Injury Time Out

3 years later came the crash.  Seriously, who could ever imagine a cheerful, nonchalant, bouncing (yet still partially deflated) ball could end up giving me so much grief? But there I was.

I could have spent the next 6 months on the couch watching crap TV and letting my brain cells start a revolt against my body.  Instead I thought it a jolly idea to go inside my head, make those pesky brain cells do some work, and start blasting out that idea from all those years ago. That Santa idea.  

Though I said I came up with the idea and then waited 3 years to work on it, I had actually written a few notes.  It wasn't much, but it did become a small jumping off point.  The kind of notes your boss gives you, and then you do all the real work, and then he goes back to his bosses and tells them he did it all.  That sort of thing.  Luckily, I happen to be my boss, his boss, and the dude at the top that gets to do nothing all day and sip moscato d'asti while getting 2-hour thai massages, listening to the Rolling Stones, and having Simon Pegg drop by to be excitingly British.      

I couldn't walk.  Not quite yet.  It was really annoying.  I mean, I could sort of shimmy down the hallway to the bathroom and maybe get to the kitchen for some moscato d'asti (an excellent pairing with muscle relaxers some believe - I think it was the Aztecs who came up with that cocktail)  The thing is, I'd always worked out my stories by taking really long walks.  I'm talking epic here!  And during those walks, I'd let my mind do its wandering thing and by the end, I'd have a story going.  Clearly I was going to need a new way to work.  And that way to work ended up being decidedly stationary as you may have guessed.

It's probably the way a lot of writers do their thing.  But it was entirely foreign to me.  And not in the really good Fellini or Bergman or Godard kind of way.  Mine was sort of the Mel Gibson using foreign languages kind of thing.

But somehow, I got used to it and managed to write out notes - lots of them!  So many, that before I knew it, I had the outlines for 3 novels in the series.  What?  A series?  Yep, I got carried away.  It wouldn't be the last time.  The Kringle Khronicles Trilogy now stands at 9 volumes!  

A month later I was able to get outside and start competing with the elderly for sidewalk supremacy.  They won each and every battle!  A month after that, I was ready for prime time and finally passed someone in their late 80's.  In that second month, I had another milestone.  I made it all the way over to Central Park, my haven, my love.  And it was there where I was able to get back to my way of working.  The ideas flowed - I was on a creative tear!    

During my 6 month injury time out, I wrote the first 2 drafts of The Kringle Khronicles Volume 1: The Legend of Winterdale.  And then I was finally strong enough to take care of Jaden again. We kept our nanny for 2 days a week, I had the little guy the other 3 days.  Its a good thing I had lots of time to write still. After I received feedback on the 2nd draft, I knew I had all sorts of re-writing ahead of me.  Yikes!