I saw a doctor today about my sneeze injury. It hurt like the devil and seemed worse to me, but the doc assured me it was simple muscle injury and it would heal on its own. It would take a while but it would heal.
Not serious
Monthly Archives: July 2010
Sneezing injuries are less than funny
It’s strange just how much my side hurts from the freaking sneeze injury. It’s worse that every time I sneeze I seem to re-damage the damn muscle. At this rate I will never recover.
Can you herniate a muscle with a sneeze?
I sneezed twice at work and boy you should have seen every suddenly looking at me. I nearly fell out of my chair with the pain.
However on the plus side my oral surgeon says my mouth is doing well and that it looks quite good from only one week out from the extractions.
I started the work up on version 1.5 of Cawdor. I’m not getting as much done per day right now because my day job is taking up CPU cycles from my writing time, but that special project ends on Thursday and then I can dive full speed into the 1.5 edits.
I have stumbled on a great resource for writers. Kristen Nelson, literary agent to Gail Carriger and others, has posted on her site a number of query letters from clients. These are the actual query letters that got her attention enough to ask for submissions from these writers.
Kristen goes through most of the letters and tells you point by point why it worked for her. This is really really cool. Only the internet could bring resources like this to unpublished writers. You should google Pub Rants and follow her blog.
Surviving, but not pleasantly
So Today was my first full day back from the convention, but sadly it was not as care-free as I would have liked it to be. I injured myself at the convention and that injury has continued to plague me.
On Saturday morning my sweetie-wife and I were walking back from a spot of breakfast before the convnetion when disaster struck.
I sneezed.
Now you are probably expecting at this point something like I tripped while I sneeze and fell hard to the ground. Or that when I sneezed I lost track of where I was walking and walked into danger or some such exciting event.
Nope, I sneezed and noting more. When I sneezed a sharp pain stabbed me in my side. Very much like a cramp from running too far too fast and I thought I had triggered a cramp. The rest of the day it hurt to walk, to get up from sitting or to go down to a sitting position.
The next day, yesterday, I sneezed again and it was clear that I had strained a muscle or muscle-group in my left side. the pain continued throughout the day.
Today I went and saw Toy Story 3, a fine film and a worthy sequel, it was very funny. That turned out to be not the bets of things. It hurt to laugh. When I sneezed twice today, I really put pain into my left side.
There’s no doubt about it I have injured myself with the power of my own sneezes.
One the plus side I have a new idea for a short story; something fairly subversive in my opinion. It’ll be fun writing it when I am through with Cawdor,
Westercon Update #3
Here it is sunday morning and the last day of the convention. I’ve had a blast and I am exiting the convention energized and motivated.
I started yesterday with a two hour ‘workshop’ with literary agent Ashley Grayson. I put workshop in quote because in the schedule it’s billed as a workshop, but it reality it was Ashley Grayson giving us the benefit of his knowledge about what works and doesn’t work in writing with tips on how to get to what works.
From there I went to a panel on the basics of writing. Nothing there I did not already know, but the panelists were the draw, the room was packed, and it was a lively discussion.
After that my friend Brad and I went to the presentation, ‘riding rockets’ by one of the engineers and flight crew for Xcor’s rocket plane. Very informative and entertaining. By 2013 Xcor hopes to be competing with Virgin Galactic for sub-orbital rides for paying passengers.
The final panel of the day was a bit of a surprise. It was on Global Warming, and while both points of view (Man-made vs unknown causes) were present in the room the discussion did not devolve into bitter verbal fights or political point scoring.)
After the dinner break my sweetie-wife, Brad, and myself played the game “Are you a werewolf’ for the first time. That was a lot of fun, then it was the usual parties and then bed.
Westercon 63 Update #2
From the lobby of the hotel:
Last night went pretty well. There was an evening panel on remakes and are they needed anymore. The sole panelist had quite a bit to say on the history of remakes in hollywood and how it has changed over the years.
His final answer were that remakes are not required anymore. (There was a time when film copies were routinely destroyed and remakes were seen as the only way to tell the story again. all pre-TV of course.)
After the panel I toured parties had a few good conversations before turning in for the night.
I rose early this morning, I’ve spent about an hour and half editing on Cawdor.
Now it’s time for day three of the convention.
Westercon 63 Update #1
We do seem to have an internet connection, but it is a bit on the iffy side so I can not be assured of being able to do daily updates.
Today was a pretty good day. Oh the first Panel I went to was a bust. Turned out it was about painting and drawing not writing. I can not paint or draw and new media vs old media in that fight has no meaning to me.
Next I went to “Is Manned Space Travel Gone Forever?” It was a pretty well attended panel, with lively panelists. A panel on the SF movies of 2009 veered wildly off topic — I know, shocking — but still proved to be entertaining. One of the panelists reported that he had interviewed John Frankenhammer director of ‘The Manchurian Candidate’ and that the director totally viewed that classic film as a work of SF.
The best panel of the day was two panelists, Tim Powers and Harry Turtledove, on if history was a help or a hindrance to plotting. These two men riffed together and the room was packed and everyone was entertained.
I saw my first plastered panel at the end of the day. Okay, they weren’t plastered but they both brought scotch to the panel and drank as they discussed horror and taboos.
The day is done, one last panel to attend and then parties.
Leaving soon
In less than an hour we depart for Westercon in Pasadena. I have all my essentials packed: clothes, toiletries, and manuscripts for editing.
I’ll be driving half the distance and my wife will be driving the other half, If We don;t have access to the internet see you next week.