16 Months with Guillain Barre Syndrome

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Month two of returning to work was much easier than month one—at least from a Guillain-Barre perspective. Since my office building is undergoing renovations, I was only required to make the trip into the city twice a week instead of four times a week. That saved me a ton of energy, and allowed my body to recover from the exertions of the first month.

Unfortunately, I also came down with a very annoying sinus infection a week into the month, and spent two weeks recovering from that. That dragged a lot more energy out of me than I had planned. I’m pretty much recovered from that now, and back to gaining strength instead of slowly losing it.

Last week was a fairly good gauge of how I’m doing. Monday was a holiday here in the US, but since I’m a contractor, I don’t get paid for holidays, so I had to make up the hours on other days. I worked a couple of hours on Sunday, three hours on Monday, then did a nine hour day on Tuesday (from home), into work on Wednesday and Thursday, and a ten hour day on Friday. Thursday was the day I felt my symptoms the most. I didn’t sleep well the night before, and had a cup of Chamomile tea at work. That’s supposed to be good for the nerves, but within a couple of hours, I had a pretty good case of the numbs on my face, arms and left leg. Not sure if the lack of sleep caused in, or the tea, but it’s not the first time I’ve had that tea and had worsened symptoms that day. But it could also be that I tend to drink that kind of tea more when I’m not feeling great in the first place. I’m going to bring a supply of my decaf Red Rose tea in to work from now on, since I know that doesn’t mess with me, and see if I can disprove the link.

On the whole, my energy level has been up this month—especially since getting over the sinus issues. I’ve started working out again—something I had been doing prior to going back to work, but had paused as I fought through those early weeks. I’ve been able to take my son down to the baseball field to play ball a few times. Pitching a hundred balls, even underhanded, takes a lot more energy than you’d think. This morning, I took the kids up to Home Depot for a kid’s project class, then out for smoothies, and in a few minutes, I’m taking them to the pool for a swim. That would have qualified for a busy Saturday before I had GBS.

I’ve also started writing again. I’ve got major edits to get done on my book Nowhere Wild, and while I don’t have a deadline for this edit (because my editor is super-understanding about my health issues), I still want to get it done this summer so I can get my writing career back on track. I had a 1000 word day last Sunday, and that felt really good.

I’m also slowly re-introducing reading back into my daily activities. If I have few spare moments, I pick up the book I’ve been working my way through for at least the last six months, and read a chapter or two. I can’t do the marathon-book-a-day sessions I used to do, but it definitely feels better than it did six months ago. My eyes aren’t perfect, but they’re getting stronger.

I wish I had more time and energy to blog on a regular basis, but with work, writing, and trying to get back into shape, blogging is still something I only have time to do on the weekend. Please forgive me for my inconsistent attendance. At some point, I’ll be back. Stay tuned.

2013 PNWA Conference: I’ll be there… will you?

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If you’re thinking about attending the 2013 Pacific Northwest Writers Association Conference (July 25th-28th, SeaTac Hilton, Seatac, WA), but haven’t made up your mind yet, I hope this helps you decide to come. I’ll be doing my first ever panel at the conference, along with Sally Harding, Rachel Letofsky and Kat Richardson. The session runs from 4:00 to 5:30 PM on Saturday. I consider it a “planning for success” panel. You’ve got the chops for writing, and have your manuscript tuned, now what?

‘FROM APPRENTICE TO MASTER’
Presented by Sally Harding (The Cooke Agency/Master), Rachel Letofsky (The Cooke Agency/Apprentice), Kat Richardson (Author/Master), and Joe Beernink (Author/Apprentice)

This panel will focus on the journey to being successfully published and the steps you can expect along the way. Two authors and two agents bring their old-hand experience (Kat and Sally) and fresh eyes (Joe and Rachel) to help you navigate the terrain of the publishing world. The key lies in understanding how the publishing side of the business thinks about your work. What’s the best way to craft a pitch letter? How should I approach an agent? I’ve got an agent, now what? My agent got me a contract with a publishing house, what’s next? My agent didn’t get me a contract, what now? Bring all the “questions-you-have-always-had-but-never-wanted-to-ask”, broaden your understanding of the publishing world, and begin your transformation from apprentice to master!

I’ll also be acting as Moderator on a couple of other sessions during the conference:

  • CREATING A CAREER IN THE FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION GENRES
    • Presented by Philip Athans
  • WHAT TO EXPECT WHEN YOU’RE EXPECTING YOUR FIRST BOOK
    • Presented by Gordon Warnock, Julie Matysik, and Tanya Chernov

I’m looking forward to the conference, and to the boost it always brings to my writing. Hope to see you there!

Life is a Balancing Act

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It’s a cliché, I know, but it’s never more true when you have limited time, and so much to do.

When I returned to the working world last month, I knew things would change dramatically in terms of my time to do the activities I had taken for granted during the last few months. I knew my energy would be down a bit, so I wouldn’t have quite as much time to blog or to write. But I figured I’d have some. Back in March, I was averaging a blog entry every other day, I was putting an outline together for my next book, and I was eagerly planning the next round of edits on Nowhere Wild.

What I didn’t anticipate was that returning to work would also mean that I would spend a lot of my free time getting back up to speed on the technology I needed to do my day job. I went through this same process when I started my last job back in 2008. I spent six solid months reading all kinds of technical books on software development so I could actually feel like a little bit less of an imposter at my job. But I didn’t see it coming this time. I don’t know why. This time around, instead of reading books(which is still difficult for me), I’ve been watching technical courses on PluralSight.com. I can’t recommend them enough. We even went out and bought a Kindle Fire HD (7”) so I could download the courses and watch them on the way into work. We liked the Kindle Fire so much, we bought a second one, so we can use it as a kid-occupier when we travel.

But watching these videos during my commute uses the time I used to reserve every day for writing. It’s time well spent—but still, it’s not writing time. I had hoped that I’d have time and energy to write in the evenings, but the kids go to bed later now than they did that last time I did any serious commuting, they have swim lessons twice a week, and I’m so much more tired than I used to be when I get home. By the time the kids are in bed, the bills are paid, and emails returned, it’s 8:30 PM, I’m bushed and bedtime is just 45 minutes away. I crash on the couch, watch a TV show on Netflix, and crawl into bed.

I used to get a lot of writing done in the early morning hours of the weekend, but now the kids are up long before I am. MY body needs a couple of extra hours of sleep on the weekends to make up for the early wakeups during the week. During the rest of the day it’s nearly impossible to get an hour’s peace to just sit down and write.

But the writing must happen. And it will. I’m nearing completion on the first round of essential courses I need to take for work, and that will, hopefully, free up a couple of commutes per week. That does still present the issue that because I can’t mingle my work and home PC content, that I’ll have to lug two laptops back and forth each day to the office—but I have to find a way to make that work.

I realize that I say “hopefully” a lot in these blog entries. Hopefully this will happen, and then I can do that. In the old days, before GBS, hopefully meant that I probably wasn’t as committed to getting things done as I should be. But with my recovery from GBS, hopefully means that I am doing everything in my power to balance the needs of my recovery, my family, my work, and my writing. Unfortunately, the writing has come in 4th place since the beginning of April. It won’t be moving up the list any time soon, but as my strength returns, the hope is that the GBS recovery takes less and less time each day, and leaves more time to write. There’s that word again—hope. When it comes to the recovery, I’ve learned that I can’t set a deadline on being better. I hope for the best, and try to do a little more whenever my body allows me to. Sometimes weeks go by before that next step is possible.

So for now, I’m making no promises on what I’m going to get done this month. Fortunately, both my editor and agent understand my situation, and are more than accommodating. The only pressure being applied to me to get this round of edits done is from my own desire to get back into the story, and to make the book as good as it can possibly be.

15 Months With Guillain-Barre Syndrome

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When I set foot on the train to go to work for the first time in over fourteen months on April 8th, I didn’t know what I’d be writing in my Month 15 update. I knew it wouldn’t be more of the same “getting better slowly” notes I’d written the last 6 months. I hoped for the best—that I would be a little low energy for a few days, but pretty much normal after the second week. But I feared the worst—that after a few days, or a week, I’d have to back out of my contract because my GBS prevented me from continuing.

The good news is that except for one day (where I had a doctor’s appointment), I made it into work every day I was scheduled to, and was able to work forty hours each of my first three weeks. The bad news is that in each of those first three weeks, I had at least one day where I wondered if I’d be able to make it back in the next day.

The first week wasn’t actually too bad. I was excited to get back to work, though nervous for obvious reasons. The people are great, the work space is pleasant, and the work is interesting. What killed me the first week was all the walking. I should clarify that it wasn’t the walking around work itself, but the walking from the car to the train, and the train to the bus, and the bus to the office, and back again at the end of the day. Ascending and descending the stairs at the transit stations was more difficult than I remembered. I’d lost a lot more muscle, and lot more endurance in the past year than I’d thought. After four days of commuting, my energy was perilously low, and my legs were like so much Jello.

Two things saved me that first week: 1) My kids were on spring break and off to their grandparents for the week so I could just come home every day, grab some food, and crash on the couch until bedtime, and 2) Friday is a work from home day, and I’m capped (per my contract) at 40 hours per week. Since I put in more than 8 hours a day on days I’m in the office, that means I only need to work 5-6 hours a day on Friday. And I needed every minute of that first weekend to recover.

The second week wasn’t much better than the first. In fact, it was probably a little worse, since I didn’t get fully recovered from the first week before the second week kicked off. I had a couple of bad nights of sleep that week as well (less than 4 good hours of sleep), and each one of those bad nights put me further behind the eight ball. I’m not sure what was causing my bad sleep… Was it anxiety or excitement about work? Or nerve pain from the GBS? I’d wake up with my body on fire, as if my internal thermostat was running at 105F, but my temp was completely normal. I had no problem getting to sleep each night, but I’d wake up every night between 2 and 3 AM, and would be absolutely unable to get back to sleep. I’d watch the clock tick towards 5:00 AM and my brain would not shut off. I tried Melatonin before I went to bed, or as soon as I woke up in the middle of the night, but it had made no difference.

By the end of the second week, I was about as low on energy as I had been in months, and my symptoms had returned with a vengeance. I had numbness all across my face, arms and legs, and my legs were getting progressively weaker. Again, what saved me was my work from home / short Friday.

I recovered a little bit faster through that second weekend, but really wasn’t able to do much but lay on the couch and nap. I felt a little better than I had the previous weekend, but the trend was generally a downward slope. By noon the following Tuesday, I was in a panic. The left side of my face was completely numb… not tingly numb like I was used to, but dentist-Novocain numb. My left arm was getting progressively weaker as the day wore on, and I’d also lost feeling and strength in my left leg. I called my neurologist, and they were able to squeeze me in first thing the next morning.

I described my symptoms to her, and the situation with work. I knew that if I could just get some good, consistent sleep, I could get through each day, but I didn’t know if I was doing any long-term damage to my body. My doctor was fairly confident that that was not the case. It was more that I was just doing things that my body hadn’t done in a long time, and it would just take me longer to adapt to the energy burn. A lot of my symptoms were what my doctor considered more typical of primary symptoms during the onset of the GBS—symptoms that, for one reason or another, I didn’t necessarily have a year ago. With my physiology (i.e. my CMT), it’s really hard to know what a “normal” healing process would or should be.

We decided to try to treat the sleep issues first, figuring addressing those would allow my body to reset each night. She prescribed a very low dose of Nortriptyline, which we hoped would calm my nervous system without any major side effects, except for maybe a little drowsiness first thing the morning.

I took my first dose that night, and, for the first time in what seemed like forever, I slept until my alarm went off. I felt a little drowsy (as expected), but the numbness was gone, and I felt rested. My sinuses were a little dry, but other than that, I felt pretty good. Still I was happy I could still work from home on Friday, and rested a lot that weekend.

But I couldn’t stay on that medicine very long. After the second night, I started getting nosebleeds, and by the third night, the nosebleeds were a little worse. I’m not talking about gushers street fighters get or anything like that, but enough that I had to carry extra Kleenex around all the time. I also wasn’t sleeping that well. I still woke up around 3 AM, and instead of a relaxed dozing, my mind jumped around like a kid on a trampoline. By the fourth night, the pain and stuffiness in my sinuses became too much to bear, and I stopped taking the medicine. It took about six days for my nose to feel normal again.

Since I stopped taking the meds, my sleep has been a little better, and last week (my fourth week), my symptoms began to subside a bit. I wouldn’t say I’ve had any really good days where I feel symptom free, but I at least didn’t have any really bad days. That felt like progress. As long as I stay conservative on my energy burn, I’m fairly certain I won’t have any issue getting to work each day this upcoming week.

I should note that because of all the walking around on my commute, I’ve dropped about five pounds in the last month. That wasn’t something I had planned, but I’m now back to my pre-GBS/pre-2011-surgery weight, and a little worried that I may need to increase my calorie intake. I’ve also begun eating a lot more salads for lunch, trying to max out my B-Vitamin intake, which should also help my nerves to heal. There are two café/deli’s around my office with big salad bars that I enjoy grazing at, so that makes healthy lunches easier to obtain. 

And, as luck would have it, this will be the last week I’ll have to commute for a while. It turns out that the office I’m in is scheduled to be remodeled starting at the end of this week, and we’re all being asked to work from home until the end of June. For me, this is perfect. I’ll be able to focus on my work, and allow myself to recover from the first month. Hopefully, by the time July rolls around, I’ll be that much further along in my recovery, and be used to the long days.

I can’t have asked for a better situation for getting back to work. Like I said, the work is enjoyable, the people great, the money good, and the flexible work schedule perfect for me. I’ve seen some old friends on the train, and even swung by my old office to say “Hi”. Even with that, the first month saw a few more dips than that I had hoped for. I expect that I’ll have a few more bad days in the next month, but I’m really hoping that they become the exception rather than the rule.

A Few Technical Notes From My Return to Work

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Two weeks ago, I started a new job. Not surprisingly, my last post here was 15 days ago. As I expected, things got really busy, really quickly. I’m not quite ready to do a full write up on what going back to work has been like… I’m going to wait until I’m closer to a full month to do that. But I do have a few random technical notes I thought I’d pass along.

  1. Now that I’m out of the house more, I get to see my iPhone 5 in action. The LTE speed is impressive, and just serves to point out how absolutely crappy the wi-fi on the phone is. Images and videos load almost instantly while out in the wilds of Seattle, but sitting in my living room, just 40 feet from my router, I barely get any throughput.
  2. The downside of the LTE is that using any kind of streaming (i.e. MLB.com to listen to a baseball game) kills my battery halfway through the game. I usually listen to music at work as well, but with the iPhone 5, I have to stop 2/3rds of the way through my day so I have enough battery left to make a call on the way home if I need to. I don’t remember having that issue with my 3GS (at least not when it was new).
  3. The iPhone 5 also gets really warm when using LTE or has the screen on… so much so that I have to set it on my desktop, instead of in my pocket when streaming audio so I don’t burn my leg. But at least it lets me know when an app is running and burning down the battery.
  4. The laptop I was given for my new job came equipped with Microsoft Windows 8. Two weeks is a pretty good length of time to evaluate a product. My evaluation? “Why?” I am constantly frustrated by the OS—not because I can’t figure it out—but because they made things that used to be easy and logical, into a demonstration of “look how cool this is”. And it’s not. I’m continuously shaking my head at it, or worse, banging my head against my desk. I spend zero time on the tiles screen except when I have to search for something that used to be easily found through the old Start menu. Sure, there are a couple of things that work better than Windows 7 (like the Search Feature), but it would have been so much better to introduce that feature into the Windows 7 paradigm. Other than that, Windows 8 seems like a complete disaster from a productivity standpoint, and I’ll be keeping my home PC’s on Windows 7 for the foreseeable future.
  5. I’ve also spent the last two weeks getting used to Visual Studio 2012. I can’t say I’m overly impressed with the new UI for that either. I’ll probably get used to it, but the new interface for Team Explorer hides the features I use most, and requires more clicks to do things than I would prefer. The Test Explorer seems to be lacking pieces that were just intuitive in the past, and I’ve stopped using it altogether in favor of Resharper’s Test Explorer. I’ve also had at least three times where the UI starts behaving erratically, forcing me to restart it to allow me to continue working. The jury is still out on whether or not VS2012 is an upgrade to VS2010 (at least from the UI perspective). I’m not a big fan of the chrome-less look of Windows 8… it just makes things look unfinished.
  6. Speaking of Resharper—it’s the first tool I always install on my PC after setting up the basics. The latest version of that doesn’t disappoint. This tool is still the greatest productivity add-on for Visual Studio that I’ve ever found. In job interviews, I always ask if the team is using it. If they aren’t, and aren’t willing to let me use it, I probably won’t consider working there. Luckily, my new team insists on using it.
  7. Under the hood of Visual Studio 2012, however, the cool features for .NET just keep coming in .NET 4.5. The more I dig into it, the more time it saves me in things like async programming and Javascript development. What used to take days or weeks or months to do 3 years ago, now can be done in just a few lines of code. It’s definitely worth upgrading your apps.
  8. One of the pleasant technical discoveries I’ve made in the last few weeks is pluralsight.com. I used to buy (and lug around) 800 page books each time a new technology came out, and then those books would sit on my shelves for years until I gave them away. With the speed at which technology changes these days, they’re only relevant for a year or two at best, some for just a few months. For $29 a month, Pluralsight gives me access to dozens of very good training courses on the technology I need to do the projects I’m working on right now, and I’m learning a lot. I’m going to buy a tablet (probably a Kindle Fire HD) just so I can watch more of these courses while commuting.
  9. I’ve also become a recent convert to feedly.com as a blog aggregator. I used to use Outlook as an RSS feed collector, but each time I transferred jobs, I lost my list of feeds. I was going to use Google Reader, but at about the same time I was making that decision, Google decided to abandon the app. I watched the debates about which app would fill that gap, and chose feedly. I haven’t been disappointed. I set up my feeds, and read them on my phone on the train on the way in to, or home from work. It’s synched up to my PC as well, and it’s really easy to add another blog if I need to.

Jumping back into the workforce has stretched me out of my comfort zone technologically, but I’ve found some new tools that help me to be more efficient with my time and more effort. If you have any suggestions for other tools I absolutely must use, please let me know.

A Double Sunrise Rainbow

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Looked out the window while eating breakfast this morning, and saw a rainbow. So I took a picture—because, you know, that’s how we roll around here. But after taking a picture, I discovered it was actually a DOUBLE-RAINBOW. A double-SUNRISE-rainbow.

How cool is that?

Rainbow 001

Magical Abilities

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Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law states that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” From a science fiction writer’s point of view, that’s a fantastic law. It allows me to create stories around futuristic ideas that no one here, today, can debate because, dude, to you it’s all magic—you’re not technologically advanced enough to understand it. So I can’t be wrong. Right?

Ahh. Well. Within reason, perhaps.

Recently, however, I’ve come to appreciate that with a small change, the law applies to far more than just technology and to the here and now. I think we should create a extension to Clarke’s law, with one minor change to the original

“Any sufficiently advanced ability is indistinguishable from magic.”

Let me explain.

Last weekend, my wife and I watched the movie Chasing Mavericks, which is based on the life of Jay Moriarity, a teenage surfing prodigy who sets his sights on surfing some of the roughest waves in the world—the mythological break at Maverick’s, near Half Moon Bay, California. The waves at Maverick’s are huge. They’re cold and they’re nasty. They scare every surfer who has ever seen them. The story behind the movie is pretty good, and the movie itself was fine… though a tad reminiscent of a surfing version of The Karate Kid.

But it was while watching this movie that I realized that surfing is one of those advanced abilities that, to me, seems like magic.

Now I know the physics behind surfing. Pressure, surface tension, gravity, speed, friction. I get all that (though I wouldn’t want to try to write the equation for it). I also know that vast schools of surfers paddle out into the surf every day, and ride the waves, all around the world. To them, the act of surfing is not magic—though the experience may be.

But for me, watching someone surf will always be magical. Balance is something I’ve never had much of. I have trouble enough maintaining my balance on solid ground.This is attributed, mainly, to my lifelong battle with Charcot Marie Tooth disease (CMT). Being able to stand up on a surfboard while the swell hurtles me toward jagged rocks, and the wave-front tosses my surfboard board this way and that, is just something that I’ll never be able to do, even on small waves. I appreciate that riding small waves is possible. But watching surfers ride those giants at places like Mavericks… that’s magic.

There are lots of other things that require a good sense of balance that also seem like magic to me: skateboarders working a half-pipe without cracking their skulls every time; construction workers walking the high steel of a skyscraper; rock climbers pulling themselves up a vertical face. I cannot even imagine doing those things. To me, those acts are no different than making a city bus disappear by saying “Abracadbra”.

It’s not that these activities just seem hard, or that I’m not willing to put in the work to learn how to do them. I’ve taken on lots of hard things that took immense commitments to train for, or to learn how to do them. I’ve ridden a bike 100 miles in a day. I’ve written 6 novels. I’ve raised amazing twins (though I was little more than an assistant in that bit of magic). But to surf requires more than just will and training. It requires a magical conglomeration of balance and anticipation and strength—things I will never have.

There are a few other things that will always remain magic to me. Acting for instance. I have zero acting skill. Zip. Zilch. Notta. When I watch good actors, it seems like what they are doing is magical. Their acting has the ability to transport the me into a whole different world of belief. If that’s not magic, I don’t know what is.

On the more practical side, even some of what I do every day requires magic I don’t possess. I’ve been a computer programmer since I was 8 years old. I’ve learned a dozen programming languages, and written hundreds of thousands of lines of code. But when I see new video games with all the amazing artwork and graphics, I can’t help but think that those developers aren’t wizards from another realm. Beyond the technology involved, the artistic skill needed to develop those images is something I will never possess. When I’m working on a website these days, I insist on involving a good designer, to raise my application functionality to a new and impossible level. I’ve seen horrible sites become great with just a little pixie dust from a talented designer.

Not everything I’ve ever thought was magic remains a spell possessed only by a secret society. I used to think that speaking in public was one of those things I’d never be able to do. I’ve watched the speakers at conferences like TED and PNWA and PDC, and thought “I’ll never be able to do that.” I’ve never been good at memorization, and public speaking used to scare the crap out of me. But I started going to Toastmasters, and practicing my speeches. Now speaking in public doesn’t bother me anymore. Perhaps magic can be learned. Or maybe that was just one of the spells that can be cast with just hard work.

Clarke wasn’t wrong in his statement. But I think by substituting “ability” for “technology” we can recognize that magic comes in many forms. Hard work and determination almost always pay off. But when will and talent come together, they create a sense of wonder  that can be truly stunning, and beyond belief.

I appreciate the magicians among us. They might not think what they are doing is so awe inspiring, but I do. So thank you, surfers, construction workers, artists and actors of the world. Thank you for sharing your magic with the rest of us. We are all better for it.

The Watch List: Part XII

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If you look at the list of TV watched below, you’ll see that my TV watching seemed to decrease in March. And it probably would have… except that what isn’t seen there is the return of baseball, plus the fact that my wife and I have been completely immersed in re-watching all 7 seasons of The West Wing. We’re part-way through Season 7 now, so I expect this splurge to end soon. It is still one of the greatest shows ever made, and it’ll be hard not to turn right back around and start watching Season 1 again.

Must see movie of the month goes to The Perks of Being a Wallflower. If you went to high school in the 1980’s, you’ll be suffering flashbacks the whole time, but it’ll be worth it. The plot is deep and touching and the ending hurts.

Also, if you haven’t seen the 1995 BBC Miniseries, Pride and Prejudice, you should. I doubt I’ll ever be able to read Jane Austin’s novels (I don’t have the patience for that style of writing), but this series was incredibly well done, and after watching it, I expect I wouldn’t get nearly as much out of the books as I did the series.

Worst movie of the month goes to Sydney White. This movie ended up on our queue back in 2007 when, after giving birth to our two kids, my wife could only watch ‘fluffy stuff’. But we didn’t have a lot of time to watch movies back then, so it stayed there for 6 years, until we were finally in the mood to see another fluffy comedy. Perhaps this movie works for the pre-teen crowd, but my neck ached at the end from shaking my head so often.

My list also shows that I’ve watched two seasons of Weeds. It’s a good show, and, at half an hour for each episode, it’s quick to burn through a whole season in a short amount of time (especially if you fast forward through the most annoying opening credits on television). But I probably wouldn’t miss it if it suddenly disappeared from my queue.

Listed below are the movies and TV series I’ve been watching since Part XI of this series:

  • [x] = Number of Episodes watched if TV show
  • ( y ) = Rating out of 5.
  • Items in bold = ones I highly recommend
Theater
  • None
TV Series (watching as aired)
  • Castle
  • Chicago Fire
  • Big Bang Theory
DVD
  • Atlas Shrugged: Part II (2)
  • Chasing Mavericks (4)
  • Connections 3: [2] (4)
  • Deadwood: Season 1: [1] (3)
  • Homeland: Season 1: [1] (5)
  • Leap Year (2)
  • Pride and Prejudice: Vol. 1 & 2 (5)
  • Sydney White (1)
  • The Perks of Being a Wallflower (5)
Instant Watch
  • Weeds Ssn 1 [3] (4)
  • Weeds Ssn 2 [12] (4)
  • Weeds Ssn 3 [6] (3)
  • Survivorman [2] (4)
  • Cosmos [1] (4)
  • Midsomer Murders Ssn 1 [2] (2)
  • Doctor Who Ssn 1 [3] (3)
  • House of Cards Ssn 1 [1] (4)

* Note that Netflix has changed the way it allows me to access my viewing history, and I can no longer look back for a whole month of watching, so it is entirely possible that I missed something. I should say that most people will be able to see their whole month of Netflix watching, but I have two kids who watch a lot of Sonic the Hedgehog and Strawberry Shortcake, and those cause my list to be longer than most people’s. My instant watch list above is largely from memory.

14 Months with Guillain-Barre Syndrome

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In my update last month, I talked about how life was beginning to return to normal. That process continued through March.

As I announced last week, I will be starting a new job next Monday, April 8th. This is a huge step for me, and I can’t wait to get back to it. I spent the better part of last week learning about the technology I’ll be working with, and the day-long efforts didn’t cause any lasting impact to my energy levels.

We have, however, had a nasty cold circulating through our household during the last week. My son missed two days of school, my daughter has been coughing on-and-off, and my wife has been on the couch for the last three days. I’ve got a bit of a sore throat, but it hasn’t knocked me out (yet) like the colds did last summer, so that feels like progress as well. Knock on wood.

On Saturday, since my wife was sick, I did a full trip to the grocery store for the first time in over a year. I’ve been to the store quite a few times, but not for a full “the-fridge-is-empty” restocking since the onset of GBS. I felt a little bit tired after that, but I still had enough energy later in the day to play outside with the kids and to walk down to the local schoolyard after dinner so the kids could play on the playground equipment. It’s these type of subtle changes that really build my confidence in my recovery.

Yesterday I went for my first bike ride in a couple of years. I had to pedal slowly, since I was riding with the kids down to the park, but 6 months ago, I wouldn’t have dreamed about getting on a bike and riding the two or so miles. My balance still seems off a little bit, but I ‘m not sure if that’s the GBS, the cold, or the CMT. It does seem better than it was a few months ago, so I suspect the recovery from GBS is continuing.

I’m still not at the point where I’m going to tackle any big outdoor projects, and I’m not yet ready to go on any big hike in the mountains. Those are just unnecessary and foolish risks to take. But my body continues to recover, and I feel stronger every week. I’m very careful not over-stressing my eyes by doing a lot of reading. This is probably my number one concern about going back to work.

The changes through March definitely made me feel like life is shifting out of neutral. I’m still in first gear, but it feels really good to be back on the road. I won’t be putting the hammer down for a while, so pass me on the left if you need to. But keep checking your rear-view mirror. I’ll be catching up soon.

Sometimes Editing Tires Out My Vocal Cords

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I can’t recall where I first heard that reading your work aloud could really help with the editing process. Jason Black probably mentioned it in one of his talks at the PNWA Conference. Or perhaps Sally Harding planted the seed in my brain during one of our many conversations. But I never really tried it until I did my last edit on my novella 38 Years Old (Never Kissed a Girl) back in February. I found it highly effective on that story, especially since that story hadn’t been through the gauntlet of multiple beta readers, and I had no intention of paying a professional editor for something I wasn’t going to actually charge for.

The idea of moving my lips while reading one of my novels scared the crap out me. My novels are roughly four times as long as the novella. Reading an 80000 word novel out loud seemed like a recipe for disaster considering my frail vocal cords have about a 2000 word limit at any one sitting—a side effect of a bad case of mono back in the 1990s, and lingering effects of my GBS.

But after trying it with the novella, and repeating it with success with a number of blog entries and even some emails over the last few weeks, I decided to try it with Nowhere Wild. I didn’t expect to find much. I’ve edited this puppy at least 20 times. I’ve had it read by a half dozen readers. I figured there would be a couple of places where I’d added a word that didn’t need to be there, or removed one that should have been left behind.

Yeah, there were a few more changes than that.

I printed the novel in 50 page chunks. 50 pages isn’t too much to carry around, and if, for some reason, I wasn’t able to get through the whole thing, it didn’t seem like a complete waste of paper and ink. It was at this point I learned that my printer is not capable of true double-sided, collated printing, so I had to print it single sided. Sorry trees. Next time, I’ll send the whole MSS down to the local copy shop and get it done in a single shot with half the paper.

I sat down with a highlighter in hand, and read every word. If a section seemed clumsy, I circled it so I could come back to it later. If a word was wrong, I highlighted it and moved on. Simple mistakes I fixed with a quick note. I tried to edit without breaking my speaking flow. Long notes interrupted my cadence and made it impossible to capture the true pace of the scene.

I did about 25 pages a day, so two days per 50 page section and twelve or thirteen days for the whole book. At the end of each 50 page section, I went back through and transcribed the notes into the book, and fixed the issues while the memories were still fresh in my brain.

I’m amazed at how many problems I found using this simple technique. Word territory issues, extra phrases, and dialog stumbles really pop out when you engage your lips. I had heard that, but I never really believed it until I tried it. I wish I had used it on all of my work before sending it out. I know I will do it in the future, including on these blog entries.

If you’ve never tried this technique, I sincerely hope you give it a try, even if you are going to pay for a professional editor. If you’re going to self-publish anything, it’s like having someone sitting over your shoulder while you edit, pointing out all the mistakes you missed the first dozen times you read the piece. I think it’s well worth the effort.