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 (just the) "Brain Injury" Entries For Christmas 2007 I received a car accident and a head injury (thanks, Santa!) and months later I'm still dealing with something called "post concussion syndrome." Not the most fun part of this blog, and apparently no good as a legal defense if I decide to send Santa some payback this December. WotF: Finally a Finalist! September 16, 2008 I'm currently one of eight finalist in the Writers of the Future contest, 2008Q3 (quarter ending June 30, 2008). I'll find out in the next month or so whether I've won. Got the call last night from Joni Labaqui, and she posted the results a few hours later. How do we feel about this?  ...except with less beard because I don't have a beard these days. This is the story I was working on and hoping to finish when I had my mild traumatic brain injury last December (err, welcome, new readers!). The story was probably 80% completed then, and with medicinal amounts of caffeine and working in short bursts, it took me another six months to finish. I first entered WotF in December 1998. This was my 20th entry over the past 9.5 years, and my first time ever getting past the first reader/coordinating judge (formerly Algis Budrys, currently K.D. Wentworth), who reads and sorts everything, and passes only the finalists on to other judges. My current tally is... 8 nonplacers 9 honorable mentions/quarterfinalists 2 semifinalists 1 finalist (or better!) And I believe I'm one "pro" sale away from being disqualified for the contest.
 Spoken Alexandria podcast returns (finally) September 15, 2008 Finished my first narration since the accident!  Bulfinch's Mythology, Chapter 4, in which we learn...
So... ten months between chapters. I'm not up to doing these weekly or anything yet, but it shouldn't be long before the next one.
O Soft, Fragile Thing in My Skull September 9, 2008 So it is a terrible idea--as my brain is still healing and my emotions are harder to control--that the majority of my contact with the outside world consists of rejection letters?
My Brain Is Your Stock Market August 8, 2008 So my "good days, bad days" answer to "how are you" doesn't cover it anymore, now that I'm seeing some patterns, getting a handle on the specifics of my symptoms. I've just come out of a two week slump which was starting to make me think I was doing worse than ever. It's now been seven months since my head injury. I'm reading/flipping through Gail L Denton's Brainlash again. This year, it's the only book I've been able to (slowly, missing much) get through, cover to cover. I'm reading it again because (a) the library only had an earlier edition, and now I've got the latest one and (b) I don't remember what it said the first time around. While "good days, bad days" is generally true, there are also good weeks and bad weeks for my brain, and good and bad brain days within (and relative to) both of those. But, according to the books, this is normal, and I should view bad weeks as "resting on the road to recovery" rather than backslidery. Fair enough. So my brain's like the stock market. Fluctuates day to day, and even has longer periods of decline. But even taking into consideration the down-months and even down-years (talking about the stock market here, hopefully not my brain), there should be an overall uptick. So here's where I am, roughly...
Continue reading "My Brain Is Your Stock Market" Filed Under: Brain Injury, Journal, Pity Party, Writing Life Telltale Audio - July 2008 August 1, 2008  Last month (okay, last night) in spoken word audio, Telltale returned with three elephant tales by Rudyard Kipling, narrated and selected by Robert Bethune. Includes "The Elephant's Child" (1902), "Moti Guj Mutineer" (1891), and "Toomai of the Elephants" (1894) in DRM-free MP3, AAC, and Ogg Vorbis formats. Enjoy! The PCS-induced hiatus has been broken! I hope this is the resumption of at least twice-monthly Telltale releases for the remainder of the year. Thanks for your patience.
WisCon 2008: Best Mistake Evar! May 31, 2008 So WisCon was probably a mistake, healthwise. I was beat even before my reading Friday night, and compromised my immune system so quickly and thoroughly that I caught a bug probably from the first hands I  The Clarion 2006 partial reunion. Photo courtesy of Vince, who has a larger version (and his own blog about WisCon) here  Alex does his, um, reading? as JoSelle looks on in horror.  Is Will testing the camera? Or is the camera testing Will?  This made me sad. And I don't think I made a fool of myself too often throughout the rest of the con, though I don't think I've ever felt so self-conscious as I debated with each interaction: do I bring up the brain injury and risk looking like a sympathy whore or do I let this person walk away assuming I'm just a flaky dumbass? Tried both. Felt like a tool either way. Gonna sign me up for next year and see what WisCon's like coherent. And it'd be nice to actually go to more panels, readings, and parties than I reluctantly miss out on. *Watched Recount. Brilliant performances, except for the cringeworthy Gore and Bush impersonators. Overall, allowed me to relive that unique visceral disheartenment of 2000. So... thanks, HBO!
In Which William S Burroughs Calls Me a Pussy May 6, 2008 It occurs to me that I talk about caffeine in the same way that real writers talk about heroin. I've seen a neurologist. I have post-concussion syndrome. What a relief, just having a name for it. No consensus on prognosis, because the brain's such a crazy place and no head injury is exactly alike. I've definitely shown improvement since December (yay!) but most people show more or complete improvement by now (boo! I mean: good for them, but boo on my own progress). "It takes as long as it takes," is both the general and the Alex-specific prediction, which is exactly as much as I knew before seeing the neurologist, which makes the neurologist bill that much more of a joy to pay. Studies vary, but it looks like I have a 90%+ chance of fully recovering by the end of the year, and there isn't anything I can do to increase those chances or hurry it up. I'm assuming they've considered heroin. Had some dental surgery in the meantime. As long as I'm useless/recovering, might as well be entirely useless/recovering all at once. Among the problems with my teeth: I've had two baby teeth in my mouth with no adults ever growing underneath to usurp them, so those babies have been ready to go for a few decades now. I have had them pulled and have begun the 16-week implants process. I should probably figure out whether pudding qualifies as a liquid before I get on my plane to WisCon, huh? Probably should've waited until the post-surgery drugs wore off before this unaffiliated citizen early-voted in his first ever Democratic primary, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do...
Algernon for Alex April 16, 2008 I liked this better when it was written by Daniel Keyes. Yeah, I was doing better for a while there, huh? If any of my previous journal entries or emails or conversations have been coherent, gotta give props to medicinal amounts of caffeine. Phasing that out again has been like watching my IQ drop to day-after-head-injury levels again. With less-to-no caffeine, doing this whole listening-to-my-body song and dance, my brain gets taxed very quickly, so things like working on my taxes (there's a pun there, but I can't make the words go where they should go) for half an hour or conversations with insurance providers have exhausted me for most of the rest of the day. I've sent out emails, called people back, when I can, but I'm still pretty far behind there. Monday I bumped my head in the shower. I've bumped my head half a dozen times on the small doorframe of the Prius since February, and even with caffeine it always makes me useless and nauseated for the rest of the day. This was a worse bump, but I managed to get taxes and Telltale contributor payments out at least. Still not feeling so good. Something fun tomorrow or Friday, we'll see how I'm feeling. Seeing a neurologist next week, so let's talk about other things until then.
Incremental Soldiering March 9, 2008 Obligatory head injury tag. My friend Steve turned me on to Jimmy Amadie, a jazz pianist with tendinitis and nerve damage so severe that he's "unable to play for more than five or six minutes at a time, on a piano whose keys are specially weighted to cushion his touch" (from a review of Amadie's Savoring Every Note). It'll take two years of working in these increments before he'll compose, record, and finish his album. With considerably less talent and with large concentrations of caffeine, I can manufacture (almost consistently) a similarly short period of relative lucidity/productivity each day, so I can steal back my productivity from the twin gods of STFU and Convalesce. This is how I've technically written something every day this year with unbelievably little to show for it. This is because the same rules apply as before the head injury: some writing days are (relative) winners, most aren't. It's just that now the writing windows are smaller and foggier. I'm never near my peak performance. And for the most part, words and thoughts still just won't do what I want them to do. Stupid words and thoughts. Would I be the first to write with colors? Not entirely convinced these last ten (!) weeks wouldn't have been just as well served had I purchased a video game console in December, but I have trouble seeing the difference between that and giving up. I owe too much of my sanity and identity to reading and writing. And if I understand correctly (and ha! that's unlikely these days), the athlete who fully rests after an injury comes back nowhere nearly as strong as the one who works at rehabilitation, pushes herself, and exercises those stubborn muscles. Which brings up the big assumption: that I'll come back from this. Except for those caffeine-grabbed moments (which hell can't be good for me in the long run), my ability to think clearly is worse even than it was last month. Now, that could be a perceptual issue; of course normal seems worse compared to the caffeine high. But even if I'm not getting worse, it's become pretty hard to believe I'm still getting better. Even assuming I could be good at something else... it's only because I've put nine years into it that I'm on cusp of being good at writing. My father died at 53 (and his father at 52), so that doesn't give me a lot of time to practice a second calling. On the other hand? If I'm ten years away from making headway on my next big pursuit? I should probably get started on that ASAP, huh?
2008 Submission Log Weeks 7-9 March 3, 2008 Submissions 498-507 Fantasy (my 4th sub there) McSweeney's (Quarterly) (6th) McSweeney's (Books) (1st) Zombie Inside (1st) One Story (1st) Weird Tales (8th) Silly Fantasy (1st) Glimmer Train (4th) ChiZine (5th) Eclipse Two (2nd) Apex (2nd) Rejections 356-368 Tin House (68 days) Pseudopod (2 months) F&SF 9 days) Zombie Inside (1 day) The First Line (18 days) F&SF (9 days) Writers of the Future (48 days) Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award (Semifinalist, 134 days) SFReader Contest (50 days) Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine (74 days) Fantasy (20 days) Mythic Delirium (55 days) ChiZine (2 days) Eclipse Two (22 days) Of Interest My 500th sub was to One Story. Here's my Zombie Inside thing, with more info. Looks like I won't be able to vote in yet another SFWA election. Even if I made my third SFWA-qualifying sale today, I doubt I'd get the contracts in in time. Still having a lot of trouble with the head injury thing, but I'll talk about some ways I've been able to adjust this week. I have a bad feeling this is gonna be with me for some time, so... Since I get new emails about it with every mention (and keeping up with email is difficult for me, even if the emails are absolutely appreciated), let's just make a brain injury tag. February was almost entirely spent on a story for Shimmer's "Clockwork Jungle" issue. I wasn't able to get it to a nice enough draft to submit, but that could've been the case even if I was at peak performance and actually could read the entire 2-2.5k word drafts in three sittings or fewer.
Head Still Attached February 18, 2008 I'm doing better gradually, and I'm mostways able to function like a normal person in spite of my focus issues. Reading and writing are the last holdouts. I've been reading Raymond Carver's intro to John Gardner's On Becoming a Novelist over and over, and I'm able to get to the end without forgetting what I've read only when I tackle it in two and three paragraph chunks over the course of several days. Went for my first brief run since the accident. I haven't been in this out of shape since the days after Clarion (when my pathetic ten runs and minimal pushups/situps over six weeks conspired with the quality of campus protein and veggies to sacrifice to the Clarion gods any muscle mass I pretended to have). I'm hoping the current 24-hour headache, worst in at least a few weeks, is unrelated to the workout; my body can't take much more inactivity, and walking just isn't scratching that itch anymore. One of the things I can do: Clean out my junk mail folder for the first time in a while. Best find: "Turn $2400 into $1000!" It's like they're not even trying anymore... Oh and memory. Memory's another holdout and, no, I'm not just being cute. I thought of memory only after checking and rechecking this entry for grammatical errors. Guess I could have inserted it in the first paragraph, but okay maybe I am being cute. Maybe I can't help being cute. It's a burden, really.
Balcony Scream from Romeo and Julienned Brainstuff February 15, 2008 In my ongoing hunt for bitty projects I can actually work on while still dealing with my head injury (focus problems, mostly), I sent this little piece of reanimated iambic pentameter to Zombie Idol yesterday. Didn't make the cut, so here's the only other thing I can think of doing with it... Balcony Scream from Romeo and Julienned Brainstuff by Wild Bill Shakespeare and Alex Wilson (glorified typist) But crunch! What scent through yonder cranium wafts? It is fresh meat! And Juliet, the meatbox! Arise, ye mostly dead, and cleave the skull Whose cup o'erflows with that electric food Which sparks our own undeadly minds to move. O be not gentle with that pretty flesh Or vestal liver tempting freshly greens Away from grayer matters. Spit it out! We seek the brainstuff! O, the one true meat! O, all she's ever known must wet our teeth! She screams, her tongue insipid and distracting. (I'll yet bite, though tongue's a waste of gnashing.) FWIW, they're still looking for entries for "round two." Alls you do is insert a zombie into a good text and try and make it gooder.
2008 Submission Log Weeks 3 and 4 January 30, 2008 Submissions 482-492 Clarkesworld (my 5th sub there) Shadowline/Image (1st few subs) Apex (1st) Highlights for Children (2nd) OSC's IGMS (4th) Nathan Bransford's Surprisingly Essential First Page Challenge (1st) The First Line (1st) Rejections 340-345 Aeon (51 days) Helix (just a few hours) Space & Time (exactly 2 months) Apex (8 days) OSC's IGMS (exactly 3 months, as usual IIRC) Fantasy (26 days) Of Interest: From Cat Rambo @ Fantasy: "This was close, but in the end we've decided to pass." Noooo! Found out about this contest too late to do much damage myself, but for those interested: Shadowline/Image is looking for pitches until the end of the month for a 3-issue miniseries. Found out about it by happy accident as I'm preparing a regular sub to Shadowline presently. A pox upon my fellow aspiring comics writers who were being so tightlipped about it! Not very sporting, is it? Not that I'm any better help, a day before the deadline... Link to the Nathan Bransford contest. I entered the first page of Pinocchio is Punching You. And, yes, if most of my other journal entries this month haven't made it clear, Pinocchio's a current semifinalist in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award (ABNA). Not too unproductive a month for a guy who has trouble reading his own journal entries once they get this long. I pushed myself a little too hard in the last few days working on the above comic book pitches and a musical treat which I hope to release tomorrow. I'm hoping that's the reason I'm so exhausted, and it's not that my head's getting worse.
Three Things I Woulda Done Differently... January 23, 2008 ...had I known I'd still be recovering from this head injury a month later.
(There are times when I feel like I'm myself again, and I feel like my mind should be able to do everything it used to do... but I'm quickly proven wrong, and I think that's the most frustrating thing. Recovery is gradual, but it's happening. Most importantly: focus is starting to improve. I'm able to read up to a page at a time before--usually--needing to start over. And if I can write an entire story in under 300 words, I can often keep all the threads in my head at one time. So... outlining and writing up pitches, mostly. A journal entry like this one will now take me less than half an hour, and I'll catch more typos now. So watch out, world! Alex'll be back in the game before you ooooh look a shiny penny!)
And We Got a Little Red Prius January 21, 2008  As soon as I'm driving again, this is what I'll drive. (And as soon as I get my camera back, I'll take a real picture.)
2007 Submission Log: Week 52! The Year is Dead! Long Live the Year! January 10, 2008 Submissions 469-475 Murky Depths (my 3rd and 4th subs there) SFReader.com Contest (2nd) Mineshaft (1-3rd) Writers of the Future (18th, yes, 18th) Rejection 334 Weird Tales (my 6th) Of Interest: I put out 148* submissions in 2007, a personal record but nothing to be admired. As I talked about here, it's been more an act of desperation than one of dedication. Glad to have gotten through it with what little progress I was able to make. Feels unreal to still be talking about 2007, when the whole year is (literally) fuzzy in my mind. I'm already into the first submissions, rejections and acceptance (I'll share tomorrow) of 2008, and I'm dizzy just writing what I've written so far for this entry (recovering slowly, but recovering; again, more later). I spent about three hours trying to focus on an interview questions yesterday for the Shimmer story and almost gave up. But then I thought: the first interviews I ever read were with 80s musicians coked out of their skulls; how unintelligible could I possibly be? Mineshaft's in Durham! How come nobody told me? Due to a clerical error on my part, my Writers of the Future entry count is up by two this quarter instead of one. The entry went MIA when I switched tracking methods a few years back, and I was all "this is my sixth or seventh" entry and I went ahead and marked it as a sixth. So my new tally.... Pending: 1 Nonplacers: 7 Honorable Quarterfinalists: 8 Semifinalists: 2 Finalists: 0 Superfinalists: 0 What's a superfinalist? How the hell should I know, with crappy numbers like these? In the interesting-to-nobody-else-but-me department, this does mean I've entered an average of twice per year for nine years. That's once a year at first, eventually upping to quarterly as my eligible days start to number. I have some hopes for 2008, the year my writing/submitting life turns ten (November) and my submission count will likely hit 500. Not a lot of hopes. But some. Don't ask me how long it took to write this. Gonna go lie down now. * Corrected from 147. Two lines in my tracking file got combined. I know nobody cares but me, but if it's worth tracking, it's worth tracking correctly.
Not Brain Damage Yet January 1, 2008 (From the literature:) Following this type of head injury, headaches, nausea, inability to concentrate/focus, etc. may linger for a few days, weeks, or longer... Most of it's dealable, but it's been a week+ and the last one is killing me. A big part of writing, especially storytelling, is keeping multiple trains of thought going at once, both on a sentence level and and on a greater story-construction level. It's at the point where by the end of a paragraph I've lost everything I set out to do with the first word. Last journal entry took me over an hour. Had to give up on multiple stories that were so close to being done for a few Dec 31 deadlines, self-imposed and otherwise. Sending an older story to Writers of the Future, even a strong one, always feels like a defeat to me. Unproductive is the hardest feeling to deal with. ...but the brain damage is rarely permanent. The FUCK did you just say? I currently have brain damage but it's probably only temporary? And this is how you break it to a guy who constantly feels he's missing something: as an aside, like it's already been established, like we've been talking about brain damage all along, so he has to re-read all this passive-aggressive literature just to know he's not also suffering from memory loss? If only I'da known I had temporary brain damage a week ago. I've seen Law & Order. I could've gotten away with so much stuff over the holidays. I hear bank robbing does wonders for headaches and nausea.
Almost Made It December 27, 2007 So black ice is real. I lived most of my life on northern Ohio roads. When it comes to ice and similar hazards, I'm an annoyingly cautious driver. Sure, I've pulled myself out of fishtails, and I've pushed myself out of snowy ditches. But black ice? Where the first sign of anything slippery is a complete loss of traction? I've only hit black ice exactly once now: it was Sunday night, coming up 77 from Carrboro, North Carolina to Akron, Ohio, in the last half hour of a nine-hour solo drive.  But once is enough, eh? The driver who stopped and called an ambulance for me said I rolled twice, but I blacked out too soon to corroborate that. Walked away with nothing more than bruises and a mild head injury, if any head injury can be mild. Head's still swollen. Still can't focus for long periods, or stay awake for the better part of the day. But that'll get better. The Honda CR-V's finished after taking the worst of it (2000-2007 with just under 160K miles on it; airbag never deflated, but it saved my life regardless). Got sick of picking broken glass out of my beard, so that's gone, too. My glasses were torn off me in the crash, but better torn outward than inward, I guess. So the year ends the same way it begins, with an ambulance ride to the emergency room. Wheeee! I'm thinking 2008 must have something pretty wild in store, if 2007 is that adamant about keeping us from seeing it. But we're alive. We're happy. We're blessed. Drive safely, all!
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Alex Wilson writes fiction and comics in Carrboro, NC. His work has appeared/will appear in Asimov's Science Fiction, The Rambler, Weird Tales, The Florida Review, Futurismic, Shimmer, ChiZine, FutureQuake, Pif, and Dragon. Locus Magazine has called him a "promising new writer," and Publishers Weekly also has nice things to say. Alex runs the audiobook project/podcast Telltale Weekly and the writer wiki Guidevines. He publishes the minicomic/zine Inconsequential Art. He is a 2006 Clarion graduate. Blog Archives 2008 - Clever Label TBA 2007 - BadYearNoCookie 2006 - Clarion! 1st Pro Sale! 2005 - Peers and Peerless 2004 - Telltale Launch 2003 - Dog bites, acting out 2002 - In my mind, I'm going... 2001 - Marriage, Macs, 1st Cons 2000 - Setback, Milestones 1999 - Engaged, Graduated 1998 - Creative Independence    Powered by MT 3.35 MySpace Profile Technorati Profile |
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