… but I got sick last week.
“Sick” is hardly the word, really. This state of being seems to have hearkened straight from an unabridged Charles Dickens story… having a body desperately ill, wracked by ceaseless bouts of coughing and all the while drawing ragged breaths through an inflamed esophagus, that refuses to be comforted by either medicine or tea.
Sick, indeed.
I came by this virulent guest honestly enough; my husband and children were struck with it first, after an innocent visit to a park on President’s Day. The fever made itself present within 48 hours and my workload effectively doubled. Our book was paced on hold as I made restorative soups, disinfected surfaces and doorknobs like a mad woman, soothed feverish heads and doled out an herbal tisane during the day and medicine at night.I fantsied myself quite the nurse and bustled about to make certain the laundry didn’t pile up, but the novel was not far from my mind.
A scene in our latest book became all the more real to me during this process for the hero of our epic fantasy series was–at the time we all fell ill–enveloped in the grips of a virus, while imprisoned in an enemy island fortress.I made copious mental notes as my husband ran the course of his illness and eventually grew well enough to return to work. The virus made its way through our four children, and then paused. I dared to hope that I had downed enough Vitamin C and Echinacea to have withstood its invisible power.
But, it was not to be. With a feverish brain I lay abed, inwardly forming arguments to rain down on the heads of the parents–if I ever found out which they were–whose naivete had allowed sick children go to a public park and infect their neighborhood. Ours was merely one house among many along our street to feel the viruses feverish brush.
As I tried to sleep in such circumstances, I keenly wanted to write… to pay attention to the character I had left in such limbo. What woe he must feel, to be ill, hundred of miles from home and at the mercy of uncaring captors. I felt grateful for the warm confines of my bed and relative quiet of my home and tried to imagine the scene where Lord Asher recovered.
But, there the concentration ended, as well as what energy I possessed. For over 2 weeks I have not written a word on the story. Other things have been lost, the children piano lessons have been delayed, my garden ignored and my supply shelves ravaged, but thankfully, we’ve emerged from the fog of influenza unscathed and with added immunity.
Though my cough yet remains, I am back, once more filling the breech of words between “unfinished novel” and “completed manuscript.”
L. R. Styles is an author with Belator Books
{L. R. Styles} 