Writing is hard and so is typing

Here’s what I meant to do: I meant to celebrate the end of my intense Aurealis reading period, which amounted to somewhere around 50 anthologies and collections in about 11 weeks, with a triumphant return to writing, blogging and sending out newsletters.

Then I had a few weeks of being a bit sick and chasing down medical stuff, but I figured – “Well, a little longer won’t matter too much, so I’ll just give myself a break and get back to it in the last couple of weeks of February. In the meantime I can do some tinkering with a story and practise playing my bass guitar. You know, those things I like to do for relaxation and a quiet sense of accomplishment.”

Then my puppy accidentally (!) took a giant chunk out of the tip of my middle right finger, which just happens to be one of the main ones I use for both typing and plucking bass strings. My typing technique is self-taught and sits at the precise balance-point between touch typing and classic hunt-and-peck. My bass technique is similarly haphazard and undoubtedly offensive to trained instrumentalists)

To briefly sidestep into the mildly grotesque surgical details: a few stitches, no bone or significant nail damage, tendons are fine but jury is still out on possible nerve twinges. The meat will probably take a few more weeks to properly seal over, and I’ll end up with a scar to match the one on my index finger that I have no recollection whatsoever of injuring. I daresay I’ll be able to play bass again, but maybe not for a while.

So I’ve had a more-than-usually dramatic couple of weeks to neatly tie a bow around the 2020 hangover months of January and February. I’m hopeful that will be the end of the near-constant string of distractions, and I can ease back into writing. This has been some good practise – it’s the longest string of uninterrupted typing I’ve done for weeks, and I can hardly feel a tingle in my bandaged finger at all.

Let’s see how it feels once I start using it to type fiction…

(Oh yeah – I have a dog now. More on this important development soon.)