Literary Illness, Take Two

Evidently I'm prone to pneumonia.  So I, along with my 80-year old relatives, will be lining up to get a pneumonia vaccination as soon as I'm well.

I had pneumonia back in 2016.  I've written on this blog about how it was during that time that I began sending out queries for Sweet Divinity after a hiatus.  Pneumonia is a very literary disease, and by that I mean that it seems to be the ailment of choice in a lot of classic literature, and also, that one can get a lot of literary work done whilst recovering from it.

I tend to pretend I'm not sick and keep living life at a ridiculously rapid pace.  And then in comes pneumonia, knocking me on my rear end and reminding me that I should actually listen to my body.

And so I've spent the better part of three days quarantined in an upstairs room, occupying myself with Outlander, Black Panther, The Man in the High Castle, and Trevor Noah stand up.  But I've also been writing.

I've been trying for months to pound out the opening of the sequel to Sweet Divinity.  I've written some funny stuff, but nothing that is just right.  I love the opening of Sweet Divinity.  Its sequel deserves something just as grand.

And then this morning, snuggled under my blankets, eating crackers (which is basically all I've eaten in the past forty-eight hours), it happened.  I opened a document, titled it "Aunt Annie Mae", and went to town.

But I'm not thanking pneumonia.  It's a horrible illness that really wrecks lives, but I am thanking the cosmos for the swift kick in the pants, and thanking my amazing doctor who's given me some good stuff.  I'll happily crawl back beneath my covers now and rest a bit.  Until the next bout of inspiration hits.

I advise you to take some quiet time for yourself...no...I advise you to choose some quiet time for yourself.  Only then can we hear our inner genius.