Tuesday, September 22, 2015

When Writing Causes Work Injuries

I feel so stupid right now. My thumb is encased in five miles of gauze, because I successfully sliced off a full centimeter of flesh off, with a sizable chunk of fingernail to go with it.

I was cutting kale into a small dice when it happened. I was carrying on a half-assed conversation with a co-worker about...Oh Hell...What were we talking about? Something work related. I was thinking about writing.

I have finished a sex scene for my new novel Elaina's Fate, and was wondering where exactly I start after that.

Plus I'm not happy with said sex scene. I've been quoted as saying "Writing sex scenes is like losing your virginity in public." This is much worse. Elaina's Fate...is written in first person. And in present tense. Which means I'm writing it as though I'm LIVING it. If writing sex scenes is like losing your virginity in public, then this feels like inviting all my friends over to watch my own sex tape and making them popcorn. Why do I do this to myself?

So I was thinking of writing, and babbling about work with my hand splayed out, not digits curled in like I know they should have been. We were out of coleslaw, and I was trying to hustle. So when I sliced my thumb, I did it with an aggressive chop borne of determined haste.

My agonized, startled yelp caused Dhodie to jump about three feet straight up in the air. He has the nerve to ask,: "Did you cut yourself?"

So we inspect my injured digit, and he turns grinch green and teeters slightly. I've seen worse. And it hurt worse than this. Actually, the powder they dumped on my cut to stop the bleeding hurt worse than the cut itself.

The bad news? I'm not allowed to push, pull or lift anything over eleven pounds. I can't do yardwork, peel anything for canning, or generally anything that might cause me to bleed again.

The good news? I type with only two fingers, so I can still write to my heart's content!

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