June 2009 Archives

I've got a playlist that helps me while I write. Currently 50 songs, give or take, most of which take me back to the late eighties and early nineties. Not because they were necessarily written then, or were even very popular at the time, but because they’re songs that were part of my college years. Some I've called out in the narrative because they are so visceral, so intrinsically tied to my experience in 1990. Others I'll write about here.

In no particular order, this first song to share -- Patti Smith's Piss Factory -- came from a compilation album, Just Say Yesterday: Volume VI of Just Say Yes. It’s one of several similar Sire Records compilations I'd borrowed from Aaron when we were roommates together at Carleton, during both of my senior years.

Just absolutely love this song. And thanks to YouTube, I never knew that this was the "B" side to her cover of Hey Joe (which is another song on my playlist, the Jimi Hendrix original, for a couple of different reasons).

I’ve had several very good conversations over the course of the past couple of weeks or so. Actually, they probably go all the way back to the end of April. Talking about writing, about editing, about what it takes to bring a book to market, any book, really, but more specifically a memoir about a twenty-year old college student who is diagnosed with leukemia.

No great surprise: the consistent advice I heard through all of those discussions was to finish the book.

Simple.

I don’t know exactly how far away I am from finishing the narrative. Feels like maybe halfway, maybe a little more. If I trust that I’ll want to do some extensive trimming of what I’ve already written, then I’m sitting at somewhere in the vicinity of 50,000 words. So let’s say that 40,000 more gets me to where I want to be.

40,000 words.

Between now and the end of summer is just about 12 weeks. 40k/12 = 3,333 words/week. Divide that by six days of writing each week gets me to 555 words per day.

After crunching the numbers, I realize that this is absolutely within reach. Just this past week (when I wasn’t even thinking about a word count, or goals, or anything other than trying to write) I’ve had sessions of 1100, 650, 680, and 560 words. It’ll take some discipline, to be sure, to carve out time to write every day. But it doesn’t take much to get to 500. Heck, even though it won’t count toward my daily total, this post is already getting close to 300.

So that’s the goal: finish the manuscript before Labor Day.

I decided to root though my old manila folders tonight, tucked away in bottom right drawer of the credenza upstairs. My 16-month wall calendar from 1989-1990 is there, too. I wanted to write down specifics. I’m coming to parts of the narrative where I don’t remember exactly when certain things happened, even though I have a pretty good feel for the times and dates, and I want to make sure I’m accurate.

Ended up writing out three different timelines. Variations on a theme: one with precise dates and milestones, from 02/19/1990 all the way through my last (non-chemo-related) visit to the hospital on 09/25/1990.

Another with the same dates but instead of milestones I wrote up date ranges.

Finally, the last timeline I put together is one I’m copying below. Took the same date ranges but instead of showing dates I wanted to simply show how long the main stretches of my spring and summer were. After fleshing out some additional details, I think there’s an interesting story quietly hidden within the numbers.

• 7 weeks in the hospital – “Round One”
• 1 week of chemotherapy (7 days daunorubicin with 3 days Ara-C)
• 1 week of observation
• 1 week of chemotherapy (3 days Ara-C with 7 days daunorubicin)
• 4 weeks of recovery
• 3 weeks at home
• 4 weeks in the hospital - “Round Two”
• 1 week of chemotherapy (7 days daunorubicin with 3 days Ara-C)
• 3 weeks of recovery
• 4 weeks at home
• 6 weeks in the hospital - “Round Three”
• 1 week of chemotherapy (high-dose Ara-C)
• 5 weeks of recovery

In other words, my first and last rounds of chemotherapy were not without their fair share of complications.

I was doing some writing tonight – something I’ve been tackling with greater frequency over the past week or so, trying for at least 30 minutes a night but usually ending up closer to 60 minutes every-other-night. I’m also going to keep track of word count, not just minutes, to make sure I continue to move the story forward instead of making my fortieth revision of the same sentence.

In any event, while going back to double-check that I remembered the name of the exit to the UWMC from Hwy 520, I decided to zoom into Google’s street view to see if I could virtually relive some of the scene I’d just written, where mom drives me back to the hospital to begin my (scheduled) second round of chemotherapy.

I initially thought the street scenes were pretty gloomy. Typically dark and overcast and stereotypically Seattle.

But I remembered that day being a beautifully sunny spring day, flowers blooming, bright sunshine. Imagine my surprise, then, when I clicked ahead to the next intersection.

Funny vagaries of Internet maps. Would that the seasons changed as quickly as walking across the street.

Templates have been cleaned up, finally, and all that was broken is now unbroken. I'm going to need to resist the temptation to tweak the look and feel of the site too much -- time is better spent working on other things.

It has been brought to my attention, recently, that it's probably not the best thing to have a five year gap on a website chronicling my adventures with leukemia. Couple that with the fact that comments have been broken for I-don't-know-how-many-years and it might have appeared that the site was dead and unresponsive because, well, I was, too.

Not at all true. In fact, within the past few months, I've celebrated nineteen years in remission, as well as my fortieth birthday. I am returning my focus and attention here after a very long absence.

Unfortunately, while attempting to clean things up a bit, a few things were inadvertently broken along the way. I apologize for the mess. Should be able to muddle through the updated MT templates over the next couple of weeks and put together a serviceable design.