I laid it all out, every particle of energy, every neuron corralled in the effort to finish my manuscript by the June 9th deadline. I could’ve gotten an extension, but mentally, the thought of working beyond my capacity for one more day slayed me. I’ve been working beyond my capacity for over a month, and as long as I kept going, I could keep going. But now I’ve stopped, my body has risen up and puffed my eyes, stuttered my voice, pounded my heart, weakened my muscles, and wrung me out. Used to be kind of scary shit, but for the first time, I felt pleased at completing a nonfiction book. Satisfied. I’m not disappointed at a goal unmet again. Nor did I feel like it wasn’t what I envisioned. I also had people work with me every day or every few days. It’s less lonely working on such a difficult book — my hardest one yet — all on one’s own. Having people to riff ideas off of, to pep me up, to schedule me, and keep me going through the tedious parts of writing, made a huge diff. Having an editor provide solid work gave me confidence and a feeling of standing on stable ground.
In the end, it’s good for one’s esteem to have met deadline. So it was worth it.
The day before deadline, a week after two days of the worst nausea I’d had in a long time, my brain made the last connection in new pathways, and I experienced a major uptick in organizing thoughts — I was able to see how chaotic a “Learnings” chapter was and to bring order to it — and a few hours later, an uptick in understanding — concepts that I either had sort of understood or had no clue about suddenly came into razor sharp focus. Needless to say, the new ability to think and understand meant I had to go over chapters I thought I had finished. Not satisfied with the workload, my brain decided to up it.
So Concussion Is Brain Injury II: Treating the Neurons and Me is one step closer to being published. If you want to be part of the process, get a peek at deleted scenes, or an early copy, please check out my Patreon page: http://patreon.com/ShireenJeejeebhoy
Now to work on the cover image!
