Wednesday, July 19, 2023

Of Weather and Writing by Bonnie Le Hamilton



Well, here it is the middle of July, and there are heat advisories out for my area. Yes, my area. I do not want to know how bad it is in Vegas. Though I get the feeling it’s cooler here than down south in Vegas. So, I’m not going to complain too much.

And if that wasn’t enough, I’ve got a much longer tale of woe. Starting with I am on IV antibiotics, again. Yip, I spent another three days in the hospital, for the same reason as last time. At least this time they didn’t need to cut open my ankle. I can count that as a blessing.

However, my poor cat is so stressed out about me being gone that long, he’s pulling his hair out again. And I haven’t even finished with all my problems.

I was still in the hospital when my landlord called me and because he hadn’t as yet received the one hundred dollars of my rent my local church leader promised to pay for me. I had already paid five hundred dollars, and he threatened me with eviction over one hundred dollars!

Let alone it turned out that my landlord is stubbornly refusing to present my local church leader with an invoice for the amount I need help with before he gets the money, yet our rules say we need the invoice before a check can be sent, and my landlord has been told this.

And now I’m going to need church help with rent next month, as in for all of it, just like last time I ended up in the hospital, I’m not going to have enough money to meet all my bills. Just great.

And then, two days after I got home, my landlord up and surprises everyone in the building by putting up a for sale sign! Wonderful. This is the cheapest place in town that isn’t subsidized housing. It is also a dump with an access road badly in need of repaving. My hope is it doesn’t sell anytime soon, especially since every place in town has long waiting lists, and one-bedrooms around here are going for more than my two-bedroom. I have no savings for things like the deposit and the first month’s rent.

Anyway, between more doctor’s visits (I am now seeing my podiatrist regularly as well as my primary) and trying to bury myself in reading to take my mind off my worries (starting before the issues with the landlord) I haven’t done any writing or editing in a week or more. I have been rereading the few Linda Goodnight books I have on my reader.

At least when I asked my friend to take me to the ER this last time, I decided to be prepared for an overnight stay. I packed my laptop, my reader, and my phone along with all their chargers into my backpack. I also packed my eyeglass case and a few other things. And I’m glad I did.

The problem is I never once took my laptop out of the bag! I just read my books. I really need to finish editing my sci-fi manuscript. Then again, right before my foot got so bad again, I discovered that I’d somehow lost a scene I know I wrote. I don’t have it anywhere, and it was so good! Now I have to rewrite it from memory.

I hate having to do that.

And I have no idea how I lost it unless I just failed to save those changes. I have had issues lately about having several versions of the manuscript, and I honestly think I either didn’t save that scene or when I was confronted with two files of the same name, I mistakenly saved the older file, not the newer one. I’m sure it’s something like that because I’ve had that issue a few times before, I finally renamed the file I was working on by adding the word “current” to the file to save it when that happened the last time, but that version clearly didn’t have this really good scene in it.

Between wishing I didn’t have to start from scratch on that scene and trying to stay cool in this heat wave (Konnie, I don’t want to hear how bad you have it. This is hot here and I no longer have trees shading my apartment!) I hate triple-digit temps. They are awful.

Plus, I’ve been thinking more about a couple of my romance manuscripts than I have my sci-fi. Maybe I should stop reading romances and dig out my sci-fi novels instead. Maybe that will get me back into my sci-fi, even though I read more mysteries than anything, and I can’t write those!

Anyway, happy writing everyone!

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