Heavy Traffic

Thursday was a busy day. The RN came this morning -- I am healthy enough that I don't really need a check visit by a visiting nurse, other than monitoring my vitals due to the number of prescriptions I am still taking.

At 1pm the HHA came for Shower Day -- the shower transfer bench arrived last Friday a couple of hours after the HHA's first visit. The OT had helped with a dry run of getting in and over the tub on Monday. Today was the proof of concept. In the hospital, a shower took about an hour. A sponge bath last week took about an hour. Today's shower took around 40 minutes. Hey, this stuff might actually work.

Later in the afternoon PT came and among other things, I verified that I could get up from a kitchen chair by myself. And I took a step down into the garage, turned around and we experimented with some different step up techniques. Although it's the left leg and foot with the nerve damage and I am right handed, it is much easier to climb up a step for me leading with the left. The left leg actually has a great deal of strength. I knew that before, but we had to test some things. I guess I am just weird that way.

Oh, and a fourth vehicle came up the driveway delivering a postal package. Haven't seen this much activity in our driveway in years. Of course, no Trick-or-Treaters came by again this year. Just as well, we didn't bother to buy any bags of candy, though Mrs. Dr. Phil and I split a dark chocolate Snickers she'd bought special for dessert tonight. (grin)

Managed to sleep in bed all night. This being home thing is coming along. And I continue to find that long stay in hospital to be a fading dream... How quickly we adapt.

Dr. Phil

2 - 48

In the last 48 hours or so I've managed to get two submissions out to two anthology markets. The first involved a rewrite which expanded the story by 25%. I got that one in about 23½ hours before the deadline. The second came from a Facebook entry and I managed to get that one together in two hours. It's great to have Invenstory. It's also good to do due diligence and verify that a story isn't out to market elsewhere. This is especially important when you're at least six months out of date with keeping up with subs. (grin)

These are the first subs made since I've gotten home. Not that I haven't been working, mind. Writing and rewriting takes time.

A lot of people like to quote some of the Golden Age authors and say never rewrite. But as with all advice, you can't quite take it at face value. First, Heinlein, et al, were writing in a very different environment. On the one hand you could actually make a living with short fiction, if you were prolific enough and willing to cross genre boundaries. And on the other, you had editors who edited. I sometimes think that the use of computers to spellcheck and easily revise today, versus retyping a whole story and making carbons, allows many editors to demand really clean manuscripts.

Whether you wish to consider this practical or lazy, I shall leave as an exercise for the reader. But I think it demands to make the cleanest story you can. Remember, your job is to get it accepted, whether it passes through a slush reader or goes direct to the editor. That won't happen if you allow your manuscript to make it easy for an editor to draw the Line Of Death through your story and stop reading.

Second, you cannot blindly accept all writing advice or so-called rules. Some people edit and revise as they write. Others dump as much of the story onto the page as they can and then clean up and fix up later. Me? I nearly always go through revisions, even with some stories which have already been to market. Cuts down on productivity, I suppose, but it makes me happy. And THAT'S the important thing.

Okay, I like selling stories and getting paid and sharing them, too. (double-entry-grin)

Dr. Phil