Catpaws Cafe

Re-writing my life?

With the leg still in the cast this is more true than ever I suppose. Writing has become my life – because it’s one of the few things left in it, even with the challenge it is to find a position to write in. It’s a trade off – less pain, muddled head. Clear head: spine, head and neck hurts.

I very much look forward to getting a splint in a couple of weeks, and with that hopefully some more mobility. I know the cast was to immobilize me and that it has done well, but I still have stuff I need to do. I want my mobility back, and a life.  And I look forward to be able to feel the cats tails under my feet again so I don’t tread on them quite as often…

To catch you up, I was in a traffic accident 3 months ago. I have no insurance and is now faced with perhaps choosing how much mobility I will have for the rest of my life. Wasn’t planning any marathons, but I’d like to be able to walk easy etc. Do I have surgery and work to pay that cost back til I die and have no money to do the things I want to do, or do I live with a splint and hope for the best? And be grateful to still be here? Focus on what I can do instead of what I can’t? I should add I love long walks, rambling and hiking. And I don’t want to have to write that last bit in past tense.

It’s not as if there really is a choice, no bank will lend an unemployed unknown author that kind of money anyway, so the question is mostly hypothetical.

Strange as it may sound at 47 I finally had a body I was happy with. For a brief year I could look myself in the mirror and like what I saw. Now that’s gone by the wayside, at least for now.  To say that I’m not bothered and not grieving would be lying.

To get back to the topic of writing, like one of my inspirations – Daphne DuMaurier – I write from a longing to be someone other than myself and a need to explore other possibilities, the ones not available to me in this life thus far.
Terry Pratchett said he didn’t want to get a life because he already felt as if he was trying to lead three already. I on the other hand feel more like Katharine Johnson, (a close friend of Nikola Tesla) in that it feels like I’m still looking for my life, and that so far I’ve mostly lived someone else’s.

My books are set in locations I have dreamt of visiting or would like to re-visit. Places that intrigue and inspire my imagiNation. They are also a case of the story choosing the writer, a phenomenon I hear more and more author’s talk about. Right now I couldn’t even get around an airport without a wheel-chair.
I write to live. I can’t imagine not writing. If I was stranded on a desert island with no hope of ever publishing I’d still write.  It’s part and parcel of who I am.

That said, I hope there will be readers who will love my books as much as I loved writing them. And that my writing will bring me a new life, new friends, travel and the purpose I have always craved.