It All Falls Down

 

As you can imagine, after being accepted to F&SF, I set about writing fiercely, especially working on stories involving my favorite novel character Gwynna Lionshadow, a bitter anti-hero I had to find a way to make sympathetic enough for readers. Of course, having majored in French literature, I couldn't see any reason not to have a true anti-heroine, but American readers have their 'druthers, so it was back to the writing board.

☝ This is the waterfall at Robert H. Treman State Park just south of Ithaca. Our family camped there from 1986 on. It's such a special place, my older son proposed to his wife under the stars beside the falls. 

In 2007, we took our usual vacation and our stack of TBR books and celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary in our favorite place. A few days into vacation that July, I got a headache I couldn't get rid of. Two weeks after we got home, I still had the headache. It was more than a headache, though. It was like the inside of my skull was a searing fire, and if I moved, my brain would scorch itself. I finally got to see a neurologist at the end of August and he prescribed blood pressure medicine (not that my BP was high) and an anti-seizure med called Topamax.

That was the end of writing for years. Although the doctor had said the side effects of the drug were sleepiness and weight loss, I -- who am known for my medical calamities and perversities -- didn't sleep for ten days straight and gained 12 pounds in that time, despite not being able to eat.

But the worst part was a form of aphasia or anomia that is not listed in the drug's listing of dire consequences but (it turns out) is rampant enough that it has its own message boards all over the place. In short, I couldn't compose writing in any form, I couldn't read with any comprehension or retention, and I couldn't get words out of my mouth. Even simple words like "the" would stick on my tongue, and my mouth wouldn't open. As a school teacher, I was crippled. Old material was a cakewalk; I could teach from memory. Reading emails and grading papers, on the other hand, was torturous. Lesson plans that would normally take 2 hours to complete began to take ten or fifteen hours. My muscle memory for typing was enough that if I closed my eyes, I could write my thoughts on the computer. My hand wouldn't write. If I watched the computer screen as I tried to compose, my hands would freeze up.

The doctor took me off Topamaxx, but it was four years of retraining my body to read and write. Four years of silence in the writing field. I was grateful to Philcon for keeping me on panels as I volunteered for them. Those in the audience must have thought it strange that I could only answer a question if I closed my eyes. 

I did write a bit of flash, including this one:

Total Eclipse of the... Something...

  Topamaxx:  yes, it removed the burning, ten-day migraines.  Then, it removed her ability to remember words.  There they were on the tip of the tongue, as she vainly pointed or gestured, grunting, “G-g-g.” Next, her ability to write.  Clutching pen or pencil, she scratched feckless, half-formed phrases, three words an hour, until finally nothing.  Soon, the words on the page unraveled to so many writhing maggots, blind and mute.  Books stared dumbly from the shelf.  White sheaves snickered.  Trapped inside her blanked mind, she tried to remember what it was she would have said anyway.  

Something about … l-l-l-…

Three words an hour, sometimes more, never more than twenty. In 2008, Jack and I went to France, in part to repair my mental health because I fell into a severe depression being unable to write. That's when I began the research for the Twins of Bellesfées. Depression and the crawl back from Topamax had devastated everything for my nascent writing career.

Yet, I couldn't stop writing. I didn't stop writing, even if it was only a paragraph or a sentence at a time.

To give you an indication of how severely depression operated on my writing: When Obama took office in 2009, I began writing Esprit de Corpse. Twenty words, fifty words, sometimes just a sentence. But I was writing, and fighting a severe depression--the kind that makes you lie in bed because you can't see the top of the deep well you're lying at the bottom of. At home, things blew up in a devastating way, both in my physical health and my personal life, sending me down a deeper hole to the point I finally sought help, got on medication, and began to move again. 

In 2016, between meds and 8 years of Obama as President and retirement that summer, I felt well enough to accept the Na No Wri Mo challenge (National Novel Writing Month) of 1000 words a day. Rather than starting a new novel, I was determined to finish Esprit de Corpse. I got three days into it when the 🟠💩🤡 was elected, and I honestly cried for six weeks, curled up in bed, unable to function. I spent two years being depressed and angry and inching my way through the novel. 

At the end of 2018, I discovered I had invasive breast cancer in both breasts, and in some lymph nodes on one side. The mastectomy surgery didn't go well, and they found a further cancer. That was four months of tissue recovery, then chemo, then lymphedema, then maintenance medication, the side effects of which were constant nausea and vomiting, aching joints, neuropathy, and exhaustion. In short, I needed 12 hours of sleep a night, and if I did more than wash dishes, I was washed out myself. 

Depression got worse as 2020 approached and the POSOTUS spewed lie after lie after lie about COVID, about immigrants, about Russia, about-- well, everything. The man didn't know how to tell the truth. The quarantine shut down France two days after we arrived for a research visit, so I got held up on that and had to change a lot of the direction of the novel. The quarantine was also a factor in depression, and just because it couldn't get any worse, my doctors had to switch my cancer medication, which meant I had to switch my anti-depressant to one that doesn't work as well. 

I was fighting just to get through a day, but each day I was fighting just to get to the next page of the novel.

I had envisioned a 20-chapter novel. I was in chapter 12 when Biden was elected. A huge element of my depression was lifted, and elation took care of some of the rest. I finished the last 8 chapters before the end of December.

Moreover, I began research into an idea for the second novel, began writing that in February, and finished it before the end of March -- 29 days total for that novel, Femmes Fatales, which I sure hope will be picked up if Esprit de Corpse succeeds.

Two weeks later, I began research for the third and fourth novels in the series of the Twins of Bellesfées: Les Fleurs du Malheur and Wails' Tales. I'm ten chapters into Fleurs and two chapters into Wails.

The point is this: If the story is in you, tell it. Push it through, and push through whatever is keeping you from it.

Marital advice: Make time for housecleaning and SO as well. It'll save a lot of pain.