Writing Through Illness

I’m recovering from the longest cold I’ve ever had. It’s a good thing I work from home, because I haven’t been working, and it would be hard to explain to a boss why I needed a month off for just a cold.

My brain was too fuzzy for writing, but as I recover, I have moments of clarity. A writer and friend and valued reader suggested changing a novel I’m working on from third person to first person, as a way to add emotional intensity (which I’d asked for her advice on).

I changed the first chapter, just to see, and liked how it pulled reader-me deeper into the character’s experience. So I changed the entire story. This was the only writing I had brain enough to do – changing pronouns – although sometimes I’d hit more that needed to be reworked.

In my mostly-not-working, I’ve discovered the solution to the second-last-chapter problem, and know exactly what I need to do to reshape it. I haven’t quite the brain power to do the full rewrite, but I’m working on it, slowly, slowly.

And I’m slowly working through some other problems I wasn’t sure how to solve. As I poke along, the answers are revealing themselves.

I’ve found this before, in returning to writing after an illness. Sometimes I find a new clarity about what a story needs. I try to think of it as the gift of the illness, so I have something to appreciate.

Maureen