It’s been almost 4 months since the craniotomy that removed the tumor that was crushing my brain. The hope was that the surgery would cure the mild to moderate cognitive issues I was dealing with, or at least stop them from progressing. I’m sorry to say that wasn’t the case, and many of the problems have gotten dramatically worse.
I don’t want to go into too much detail, least of all because it’s boring. My short-term memory, ability to read and write, as well as speak fluidly, have all been affected negatively. I’ve just had another EEG to see if the seizures are continuing, and will have another MRI this week to assess the amount of damage to my brain from the tumor that had been affecting it for years and any damage caused by the surgery, and to check for a stroke. It’s a lot of fuckery I don’t have all the answers for yet. Once I have answers, then I can begin a more exacting treatment for the problem(s).
Unfortunately, as I said above, the problems are affecting my ability to write.
Planning and outlining have always been the backbone of my writing process, but even more so now. Everything is slower and requires a lot more concerted effort and lots of revision.
In short, I’m not able to create as quickly as I once could, although I’m hoping that will change eventually with enough rehab and figuring out new ways to work around my setbacks.
Ideally, I’d like to continue posting every Sunday, just as I have for over a year, but I might have to accept the idea that, as far as things go at the moment, I might not be able to use my writing time for both a weekly ficlet while also finding the time, energy, and focus to work on longer fics. For the time being at least, I might have to switch to posting every other week so I can allot more time and attention to the longer fics.
I just don’t know yet and can’t set anything in stone either way.
But I did want to say something about all of this because I was worried people might see me posting less frequently or posting work that isn’t as long as it used to be and think that I’ve gotten lazy or lost interest. That couldn’t be further from the truth. If anything, my love of this series is one of the few things in my life that brings me joy and that I can count on (my most beloved @monotremer being the main source of that), and one of my biggest motivators in rehab is trying to return to being focused and prolific where my writing is concerned. But I also have to accept that some things may never return to the way they were.
In any event, I hope to keep posting work regularly, but hope everyone understands if I’m not always able to do that.
Updates on what’s coming:
I was working on a longer fic to post to the Data/Lore collection today, but didn’t finish it, so there’s a shorter ficlet in the non-explicit Positronic Rivalry collection instead. The D/L fic should be ready to post next Sunday (fingers crossed). And while all that’s happening, I’m still working on the multi-chapter in the main series that got much bigger than I originally intended. It’s slow going, but it’s going, and my hope is that it’ll be ready to post in July.
