A Writer’s Worst Nightmare

This past month, I’ve had a health scare — both my wrists just quit on me. I didn’t do anything in particular to them. Holding a cup hurt, mousing hurt, lifting a bag hurt…but I was pretty sure the culprit was *gulp* typing.

As you might imagine, that’s a writer’s worst nightmare.

Now, I type a *lot* in an ordinary week, even outside of writing. I’m an editor during the day. I journal and blog and hang out on social media and participate in online forums. Some of that is optional (more or less, depending on what you think about the importance of marketing and/or maintaining online friendships) and some of it isn’t (like the day job).

I cut out as much of that as I could while my wrists were healing, and I’m still being extra cautious because they’re not quite back to normal yet — and I’ll have to continue being kinder to them than I was before.

In the interim, I read a lot. I watched TV. I did lots of things *gasp* offline — though even that was limited because lifting things hurt.

Oddly enough, the instant I decided I couldn’t write, I desperately wanted to. I say “oddly enough” because normally I, like many writers, can be found looking for ways to do anything but write. And in fact that tendency has re-emerged now that I’m on the mend. Ladies and gentlemen, the writer’s brain is officially cuckoo. But you knew that.

I was in the middle of a short story, though, and I didn’t want to leave it hanging. So as my wrists started to heal, I set myself a very low word count of 500 words a day. When I hit it, I stopped. Some days I didn’t write at all, but when I did write, I limited myself. Not only was it better for my wrists, it was effective as a strategy for writing consistently. I think I’ll keep using it.

And on that note, my wrists are telling me it’s time to quit, so…over and out!