Writers live one life on paper and another in the real world. No matter what genre we write in, the real world can be more challenging to navigate, more confusing, and more important to enjoy to its fullest.
We have gotten a grip on my husband’s battle with Parkinson’s Disease. We can mitigate his symptoms with the right diet, exercises, and medications, simple things that help no matter what your underlying health issues are.
While rough terrain and loose soil or sand are a problem, he can still go for long walks and enjoy the natural world. We choose our paths carefully and have found that bike trails and running paths are excellent places to walk.
Our small town has a large park built around an old flooded quarry. The trail through there follows an old railroad grade and is a beautiful place to walk year-round.
As I have mentioned, we are preparing to sell our house and move twenty miles north, back to the city where we were raised. We need to be where there is good public transportation and easy access to our health care providers.
We’ve been in this house since 2005, and if I had one wish, it would be to pick our house up and move it to where we need to be. We have made many memories in this house, and it’s what our grandchildren think of as home.
When we bought this house, it was the height of the housing bubble, and for many years we owed more on the house than we could have sold it for. Now is the right time to put the house on the market. It’s a good time to embark on our new adventure.
We will indulge ourselves with plays and concerts, going to parties at night – things we haven’t been able to do since the doctor banned my hubby from driving. I don’t drive at night because of my night blindness, so he always drove after dark.
In the town where we plan to move, the streets are well-lit by streetlamps, and I have no trouble seeing even in the rain. But out here in the country, the roads are pitch black. Right now, we need to be home before sunset.
This week we are making another foray, possibly getting on the list for the apartment we want. We have our eye on three places, each with different amenities. No matter where we go, we need two bedrooms, as one will be the office.
Parkinson’s Disease has made us more aware of what truly matters in life. I’m turning seventy this June, and I feel no different than when I was thirty. I don’t have as much crazy energy, but I’m still that woman. Just a little wiser.
And slower.
And Greg is still that man. His diagnosis has motivated us to make the most of life, and in our new town, we will have plenty of opportunities to do just that.
LSVT BIG therapy has taught my otherwise quiet and reserved husband to live large and loud. Actually, anyone can benefit from these exercises.
I have found that the more I accomplish on the packing up and sorting front, the better I write. I’m not the world’s best housekeeper. Dust is dealt with when it becomes a problem, but I cannot handle clutter. I need my space to be visually organized, or I can’t focus.
Unfortunately, clutter is the name of the game at this point. We take a carload of objects to donate and then pack a few things we don’t want to part with. Then we stack the boxes in this corner (if they are keepers) or that one (if they are going to charity).
Things that can go to the unheated storage unit will be taken there, but pictures and certain documents must be stored in a dry heated space.
On the good side, our daughter had her piano moved to her home sixty miles north of here, which gave us a place to stack those boxes that can’t go to the storage unit.
Right now, in my writing life, my work-in-progress is at a place where I am trying to push the story forward. Below is where I am at in my outline – the crossed-out scenes have been written, and I am working on the next one, which will be crossed out when I move on to the chapter that follows this section.
Second plot point in Lenn’s Story
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Lenn goes to the port first, then walks back up the High Street, past the Temple complex, and to the East gate.
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Nutter questions him about the Tax Man. Lenn explains that the man isn’t from the Temple but is a thief.
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Lenn, Mikel, and Callie go to the Portside Inn, get more info on the Tax Man. The local ale hound, Rahlie, is a little too interested in Callie.
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Lenn steps in before she can zap the idiot with her magic. Initially upset with Lenn, Callie relaxes when he tells her he doesn’t want anyone to know she is more than just a healer. He wants her other abilities to be a secret weapon.
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New chapter: The following day Salyan arrives with the recruits. His drama ensues.
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Lenn convinces Salyan to return to glassmaking despite his father’s wishes, and it ends well. Irina asks Salyan to walk to the Odensday market with her.
Mornings usually find us wondering what we can get done that day, and evenings are often spent contemplating what could have gone better. I write whenever I can, and often end up rewriting something that seemed like a good idea at first, but which no longer works.
But no matter how the day goes, we laugh at the silliest things. And that is what life should be – full of laughter and plenty of reasons to wake up the next day.
Andy Weir is genuinely a nice person and is the best example of an inadvertent teacher that I’ve ever seen. This interview is a brilliant seminar on how to research and plot a book. He writes hard sci-fi with a heart, but the principles of creation are the same for any genre.
TED Talks
MAPS: If you are writing a story set in our real world, your characters will be traveling in places that exist in reality. You want to write the landmarks of a particular city as they should be, so bookmark 
Life in the Realm of Fantasy 