to?”

“Well, let’s see. Which one does my insurance take?”

“She’s paying for your hospital bills.”

“Ok. Which one has the better cafeteria food?”

“You’re going to Carle. It’s the trauma hospital.”

“Ok.”

I didn’t feel much pain as they loaded me into the ambulance. I felt the bumps. I was pretty sure the only place I was hurt was the leg.

By the time I got out of head-to-toe x-rays, five of my friends were there to see me. They warned me that my parents were on their way from about two hours’ north. I was hurting, and finally a nurse gave me morphine. (I’ve been told that I’m pretty funny on morphine.)

All I had was a broken leg, but about an inch of bone was shattered. I understood they were going to take me to my room and then wait for surgery. As I was being pushed through the ward by a burly red-headed nurse, he grabbed the phone, held it out for me, and said, “You know who this is.” I got an earful from my mother, who was absolutely sure I got hit by the car to stress her out. Then he wheeled me past my room (“there’s your room”) and then to the operating room.

Over the next couple of days, I had many visitors. My friends took it upon themselves to run interference with my mom, who thought they were all very nice people. I was on a morphine drip and utterly hilarious.

I spent the next 8 weeks on mostly bedrest, and I didn’t know why they wouldn’t let me go back to my regular activities until I fell a couple times the first week. Then I spent 6 months on crutches, another surgery to put a bone graft and metal bar in, and three months using a cane. I limped for a good few years; now, I have bad arthritis in my knee from the long-ago injury.

It could have been worse. It could have been so much worse. It was probably worse than I thought it was, to be honest. But I survived and made my way through grad school on crutches. And now, other than having to be pat down every time I’m in an airport, I’m doing fine.

A Small and Not-So-Audacious Goal

I have promised myself I will write 365 days in my blog without a break. So far I’m at 277 days. Right now, I’m at the point where I wonder why I’m doing this. Some days, I have no ideas and the prompts aren’t to my liking. Today is one of those days.

Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko on Pexels.com

I’m all about Big Audacious Goals. But writing daily for a year is not a Big Audacious Goal. A BAG is more like writing a novel or getting it published, and even that was only true for the first time I’d done it. It’s a goal; I’m sticking with it.

I need a Big Audacious Goal soon. I’ve been through writing a book, getting it published, doing a book fair (locally), publishing the book that was my problem child for a while … I can’t think of anything that represents a new challenge in the way that determines a BAG. The current book is a challenge, but not in the barrier-crossing BAG way.

So I’ll have to stick with my small goal for now, and hopefully get to 365 days of blogging. And then take a break, of course.

The Latest Work in Progress

I’ve been making progress with the book. Slow progress, but progress nonetheless.

If I haven’t mentioned, I am working on a book called Hiding in Plain Sight, which is an origin story of Hearts are Mountains, the Archetype commune in Whose Hearts are Mountains. The origin story is not a small thing, because Archetypes are supposed to be solitary beings, so how do they get into a commune together?

The solitary tendency (an inborn taboo) is breaking down among the Earthbound Archetypes, who are exiled from InterSpace by their unsanctioned birth. But Archetypes in gathering are dangerous, in part because they could draw attention to themselves. As practically immortal beings who are stronger than humans, Archetypes’ discovery could end in a war against them. The Council also fears the commune’s numbers because they could go up against the Council of the Oldest. The book is building to a showdown between the commune and the Council of the Oldest.

But first, the main character, anthropologist and Archetype Dr. MariJo Ettner, has been discovered by a human, her research assistant, Alice Johnson. She is in the position of answering Alice’s questions while impressing upon her that she should not tell a soul about Archetypes’ existence. This works great until Alice wants a child by Mari’s adopted son, William. A half-human offspring, born fully adult, may break the secret.

The book is about hiding a culture, a culture that would shake Earth’s foundations were it discovered. And the culture itself, made up of so many ingrained taboos it hardly exists. It’s writing slowly, as I’m largely pantsing it. Wish me luck.

What I am Doing for My Summer Vacation

First, it’s not really a summer vacation. Although I’m on a 10-month appointment as a faculty member, I also work over the summer doing internships. It’s not a big deal, though, doing internships — it’s mostly monitoring the students through assignments and touching base with them, and going on site visits. I don’t get a lot of money for internships, because this year I only have ten or eleven interns.

Other than internships, I hope to write. A lot. I have a book that wants to be written, and it’s starting to get interesting. I will have to edit it good so that I think it’s interesting from the start, but I’m in the ‘getting things down on paper’ stage. I wonder if I have more books left in me, and I realize I’m sitting on at least two ideas. So we will see.

I’m also gardening the best I can. I have a tangle of seedlings in the grow room that I have to put out to harden off soon. I would say most of what I’m planting is herbs, because my sister gave me a ton of herb seeds for Christmas. And I like fresh herbs. There will be a few vegetables because they are nice to eat. I’m hoping I can motivate to weed like I’ve had trouble with just about every year I’ve put in a garden.

I hope to do a writing retreat in KC sometime. Ideally (a hint to my husband) a trip to The Elms, a massage, and some grotto time. I would settle for a trip to 21c, some Broadway Cafe time, and a quick visit to see some kittens at Whiskers Cat Cafe. Or someplace totally new, as long as there’s a coffeehouse nearby and some decent places to eat.

Nothing fancy on the plans here. I just hope to have a good summer.

Just Keep Writing

I wrote 1200 words yesterday on the latest novel, which is more than I had been writing for a while. I still don’t know what I think of this novel — it seems like a lot of conversations right now. I don’t know if it has enough action yet. The good news is that the story is setting up future situations and complications as it should. I have to remind myself to just keep writing — I can edit later.

I have this theory that I write better when writing is distracting me from other things I need to do. Right now I have papers to grade, but suddenly I have this hankering to write. I’ve scheduled part of today to write and part to rest. Tomorrow I have a concert to go to in the afternoon; I may grade during the morning. Or Monday; Monday will be soon enough.

I will get through this semester. I will write this book.

Summer Vacation is So Close

If I get through the next two weeks, I tell myself, I’ll be scot-free.

It’s that time of the semester. The last week before finals, and I have two major assignments coming in on Friday. And two essay exams the week after. And then summer and internships.

Summer and internships are a lot easier, because my time is more my own. I have paperwork, grading, and internship visits, but I have more freedom to schedule them. And I have time on my own.

Maybe I’ll get something written.

A Discouraging Moment TM

I’m not sure I have another book in me anymore.

This is probably me having a Discouraging Moment ^TM but I’m not feeling that obsession to write. I have three partial novels and one novella, all of which have stalled.

The latest document — I know what’s wrong with it but not how to fix it. I sit and think about how to introduce what it needs and my brain dissolves into mush. I feel like my brain cells are devoted to work and my future garden, the seedlings in the basement and the research proposals on the computer.

I might take some time this morning to talk with my husband and see what I come up with. Then again, I might grade papers. That’s what writing has been lately.

Coffeehouse Thoughts

I’m at the Broadway Cafe in Kansas City, hoping my seedlings upstate are doing well. I’m drinking a latte and absorbing a real coffee house ambiance, which I have needed for a while.

Not that I dislike my local Starbucks, because it fills in for the real coffeehouses we’ve had in town, and is better than the current place that serves coffee downtown, which is a defeated pile of go-cups. But it’s not a real coffeehouse experience because of its corporate nature.

Coffeehouse thoughts: It’s about three weeks till the end of the semester, for which I am really thankful. Summer will have interns, but that means a much more flexible schedule with some rest. That sounds good to me.

I feel exceptionally calm right now, like I will make it to the end of the school year without the disturbances of the past, without unfinished projects with looming deadlines. It feels good not being manic or depressed or both.

Writing is going slow; I haven’t quite found the rhythm of the story yet. It hasn’t developed into enough of a story. I need to get there and not run away from another novel.

I need more coffee. I could fall asleep in my latte right now.

Another Book Already?

Did I mention that I’m working on another book? I don’t remember whether I did.

Anyhow, it’s another book in the Hidden in Plain Sight series, which is already full of stories, but I thought I’d write another. This one, which does not have a title yet, happens in 2015, before any of the other books so far. It is the setup for the collective Hearts are Mountains featured in Whose Hearts are Mountains, which has not been released yet. It’s an origin story about how a bunch of Archetypes, beings who are usually solitary, form a commune in the Nevada desert.

It’s going slow, especially as there are necessary conversations that have to drive my main characters to where they actually contemplate such a crazy thing. I feel like I’m doing too much talking as I write, but I’m in the “getting the words down” stage. I’m thinking, though, I’m thinking of how to get more action in the first three chapters.

There’s also a love affair between an archetype and a human, which results in a Nephilim who is not brought up to understand her heritage, who also becomes important to the plot of Whose Hearts are Mountains. So the events of twenty years later have their roots in this story.

I love the process of watching a story take shape, even one that presents a struggle such as this one.

My Career Choices as a Child

Daily writing prompt

When you were five, what did you want to be when you grew up?

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When I was five, I wanted to be a doctor. I think that’s because doctors seemed so different than anyone else I had encountered at that age. They had their own offices, they wore white coats, and they talked to little kids instead of over their heads.

When I was eight, I aspired to be a poet. My third-grade teacher taught an ambitious unit on poetry where we actually wrote in different forms (my diamante was less than desirable, but my limerick was pretty good). She had posted my Groundhog Day poem (free-form) on the door of the classroom. I told my mother I wanted to be a poet and she asked, “Do you like to eat? Poets don’t make enough money to eat.” That was the end of my vocational aspiration, because I did like to eat. I went back to wanting to be a doctor.

When I was ten, I saw a lot of doctors for a stubborn malady. At that point, I had had enough of doctors, and that cured me of wanting to be one. My career aspirations were on hold until I hit high school. When I was sixteen, I wanted to be a dietitian because I had lost a significant amount of weight. I was what they would call nowadays an orthorexic, someone who followed a strict diet and lost more weight than advisable. I held that aspiration until my sophomore year of college, when I started gaining the weight back and feared the organic chemistry classes I would need to take. I changed to Foods in Business, a corporate foods career.

By the end of my sophomore year, I wanted to be a professor. I didn’t know what I wanted to be a professor of, but I had a friend whose father was a professor and I wanted a lifestyle that would keep me in academia. It took me till my first semester senior year to find the answer. I took a family economics class as an elective, and I fell in love with the class. We talked a lot about why women earned less than men, and I found the discussion intriguing. After class one day, I asked the professor if grad school was a possibility. She escorted me down the hall to the department office and introduced me to the department chair. Thus, I got into graduate school in Family and Consumption Economics pretty easily.

Once I got my PhD, my jobs have been only slight detours in my field. I teach a few psychology classes, due to my many hours in Psychology along the way. I teach human services classes, which in my case are akin to what I trained in. At one point, I wanted to be a winemaker when I retired, but I now think that would be too much physical labor. Now, I want to be a writer when I retire.