My recent absence from this site has a really good excuse: I was in the VA hospital for a month following open heart surgery (valve job) and ensuing complications. It’s nice to be back. Really nice, believe me. And I hope you won’t mind me sharing some writing insights occasioned by the perspective of a twelve hour trip into the Valley of the Shadow. There are lots of good ways and bad ways to wake up, but I’d suggest that it’s hard to beat cresting the surface of consciousness and coming to realize that you are in an ICU bed and sighing to yourself, “Made it!” Because it wasn’t a sure thing, and that statistical reality speaks to the only thing that really, truly, puts a life into perspective: that whole matter of ceasing to be alive. There will be some changes made.
And I don’t mean the kind of changes like my shiny new Unobtanium alloy aorta valve (with it’s requirement to take dangerous blood-thinning pills the rest of my life) or the snazzy $25,000 pacemaker setting my pulse at a nice even 70 bpm as long as the batteries last. Or even the MAZE procedure in which (SF writers will just love this) they used frozen gas and taser technology to create a maze of scars on the surface of my heart, thus raising a series of levies to channel the wildassed electrical fields into rhythmic channels, like the Corps of Engineers’ eternal struggle to tame the Mississippi. I’m not making that up. Maybe they were. But what I’m talking about here isn’t medical wildness, but a cold-eyed Horseman’s assessment of my so-called writing career. Continue reading “Writing From The Right Side Of The Heart”