My head has hurt most of the day, I’ve been sore, and I’ve been trying to convince myself that the doctoral advice to rest was indeed on the mark. I’ve been reading and watching TV-on-Netflix and generally grumping about, worrying about the “soft batch” spots on my head and wondering how I managed to bruise it without actually hitting it against anything. It’s an external couple of bruises, not a concussion, and the idea that whiplash could bruise the outside of one’s head is just baffling to me.

Nevertheless, I know that getting back on the writing horse is just as important as getting on the driving horse as soon as I can. And last night I wrote, but I felt pretty bad about what I wrote. It was so choppy and challenging that at times I was wondering whether I had sustained more head trauma than I initially thought because it was clearly impacting my writing. I slogged through, but I still think that section is going to need some major reworking.

Tonight, thankfully, despite hours of wasted time and false starts, I finally got a really solid chunk done, pushing toward nine pages, all some of the smoothest and sharpest production of the whole novel so far. The work stands at over 82,000 words, closing in on Loosely Based for the longest thing I’ve ever written. I’m maintaining a pace to get the thing done early and at a clip around 1,000 words a day, every day since I started writing it again.

There was a pumpkin party in there too, thanks to a lot of help from our friends and the ability to reserve the community room at the Butler Apartments when the weather is inclement. Probably a story best told in pictures, which we don’t have that many of since we ran the camera batteries out taking snapshots of the accident. I am tempted to post some of those too, once I’ve put a little more time between myself and the incident (and I should probably get some kind of insurance sign-off that it’s okay). We had a great time at the party, but the timing has been a bit exhausting. Very stressful for Emily, who is up against midterms this week.

This is mostly just a little recap post, the chaff of another great writing session and further crystallization of my gratefulness, both for being alive and for being able to recover on the writing front while so much else still feels stalled out or downright lousy. As unfortunate as it would have been to die, it would have been perhaps worse to suffer severe brain damage. So I am thankful not only to be here, but to be able to continue doing what I feel I have long been called to do.

And now, for the moment, I am called to rest.