From Hamlet to Zombies - Sick Days

To write or not to write, that is the question. Whether tis nobler in the mind to appear more than human in powering through virus or bacteria, or to admit mortality in the face of such tiny invaders and to wilt, thereby defeating them.

Enough with butchering Shakespeare. The wisdom of sick days is in the eyes (and constitution) of the ailing. Some people can work through just about anything. I’m not one of them.

Pain? No problem. I cannot work through having my mental capacity impaired. Most illnesses only kick me in the teeth for a day then linger for a few more. I can usually get at least a partial word count out of that. Some bugs come along, though, and grab hold of my brain. This is a real thing. Pick up a copy of The Great Influenza for evidence. A flu virus at the end of WW I set the stage for WW II, all because the virus didn’t just infect the body of the US president negotiating the truce. It crossed the blood/brain barrier and infected his brain, leading to a treaty being signed that he’d been opposed to signing.

It’s a rare cold or flu that turns my brain to goo, but when one does, I am down for the count. There will be zero word count. There will be bad TV, tea, soup, and likely, an odd-tasting Chinese Herbal medicine to drink. I’ll always drink them, though, because those herbs kick viral backside and I get to work much faster.

My real problem, one I haven’t found a way around, yet, is migraines. They are the single reason I lose the most days per year of work. They are a perfect storm of neurological impairment and blinding pain that manifests as mental impairment. Sometimes, the blind part is 100% true. No writing through what amounts to an electrical storm in the brain. I have yet to find a way to push language and coherent thought through a migraine in order to muscle out word count. My best coping mechanism is to take my meds, go to bed, and get back at it when I wake.

Most of the time, this works out just fine. Now that I’m on deadline (and this is a migraine night – for the forensically minded, you might be able to detect a pattern by comparing my posts over time – I secretly suspect I make less sense and that posts written under the influence of migraine jump around) if I need to fold up shop early because of a migraine, I make up the word count on the weekend. My deadlines are figured without me working weekends. That allows for make ups as needed. It also allows me to remain married and acquainted with my family.

For the record, I’m not in favor of powering through your body's signals to rest. It doesn’t make you tough or virtuous. It makes you deaf to your body's ability to heal itself. Besides, if you’re going out in public while you’re sick, you're not taking your responsibility for preventing the zombie apocalypse at all seriously. Do you really want the CDC to identify you as patient zero? Oh. Wait. I guess if you were patient zero, you won’t care. You’ll be strolling the ruined remains of civilization looking for a tasty snack of brains.

From messing up Hamlet to zombies in one post. Do I win?

Get Down With the Sickness

by Allison Pang

Well, if there's one thing that being in constant chronic pain has taught me, it's that you can work through damn near anything.

If you really want to.  (Exceptions being made for the previously mentioned stomach bugs of the earlier posts - no one should have to do *anything* if foreign matter is coming out of either direction in the pipes. So, free pass there.)

But that's the kicker, isn't it?

There's this interesting thing about being able to call the shots on when and how you work. Writing books is lot like being able to work a day job from home. Some people have the discipline to do what they need to do...and others really benefit from having a manager and an office to answer to.

Same with writing - deadline or not, I think you have to look at your writing pattern. Do you routinely get whatever writing done that you need to? Or are you slacking off and wasting precious hours on tumblr and facebook?  (Not that I would know *anything* about that. At all Nope. Not me.)

On the other hand - writing is NOT my day job. I've lamented in the past about not being able to quit the mundane tasks that keep food on my table. I'd love to be able to support myself on my writing, but I fully recognize that may never happen. At the moment it's a secondary job that brings in some nice extra cash here or there.

The advantage to that  is that I'm the only one who gets hurt by my slacking - not writing today doesn't mean my kids aren't eating tomorrow, and that makes a huge difference. It's a luxury to be able to decide if I want to play hooky or not.

So when it comes to taking a sick day from writing, I think a lot depends on other factors - is there a deadline looming? Can I afford to skip a day or two?

Sometimes there's a fudge factor involved. Am I actually too sick to write? Does it make sense to rest up for the needed time and work when I'm fresh vs struggling in the throes of cotton-head? Or am I looking for an excuse to just take a mental health day? (Which actually sometimes really does need to happen.)

But the key is to taking a day off is knowing it won't derail me the rest of the week - what I don't want is to be happily clicking away in my routine - and have the day off push me into a holding pattern of not working for several days. (Easy to do - one day ends up becoming two days, ends up becoming an entire week. "Oh, I'll write tomorrow when I'm *really* feeling better. Right after I kill these zombies." Uh huhhhhh)

In general I tend to feel pretty guilty if I don't get a word count in - but at the moment, I'm not on deadline (for the first time in well over 3 years).  I was also pretty burned out in the November/December timeframe. I absolutely needed a break and I gave myself one. The writing wasn't happening the way I wanted it to, and it was very discouraging to realize that I *didn't* want to write at all. The stories were still in my head and I was brainstorming and taking notes, but I had zero interest in actually putting it on paper.

So, I decided not to push it - if writing happened over the holidays, great. If not? Well, so be it. I needed to focus on family matters and give myself a chance to relearn what it meant to write for fun. And also play a shit-ton of Lego Lord of the Rings, apparently.

The offshoot is now I'm back to writing every day and it feels *good* to be  in the swing again. I'd rather write than play video games. (This is key, for me.) On top of that, I ended up plotting out most of another UF series that I also started working on. (And I had been completely empty of ideas before the break).

And Lego LotR? Back on the shelf, where it belongs. :)

Big Baby Alert!

When I am sick, I am a great. big. baby.  Okay, maybe more like an angry toddler. When I feel like ick, I don't want anyone near me -- IRL or virtually. I am über snottyhackeycoughy cranky-pants. Also?

I'm totally buzzed on the Quil.

If I can stop the snot-faucet long enough to actually type, then I'm writing. Mostly because the combination of whiskey and Nyquil does wonders for the creative mind... you know, when I'm not face-first in a drool-soaked pillow.

Do I feel obligated to write when I'm sick? 

Hell no. I don't feel obligated to scrape the fuzz off my tongue or change my fever-stained clothes. The closest I get to an obligation is taking the dog five steps beyond the doorway so he doesn't pee in my bed.

What about the quality of plague-source writing?

Sometimes it's so awesome, I swear Bradley or Lackey occupied my body. Sometimes it's so heinous I print the pages just for the joy of burning them. In summary: pretty much like any other day I write.

So, I don't let sickness get me down?

 
Psht. Assuming my sickness is not of the intestinal variety, because, folks, really NO LAPTOPS IN THE BATHROOM, EVER (and you people who take your cell phones in there -- STOP IT. It's nasty.), I will write. I will also sleep and drink fucktons of tea. If the sleeping and excessive peeing prevent me from writing, so be it. I'm not going to beat myself up over it...that's the job of the cooties.

Why Writers Should Allow Themselves Sick Days

I see a lot of writers on Facebook and Twitter say things like "it might be Sunday, but writers don't get days off." Or "I'm dying of this flu, but I'm on deadline, so I'll be awake all night, writing."

I should amend that. I see genre writers saying these things. Literary types don't seem to talk about looming deadlines and powering through word count in the same way. I suspect this has more to do with what's fashionable in each community - appearing to be too much of an artist to care about deadlines or looking like someone who writes a whole bunch, all the time.

Most writers will agree that we all write at different speeds. Once you've refined your craft and your method, you pretty much write however fast you write. Of course factors like work ethic, discipline, health, competing activities, etc. all play in, but there you are.

Still, it bothers me to see people thinking that "writers don't get days off."

It's kind of like the old joke - "I'm self-employed and, boy, is my boss a bitch!"

I think we have to be careful, those of us in professions or arts where we drive much of the responsibility ourselves, to remember that we are both boss and employee. One of the things I've leaned as I've ascended to more managerial positions in the corporate world, is to take care of my team. I'm careful to tell them when something is not urgent and if they want to leave at 4 on Friday after a 50-hour week? By all means do so! Corporate America has vacation, holidays and sick leave not just because of union mandates - my company is far more generous than strictly required - but because happy, healthy workers are productive ones.

So, this week's topic is whether we can work through being sick. In one of the worst flu seasons to hit the US in at least ten years, maybe more, this is an apropos question and I'm looking forward to hearing what everyone says.

For me? I believe in taking sick leave. I'm a health-nut and into natural healing. I rarely take medications. If I'm sick - or fighting off a bug - my first line of defense is rest, rest, rest. I don't try to work through it anymore. I know, after much experimentation and mounting evidence, that if I do work through the sick, the product shows it. It takes me two or three times as long to write it and it flat isn't as good.

If I take the time to rest up and feel better, then my energy and creativity is there, letting me make up for the lost time.

I have a really great boss.