Here’s what happened in the last two weeks, near as I can tell (because to be totally honest, there are parts I don’t remember):
First, The Wookiee and I found out that the second round of attempted in-office babymaking did not work, and we made the decision to suspend efforts in that direction for the foreseeable future. The negative pregnancy test was crushing, because this time, I really really really thought it had worked; the decision not to continue was much easier. Of course, the reason for both of those was the same — the progesterone build-up (for I was on obscene quantities of that hormone). The progesterone was, frankly, wrecking my body — both with false pregnancy symptoms and other side effects. I was in fairly constant aching pain, was exhausted and sleeping twelve hours a night, was crying all the time, etc. If I’d actually been pregnant, those would have been acceptable side effects. But I wasn’t, so they weren’t. Most importantly, the progesterone seemed to be interfering with my crazy pills. Things went from bad to worse, and by the middle of January, my Lamictal was as high as it could go and still having no effect.
I promised The Wookiee a long time ago that fertility treatments were conditional upon my sanity surviving intact. We’d reached that point. So we stopped. It was an enormous relief.
So. That left me, for all intents and purposes, an unmedicated bipolar still stuffed full of PMS hormones. Fun times. For a few days, I felt pretty much the same; then the progesterone finally started to leave my system. My energy came back, but I started getting really, really fuzzy, like my brain was full of cotton balls, or like I wasn’t quite getting enough oxygen. And I lost my appetite entirely.
Luckily, I had an appointment with my psychiatrist, to whom I related the entire pathetic tale, and added my conclusion — that as the progesterone was leaving my system, the crazy meds were becoming effective again, and the dosage raise I’d had at the beginning of the month was now too much. In other words, the fuzziness was the sensation of overmedication. She agreed, but suggested that I wait to lower my dosage for another week until I could be certain all the hormones were gone, so I wouldn’t have another dissociative rapid-cycle, in that no good could possibly come of that. I agreed.
At the same time, I got around to reading Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict and watching Lost in Austen. Ten years ago, I wrote and published online a fanfic that is a combination of the two, though it was never finished. I don’t think that my idea was stolen, it’s too generic for that (though I have some questions about Confessions, because the first chapter is my fic almost word-for-word), but the fact that something I wrote at sixteen was actually marketable? That I’d written something at least as good as Confessions, and definitely better than Lost in Austen? That if I’d followed through… galling. It was galling. It’s still galling. It made me think about my writing and all the things I haven’t followed through on, all the things I’ve never finished, all the things I’ve never even tried.
Then, sitting at church a few days later, I got an idea for a story. The first real, non-fanfic idea I’ve had in years — clearly the result of all my obsessing over past writing attempts. I literally dropped my hymnal and ran for the door, sped home, and started frantically scribbling. Four hours later, I had twenty pages of notes outlining a novel. I can’t write on my desktop — don’t ask me why, I just can’t — so I went out and bought myself a lovely little netbook the next day, plopped down on the couch, and started typing. The words, good or bad, started to flow. They were coming so fast that I couldn’t keep up with them.
It’s around this point that I realized I hadn’t eaten anything in three days. Not even a piece of toast. This was contributing to the fuzziness in my head, but the fuzziness made it so much easier to focus, to shut everything else out, to not have the spare brain power to run KFKD on a constant loop, that I didn’t care.
Honestly, I don’t remember a whole lot of details about the next few days. I remember that I was typing almost constantly, hopping out of bed at seven in the morning to run to the computer, not stopping until after ten at night. I went to about six different coffee shops and always had decaf lattes, because the milk would stay down and I still couldn’t handle any caffeine. And I remember distinctly that whenever I tried to eat, my stomach would refuse to expand, and I’d throw it all right back up, which was slowly making me more and more exhausted. At this point I was hungry, hungry enough that I couldn’t eat slowly and expand my stomach in a gradual fashion, so of course I kept throwing up.
I lost about five pounds in five days and generally looked like I was dying of the consumption, but the words kept coming. I was terrified of changing anything. I ignored politics and blogs and friends. I didn’t lower my meds when I was supposed to. I didn’t do anything that wasn’t writing, out of fear that the creative burst would stop before I was finished. And I had to finish. I especially had to finish before The Rogue came, for The Vet is due this weekend. So it was a race against the clock to finish the first draft before real life could no longer be ignored.
Finally, about three days ago, the fuzziness started to fade — I think because my body simply got used to having no nutrients aside from milk and the occasional soaked piece of biscotti — and writing got harder. Luckily, I was almost done. The end of a piece of writing, for me, always reminds me of catch and haul fishing; the giant tuna has been pulled up to the side of the boat, and now you have to lean over the edge, whip giant crowbar-like hooks into the beast’s side, and haul it into the boat with all your might. But I did it.
And suddenly I was so, so tired.
This morning I lowered my meds, and The Wookiee, who has been doing dishes and generally fending for himself as I’ve ignored him for two weeks, has made me tiny meals of rice and fruit, no more than a cup at a time. They’re staying down — barely, but they’re staying down. I made eye contact with the kitchen for the first time in what feels like forever (though it wasn’t a pretty sight). Today, I may even put away the laundry.
The first draft is done — it’s too short, but I can tell there’s parts that will be expanded substantially. I will get myself back to functionality before I start editing. I need to look at it with fresh eyes. I will print it out onto real pages, get out a red pen, and go through paragraph by paragraph, but only for an hour or two a day, because now there’s no rush. I don’t need creative energy to edit. In fact, I’m better off without it, so that I can look at the mess clearly and cleanly.
I have no idea if anything will come of this book — let me tell you, the great American novel it ain’t. If I had to pick a genre, I’d probably have to go with chick lit (I love that term since it sounds just like chicklets). But it’s mine, and I want it to be the best that it can possibly be. I want to be able to say I’m an unpublished author. I want to have a stack of rejection notices on my desk. You’re not a writer until you have a stack of rejection notices. For that, there has to be something to reject. Now there is.
