The New Normal

I don't know if all y'all have heard about David Farland and his son, Ben.  David is a writer - mostly fantasy, as far as I know, and some good books on writing.  His son, Ben, was in a terrible accident recently.  Apparently, he was longboarding (a form of skateboarding with a longer board) without his helmet, and he fell going down a big hill.  Needless to say, Ben's in bad shape*.

And also needless to say, Ben suffered a traumatic brain injury.

Of course, his injuries are much worse than mine - both body and brain.  But still, seeing the posts his father makes every day on Facebook, remind me of what my own time was like. 

It was 19 years ago for me.  And sometimes, it's like it was yesterday.  Some days are good and I'm pretty much like most non-damaged people.  Other days, I can't remember shit.  Sometimes it has to do with how tired I am.  Sometimes it has to do with how much other shit is going on in my life.  (Believe it or not, sometimes when everything is going on, I remember better than when nothing is going on.)  I can't gauge what days will be good or bad.  They just are what they are. 

This is my new normal.

And it'll be Ben's, too.  Once he 'wakes up' into his head - or if he's already awake in there, he's dealing with his new normal now.  I hope his deficiencies are few, and that what he does wind up with, he can handle.  Having a family that cares helps.  Having a whole community of writers be supportive of the whole family can't hurt.

I've already advised David to locate a good therapy provider.  And he's already said it's high on his priority list - which is good.  So much more knowledge is available out there for TBI survivors and their families than there used to be.  Hell, a bunch of the people I was in outpatient therapy with didn't even know they needed help - until they realized it wasn't normal to be that forgetful, or have their emotions spike, or be that clumsy (depending on the effected part of the brain).

Now, I also saw someone tell him to watch that Regarding Henry movie with Harrison Ford so he'd get an idea of what they'll be facing.  Umm, no.  I hated that movie because it was unrealistic.  I had a friend in therapy who was a lawyer before she got hit by a car.  She couldn't just step back into her practice.  They made her 'pass' therapy, and then she was told she'd have to retake the BAR EXAM.  Which is hard enough for non-injured people.  I can't imagine trying to pass it after a head injury.  (And I never found out what happened there, so I can't tell you she beat the odds.)  You want a head injury movie to watch - try 50 First Dates.  Sure, it has it's unrealistic parts (it's an Adam Sandler movie for petesakes), but that scene where she finds out what happened to her.  It wrecks me every time, because it is so realistic.  Her pain is my pain.

The only other advice I have for David at this point is: Take it one day at a time.  That's all you can do because right now, that's all his injuries allow for.  And don't let anyone tell you what he can or can't do, will do or won't do - because he's the only one who knows that for sure and anything anyone else says can change his perception.  Let him try.  Let him fail.  Encourage him to try again because the only real failure here is accepting defeat.  And hey, failure ain't so bad, because at least he tried.

And I have a wish for Ben - that he never encounter any of the well-meaning types who try to stop him from failing before he's even tried.  Those people suck.  If he does encounter them, he needs to ignore them.

*If you'd like to help, there's a charity set up to donate money for his care - which could run into the millions.  If you can't donate money, buy some of David's books.  If you can't do that either, check his books out from the library and then review them on Amazon or Goodreads or B&N so that other people will be encouraged to buy David's books.  At this point, I think every little bit will help.

Crispy-Brain

Well, we're supposed to close on a house tomorrow.  And if all goes according to plan, we're supposed to move next week.

Of course, this means my brain is absolutely fried.  And the whole crispy-brain phenomenon is having a cascade effect. 

I can't sleep.  Correction, I can't nap.  Every time I lay down to take a snooze, my brain kicks into overdrive.  Case in point - yesterday after running around town dropping books off at various locations, I was freakin' tired.  So I hit the couch for a little down time.  I closed my eyes, and the brain starting whirring.  I fought it for fifteen minutes.  And then got up and brushed the window blinds - because that was driving my crispy brain nuts.  Of course, the same thing happens at night, but I do manage to coax myself to sleep.  (Last night I went to bed at 8 and slept 'til five - I was that tired.)

I can't remember shit.  Okay, so this isn't anything new.  I'm brain-damaged and having a leaky memory is just part of life for me.  But with my brain all crisped like a barrel of pork rinds, it's even worse.  I find myself finishing a lot of statements with "...if I remember correctly..." because I seriously doubt I'm remembering anything correctly.  (If it isn't written down, that is - which encompasses about 90% of my life.)

My focus is kerput.  I remember telling myself yesterday morning that I needed to do the laundry.  Then I started repacking books for delivery*.  Then I thought about the fact that I needed to get the Kid's computer wiped clean so I could give that to the neighbors - which led to cleaning a USB stick so I could transfer anything she might still want.  I got that project started and went back to the book thing.  But I had to call the title company.  And Max needed food.  And the outside kitties did, too.  Long story shorter than it would've been otherwise, I never did get the laundry even started.

So, you see what I mean.  I've got the crispy-brain.  Here's hoping I'll be back to what passes for normal for me by mid-April.  (After the move and the unpack and the delivery of furniture... etc. etc. etc.)

* With as many books as I have to unload, no one will take them all, but everyone has put in requests for certain genres or authors.  Since I already packed them all up, I had to go back through and cherry pick.  Paperbacks and large print for the old folks home.  Romance for the bagger gal at the grocery store.  'Scary' for my friend in the produce section.  Suspense for my friend the cashier.  Newer hardcovers and easy-to-resell for the library.  I love sorting books, but this is getting a little beyond that.  The good news is I made most of my deliveries yesterday, and today will be 'here's a box of assorted books - do with them what you will'.

Is it any wonder I'm totally loving my Kindle right now?  A hundred books all in one tiny, light-weight gadget.  :happy sigh:

Uh Oh, Looks Like a Bad Brain Day

Earlier, I read and commented on a blog post thinking the person who wrote it was a completely different person.  It wasn't until after I submitted the comment (complete with word verification) that I realized I had my people mixed up.  (Which, of course, made my comment completely off the charts weird.)

It's early yet and when I do something that totally brainfartalicious it's a pretty good indicator I've got a bad brain day ahead of me.

Which means it would probably be a good idea if I kept my brain and my comments to myself today.

Ever mix up who you're talking to online?  Or is it just my broken brain?

Synopsizing the TBI Way

What can I say about synopsizing?  I mean, other than I seriously dislike the process.  Well, one thing I can say is that even after writing what feels like a million of the damn things, I can't remember how to do it.  Seriously.  Sometimes my TBI* really messes with me, and this is one of those times.

Writing a synopsis is a learned skill.  Supposedly they get easier with every one you write.  Except when you can't remember how you did it last time.  And it's not like there's a set of instructions lying around for the process.

So, here's the process I eventually settled on - which, oddly enough, is similar to my writing process:

Sit down.
Open a new document.
Begin at the beginning.
Write until you get to the end.
Fix it later.

Yesterday I banged out the synopsis through chapter 20 of the 32 existing chapters.  I haven't looked at what I wrote, but I know it's huge and unwieldy.  As it stands I have 7 double-spaced pages of crap.  The only bright spark to this exercise is I'm not seeing anything wrong with the manuscript itself.  The plot lines are all flowing nicely, and without any tangles to trip a reader.

I'll get the first draft done today and spend the weekend tweaking it into some manageable length.  Monday is for querying.

ETA: It's done.  13 pages of the ugliest mess to ever grace this screen.  :cue music:  I can rebuild it.  I have the technology.  LOL... here's hoping it becomes the six-million dollar synopsis.   ;o)

*TBI = Traumatic Brain Injury

The Brain-Damaged Writer: Word Finding Difficulty

I've been thinking about last night's post and I decided that perhaps I should explain a little better.  If you've been following this blog, you probably already know I suffered brain damage in 1994.  I try not to make that a focus of my life or my writing - which is why the blog is called The Writing Spectacle and not 'The Brain-Damaged Writer' - but occasionally some brain-related issue pops up and draws attention to itself.  And since I also don't try to hide my brain thing, I thought why not talk about it this morning.

First off, I'm mostly normal now (as in you can't readily tell I'm afflicted).  One of the few things that still gives me trouble, though, is something my therapists called 'Word Finding Difficulty'.  For a good layman's explanation see: Understanding Word Finding Difficulty.  I'm sure we've all had to deal with the whole 'it's on the tip of my tongue' thing from time to time.  For me, it's more frequent and sometimes more pronounced.

What I suffer from is more specifically Anomic Aphasia.  (A term I only just heard this morning.  It's cool to have a technical term for what this is.)

From the above site:

The typical characteristics of anomic aphasia are:

• Trouble using correct names for people, places, or things
• Speaking hesitantly because of difficulty naming words
• Grammatical skills are unaffected
• Comprehension is normal
• Difficulty finding words may be evident in writing as well as speech
• Reading ability may be impaired
• Having knowledge of what to do with an object, but still unable to name to the object
• Severity levels vary from one person to another

I'm not so much troubled with the first - not remembering people's names is another brain thing entirely - or with the reading ability impairment.  (Thank goodness for that.  Impaired reading ability would kill me.)  The rest of the characteristics are definitely mine.  And where it says severity levels vary from one person to another?  Well, severity levels also vary for me from day to day and from activity to activity.

Now, one of the funny things about this for me is that sometimes I can't think of the simple word for something, but I can remember the obscure word for it.  That's why sometimes both my writing and my speech are littered with 'big words'.  Yay for the English language and its many ways to say things, but Boo for people who think using big words makes you snooty.  And Yay for my thesaurus, so I can type the big word in and find the common word I can't think of.  (This happened last night, but I can't remember the exact problem to save myself.  LOL)

In the end, this brain problem is like any other for me.  I learned the tools for finding a way around it - like the thesaurus to back track and in verbal communication, having all those other 'big' words to explain myself.  In the end, though, all the tools in the world still might fail me.  :shrug:  During those times I just try to muddle through.  You might even catch me doing what the above site refers to as circumlocution.

"You know, the big sticky-uppy thing on the highway.  Long legs with the ball on top.  Holds water?  Has the town's name on it.  Yeah, that's right, the water tower." 

LOL, it definitely makes life interesting. 

Any questions?

Random Thoughts on Memory

Laying in bed last night, I laid out an excellent post for today.  Then I fell asleep.  Now whatever I had planned to talk about today is gone.  After all these years, you'd think I'd know better.  For a while I got into the habit of dragging myself out of bed to write down good ideas.  I have scads of papers lying around with snippets of ideas or bits of dreams or even a really well-turned phrase gleaned from my pre-sleep mental wanderings.  Bad me for getting out of the habit.

On the upside, I also did some thinking about where to go with the rewrite of DLN and that seems to have stuck in my memory.  Heh, the brain is such a funny thing...

Over the years I've had time to consider the workings of the brain.  I've said it before and it still holds true - the brain really is like a computer system.  You have your hard drive for long term and some short term memory, and your RAM (Random Access Memory) for thoughts of the moment.  If you don't do anything to get those short term thoughts from your RAM to your hard drive, they're lost when your computer shuts down for the day.  (Unless you're really lucky and something gets stuck in the temp folder - which is why I remember the plot ideas, I think.)  Writing things down moves thoughts from RAM to my HD. 

Of course, following the brain analogy, I have some bad sectors on my HD.  That makes finding old data a little problematic sometimes, and it's not too fun trying to find a path to newer memories either.  But that's life.  I just need to remember to use the tricks I learned to hang onto memories a little tighter.  Like, say, WRITE THINGS DOWN.  (Sounds like a bad joke: I have a memory problem, but I'm okay as long as I remember the tricks to remembering things.) 

Anyway, I know this isn't totally limited to folks with bwuised bwains.  I think it's a function of our huge data storage systems and the amount of data we try to store up there.  Add in our level of stress and tiredness, and things either get misfiled or they don't get filed at all.  I don't know if it's worse for people like us who use their brains so much, or if it's just a function of being a writer.  What do you think? 

Brain Damaged Writer Strikes Again

Part of the fun of being a brain-damaged writer is the weird disconnect that sometimes occurs between my thoughts and my fingers.  Case in point...

Hell, Zeke’s library was almost as previous as my own.

I found that sentence while I was editing just now.  I know I didn't consciously write that, so what the hell?

Sure, I substitute words all the time.  Most of the time, I can figure out what I was trying to say from the context of the sentence.  For instance, I type the word 'what' when I mean to type 'watch' a lot.  Not hard to figure out what happened there.  But previous? 

:palm hits forehead with resounding twack:  And just now it occurred to me that I meant to type 'precious' - so this case was more a matter of finger placement than brain damage, but still... how irritating is it when you can't trust your own brain?

What about you?  Do you find yourself substituting words and not realizing it?  What's the strangest sentence you've accidentally come up with?

 *All images deleted to avoid any chance of copyright infringement*