NaNovember 2014: 1st November: Shattered Spoonies

Today, I have been mostly exhausted. Not because I was up all night writing as it’s the start of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, to the uninitiated) but because I slept really badly. Family problems and disability discrimination will do that to you.

You see, yesterday, I was discriminated against due to my invisible illnesses. Normally I do a good job at ignoring it, or am better at fighting for my corner. Last night, feeling a bit rough and with painful wrists, I just flaked under pressure and felt awful about it for most of the evening.

However, this morning, before I could even think about starting my novel for this year, I had to write some blog posts instead.

These, I put on my recently started tumblr account. I ended up with a lot to say on the matter, so it ended up being spread across three posts, which is crazy. Anyway, they can be found here:

Visible Disabilities and Discrimination
Invisible Disabilities and Discrimination
Disability and Magic: The Gathering

So yes, as you can see, it went on quite a bit. It was upsetting having my first FNM (Friday Night Magic) in a long while ruined by attitudes like that, but at least I tried to do something productive with my reactions to it.

However, I’ve also been hyper-aware that it is NaNoWriMo and it irritated me that I absolutely definitely had to write those important blog posts when I had a novel to be writing.

This is what I mean about being a spoonie: suffering from chronic illness means almost anything that others can take for granted can be incredible hard work for me, especially if I am having a bad day. Today is a bad day, much worse than usual. It means that to do anything more than flake requires sheer force of will and the desperate hope that I won’t end up paying for it tomorrow.

Still.

Writing my words today was tough. I mean, very tough. My wrists are absolute agony, my shoulders and back don’t feel all that much better. And, having had little more than 4 hours sleep, I am absolutely exhausted. But, I can’t not meet the recommended average on the first day. And then, when I got to the minimum, I was near the end of the first chapter, so I had to finish it. So I kind of did.

I am pleased I managed to ignore the pain as such, or at least, push through it in order to finish chapter one of this year’s NaNo novel. Hopefully, after a good night’s sleep, tomorrow’s writing won’t come quite so difficultly for me. I also need to continue editing my novel and would ideally like to alternate through the day with writing/editing so I get both done at a nice clip.

But really, I just hope that after such a spoon-depleted day for somebody with chronic illness that I have more time and energy for all this tomorrow.

Words Today: 2008
Total Words: 2008

The Curse of Insomnia

why can’t I sleep?

 

It is now exactly 3am. Whilst I am not completely wide awake, I am still sufficiently awake to think and operate. Utter exhaustion and a need to sleep has not hit yet. This is the kind of tiredness I’d ordinarily feel at least four hours ago. Instead, I am cursed with it now.

In some ways, it is a blessing. I have been able to write a near-complete character biography for my protagonist. I have been having very intriguing thoughts about my novel as a whole lately and it is making me very excited to write the whole thing. However, I am too tired to feel capable of doing any fiction writing. It never flows well when I am this tired and it is frustrating. That means I have been writing this biography, painstakingly working out the back story of one character for at least 2 hours. And now, I am too tired to even do that.

The curse side? I don’t actually know just how much sleep I will be able to obtain overnight. I’m still showing no signs of needing to sign off the internet. When I do, I’ll inevitably read a couple of chapters of my current book (Gone by Michael Grant, for anyone who is interested) and then hit the hay. But when I wake up? I’ll probably feel exhausted and irritable. That will lead to a bad headache and potentially a migraine. All of which makes writing fiction difficult.

I hope that I will stop feeling like this at night soon. The doctor insisted it was just a side effect of upping the dose of one of my medications. However, I definitely don’t seem to be showing any signs of getting used to it yet.

And yes, this post is essentially just a whine about a lack of sleep and a want to write but struggling to find the mindset to focus. Oh well.