A Week of Pain and Frustration (Patreon)

The week began pretty much as any other. Worked, wrote the story, brainstormed, helped the family etc. Then wham - I get a minor case of small kidney stones. Those who've had this know the pain it inflicts - those who don't, imagine razor blades and needles through your bladder and further down, then you're pretty close. Turns out I wasn't watching my diet's acidity/alkaline balance well enough... oops.

I recovered, managing to write and meds kept the pain down and managed potential infection. Then the power company sends a letter. "We need to do maintenance." Power goes off on the day I intended to finish off the next chapter... and it doesn't come back on at the scheduled time. Next morning it still isn't back.

We get a message. "Our maintenance had identified numerous faults in the grid, first have to fix those." It drags on and on. My fridge defrosts, I have to use a camping gas stove to cook. Our neighborhood WhatsApp group is exploding with frustration at the company and our mayor is dragging his heels.

By this point I'm so bloody frustrated and my muse is cracking the whip in my brain. So I go old school to finish off Chapter 49, and the photo above is the result. 10 pages and counting of the final part of the chapter, written in the sun and under candlelight.  I haven't used pencil and paper so much since university. 

Finally after 3 days in the dark, the lights come on. As I write this, our power has been back for an hour.

I'm working on the transcribing to word processor at the moment, should hopefully go pretty quick and I can get it to you guys tomorrow at some point.