A couple of months ago my MS took a swing at the optic nerve in my left eye, blinding it. This wouldn't normally be disastrous except my right eye has always been very weak. I haven't been able to read since except by a magnifying 300 per cent on the monitor. I have regained a small amount of sight in my left eye, but all that's done is given me doubled vision.
Sorry if I've been a bit quiet of late, but writing's been on the backburner for the last few months. I'm still doing bits and pieces occasionally, though not to any great intensity. Before being diagnosed wit MS, I used to crossdress two or three times a week, and my social life was pretty much wholly conducted en femme - I was lucky to find a group of friends who accepted, and encouraged my tv life, and in the end I even had friends who'd never met me in male guise. On becoming ill, I was determined to remain independent, and withdrew from my circle of friends.
Well that was a bit of a dark patch. Just about all the way through this latest relapse, though it does seem that my left leg isn't going to get back all its function and I will need to carry a cane from now on (I can walk, but if I stay on my feet for more than 15 minutes my leg gets very tired and difficult to move).
Apologies to anyone who's waiting for the next instalment of 'On Her Own Petard' but I've been mired in office politics of my own, and just haven't felt like writing.
I've finally reached the end of Stevie's Tuesday, and it only took 6000 words - eek - I'm too tired to go through final checks tonight so I'll post it in the morning.
I know I've been a tad quiet of late, but I've been hard at writing the next part of OHOP... since I've abandoned daily parts I decided to make each new part an entire day in Stevie's life... unfortunately she packs a lot in to her days - I'm 3000 words in and it's not even tea time!
I'm having a spot of bother with OHOP - it's not that major really, but I think I'm more than a little bit in love with Stevie, and it's affecting how I treat her. I fear giving her too easy a ride, or making her too perfect.
Does this happen to everyone, or am I being singularly weird? :)
I've just come back from a long weekend in my home village, and my best intentions of writing the next few parts of OHOP went by the board very early on. I'm not sure why I couldn't write in my mother's house - a little guilt perhaps for the mother character in the serial, or possibly just another case of me compartmentalising my life... I write in Hampshire, I don't in Wales.
When I first came to BCTS you may remember I was rather demoralised by the place where I had been posting my stuff before. Although all my new work is primarily posted here, I still post some in 'the other place' for a few readers who like my stuff, and haven't wandered over here.
Has anyone else been following the spat between Times food critic Giles Coren and the paper's subeditors? Highly entertaining stuff, tho not for the faint hearted, as Mr Coren's opinion are rather pithy.
I'm sure everyone's bored witless with my bowel gazing by now, but I thought I'd say that after visiting my GP this morning, and changing meds, I appear to be over the worst... fingers crossed while touching wood. Now to more creative outpourings :)
I've coped with a fair bit over the last six years of health troubles, so why have just spent the last half hour sitting in my living room crying my eyes out. My left arm was paralysed for more than month, cramps in my hands bend and twist my fingers and I've no control over them, even the drag in my leg that means using a cane to walk, so why does not being able to go to the toilet upset me so much? Everything the doctor has prescribed has had a minor immediate but temporary benefit, and then added added another problem.
As I've been a bit preoccupied with other regions lately I thought I'd treat my brain for a change. My old Chambers Thesaurus has begun shedding leaves at an alarming rate, so I thought I'd buy a replacement (as opposed to wandering down to the warehouse and thieving another).
There'll not be an episode of OHOP this evening, as I'm a tad rough. There was a certain room in the flat I hadn't visited since Thursday (first time experience for me), and my GP provided a very thorough remedy... I'm not feeling very creative right now :)
The last competition entry of the year went in the post yesterday so I'm free to write fiction (I'm poetried out for a few months - I don't write long works but the distillation process is very draining).
Ever since I was very young I have told myself stories before going to sleep (though sometimes I get so involved in them they keep me awake). For the last couple of decades many of these have been about the two Bloomacre brothers - one a musician/composer/instrument maker and the other a mathematician turned mercenary - set against a fantasy background similar to Europe's wars of the reformation, where a church based on magic oppresses those who eschew it as a perversion of their faith.
It's that time of year again, when there are quite a few poetry competitions for Anglos like me. I've not entered any for the last couple of years after being placed in one, and getting outed as a poet in work (definitely non-U in an IT department). I have a few to get ready, a fairly painstaking process, so no new fiction for a couple of weeks at least.
Although I'm from Gower, and would vigorously oppose anyone calling me a 'Swansea Jack', I have to admit an attachment to the 'ugly, lovely town'. In the ten years since I moved away it's managed to smarten itself up a bit, and returning as a tourist I spent much of last week trying to photograph it.
China has, eventually, begun to appear on my shelves, although it's somewhat different from what I started searching for more than a month ago. It didn't take too long to discover that I have an innate expensive taste in porcelain, the imari patterns I was most attracted to were art nouveau Derby pieces, beautiful but impractical for use.
I've spent the last fortnight alternating between the throes of nicotine deprivation and guilt from succumbing to it - I am too weak.
I've written nothing, though I've had a few new ideas, and earlier this week I - accidentally - half sold the idea of 'Midnight Angels' to one of the commissioning editors in work - like I need the pressure!
Since my last blog entry I've been immersed in the world of English porcelain patterns (or at least the eBay window on it), and have started placing bids. There's a bit of a divide between what I'd love, and what I can afford; I've been very taken with Edwardian Crown Derby Imari, but at around £25 a setting it'll have to wait, so I've plumped for a slightly later, more common deco-ish imari that's easier to find, and match.
The town where I live was expanded from a small market town during the nineteen sixties, spreading out into the surrounding countryside. As the newly developed areas were built on greenfield sites finding street names has been something of a problem - one area has streets named for composers, another for islands and another for Roman emperors!
I'm writing an SF story set in the near future, but written in the past tense (if that makes sense). The problem is, although not written in the first person, the 'author' must be in the future to write in the past tense, but some of the things written about would/will still be the same when the 'author' is writing, so should they be referred to in the present tense?
Checks can be made out & sent to:
Joyce Melton
1001 Third St.
Space 80
Calimesa, CA 92320
USA
Note: $6000 is the operating, maintenance and upgrade budget. Amounts received in excess of the $6000 will be applied to long term debt accrued over the last 19 years.
