Occupational Hazards of the Jobbing Writer

Writing for a living is a great job.  A dream job some might say.  But like any long-term occupation it comes with its tics, its frontline injuries, its occupational hazards.

Here are a few:

CARPAL TUNNEL SYNDROME

All that typing, mousing and running frustrated fingers through ones hair rents havoc on the wrists!

Rehab: Rest, wrapping the affected area, ice packs.

WALKING INTO WALLS COMPLEX

Literally. As a writer one’s imagination is never entirely switched off.  When I was a child my parents thought I might have a hearing problem. The specialist diagnosed me a condition known as being “Off with the Fairies”.  Oh the number of times I’ve looked up and had no idea how I got there! 

Rehab: Mindfulness by way of yoga can help.

 

Yet, on the flipside…

CHRONIC LISTENING-IN-ITIS

Imagine yourself out at a café, having a deep and meaningful with a friend.  If there is a writer nearby, chances are they’ll hang on your every word.

Rehab: None necessary.  (We have to get ideas from somewhere!

CHOCOHOLICNESS

I realise this one isn't limited to writers.  We might not even be the most tragic.  But boy do we give it a red hot go!

Rehab: Bwahahahahaa!  That's funny.

SEEING-THE-PLOT-TWIST-COMING SYNDROME

I’ve always been the perfect movie watcher, happily going exactly where the filmmakers lead me. Laughing where they want me to laugh, crying where they want me to cry, not picking the twist until it happens.  Only now, with a working knowledge of writerish crafty things called “story beats” and “three act structure”, so often I know which character will die near the end of the movie as soon as they walk on screen.  It’s an honest to goodness tragedy!

Rehab: Watch really great movies that sweep you up so thoroughly you have no chance to unpick the threads as they are woven around you.

COMPULSION TO PHOTOGRAPH HANDSOME MALE STRANGERS DISEASE

If a gorgeous specimen of manhood - hero material if you will - walks into my vision, I’ve been known to stare unashamedly and quickly jot down details such as the way his hairs sits, eye slant, grin shape

Rehab: I’ve never gone so far as to snap a quick pic, but I’d be surprised if others haven’t!  Therefore no rehab necessary.

STATIONERY ADDICTION

It’s serous.  And it’s real.  (Thankfully it’s also tax deductible J)

Rehab: Pfft.  Indulge, baby.

What occupational hazards come with your line of work?  I’ll bet there are some doozies those of us out of the loop have no clue about!

I Have Walked One Hundred Miles

by Bronwyn Jameson

Last month I blogged about my new acquisition, a treadmill desk which I hoped would be the ultimate multi-tasking, time-saving tool: working and exercising at the same time.  Huzzah.  Four weeks later I am reporting, as promised, on how that is working out.

In order to report, I've been recording my daily stat's...although I didn't realise until a couple of weeks in that the default setting is miles and not kilometres.  According to the manual, I can switch to metric but since I'd started recording miles I decided to stick with miles.  Also, the Proclaimers' song is a jaunty walking singalong in miles, not kilometres. (Sorry if the title has created Scottish ear-worms!)

So.  My report.

I've walked while working on 20 days for a total of 60-and-a-bit hours, averaging 3 hours walking per day.  Fewer hours than I would like, so I am setting a goal of getting this up to 4 hours per day during May.

The good news is that during those 60 hours, I have walked almost 335,000 steps and 106 miles.  Hence the title of this post: I really *have* walked one hundred miles (and a few more) during April.  Cool, right?

My average speed works out at 1.76 miles per hour which is quite a dawdle.  My farmer husband says even sheep walk faster than this but they're not typing while they walk, are they?  Nor are they scribbling notes and pausing to consult the thesaurus and coming up with brilliant (or not) character motivations. Anyway...

According to the treadmill, my month of dawdling has burned a total of 4,618 calories.  Let me put that in terms we all understand.

Suffice to say that 4,618 calories is quite a few slices of cheesecake or scoops of ice-cream or pastries or chocolates but actually I've been eating less of these.  Partly it's the walking, partly it's the recording of numbers, partly it's knowing how far and for how long I need to walk to make up for the cheesecake.  I've been eating less snacky foods, drinking less coffee and sleeping better. Bonus: I've  lost a satisfying two kilograms without trying too hard.

It did take most of the month to reach a level of comfort with typing while I walk.  If I had been able to work at it every day, for several sessions every day, then I'm sure this settling-in would have been quicker.  But this past week I've been able to lose myself in the work, to not realise that I'm walking, to not notice that an hour or more has passed since I last checked the clock.

Give me another month and I will have this working-while-I-walk mastered.  That is the plan.

PS:  I've become slightly addicted to the numbers, to adding them to my spreadsheet and watching them add up, so I may continue recording for a wee while longer.

Vomit and other catastrophes

by Michelle Douglas

Earlier this week I had a bout of food poisoning. Now I won’t entertain you with the gruesome details—there is such a thing as too much information. ;-) It does mean, however, that I’ve been somewhat preoccupied with health and sickness this week.


Hence, I’ve been pondering those times in my life when I felt I was at death’s door. Having a bad reaction to the anaesthetic when I had my tonsils out at was twelve was no picnic, but I think chicken pox at sixteen trumps it. The worst accident I ever had was when I worked part-time in a catering firm whilst at university. I dropped a hundred cup coffee pot of near-boiling coffee all over my feet. It wasn’t pretty.

I don’t write medical romances, so I don’t need to find a stream of interesting medical conditions that will reveal my heroine and hero’s expertise, but illnesses and accidents are a part of life and will, therefore, on occasion make it into my stories. A quick scan of my books reveals the various nasties I’ve inflicted upon my characters—a chest infection, a kidney infection, a miscarriage, breast cancer, ticks, two rather inelegant falls and a couple of tummy upsets.

To be honest, I've been incredibly lucky. I am, as a general rule, disgustingly healthy. Which, of course, means I take my health for granted. Today I am VERY grateful for how well, healthy and strong I feel. I want to keep feeling grateful for this, but I suspect health is like the weather—when it’s neither too hot nor too cold it’s not really something we think about.

Of course, there is now going to be a character in my future who gets food poisoning (the poor thing—yes, writers are sometimes evil). For a writer, though, every experience can become fodder for their fiction. It’s the proverbial silver lining (and a distraction if nothing else). I’ve been keeping notes about my affliction. After all, one never knows when such details might be needed in a story. ;-)

So, I would love for you to tell me the most interesting sickness and/or accident you’ve had. Who knows, it could provide inspiration for my next book. And for playing, I’ll give away one of my books with an illness and/or accident in it to one lucky commenter. :-)

Poor Josie is one such victim in The Loner’s Guarded Heart out this month in the UK anthology Claimed by the Rebel.

Health Food?

by Emmie Dark

Hi Lovecatters! As you might remember from my last post, I've recently been lucky enough to have spent several weeks in the USA. In fact I'm only just back, still struggling with the jetlag -- I'm bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at 4am, but at 4pm I want nothing more than to crawl under the doona...

I mentioned in my last post that I enjoyed some fantastic food while I was in Texas. I actually had amazing food everywhere in the States. But when you're travelling it can't be beer and ribs every night, so occasionally you do need to seek out healthier options. Luckily that's pretty easy to do in California, where places like Cafe Gratitude not only cook vegan, organic food, but name all their dishes as "affirmations" so every time you place an order, you're putting out good vibes into the universe.

I was (still am!) in love with the "I Am Grace" smoothie. I'm not a dairy person, so smoothies have never been my thing. But this smoothie (made with coconut milk) was so amazing -- like drinking cake!! I've bought all the ingredients to see if I can replicate it at home -- although I doubt I'll be able to get that true LA vibe right in my kitchen.

(I have an idea to set up a Cafe Gratitude for Authors. The dishes would be called things like "I Am Published" and "I Have An Amazing Agent" and "My Book Is On Shelves Now".)

In LA, I had no problems finding cafes and restaurants cooking vegan, vegetarian, organic -- and, most importantly, making it absolutely delicious.

On the flip side, you can't always be so righteous. And sometimes, deliciousness must rule. Like arguably the best brunch spot in Palm Springs: Cheeky's. (Unfortunately the website doesn't provide you with the logo that appears on the waiting staff's uniforms. It features two monkeys and it's, well, very cheeky.) Check out the totally awesome offer from Cheeky's:

You've heard of a wine flight, right? Well, how about a BACON flight from the BACON BAR to keep your breakfast not only delicious but educational as well?

Hmm, maybe that's what I need this morning to get my jet lag under control. Some bacon. Mmm. And a smoothie. Yes, that's what I need. And it'll be healthy, won't it? The healthy smoothie and the less-healthy bacon cancel each other out, don't they?? ;)

Sweet Nothings

by Michelle Douglas

Sweet Poison: Why Sugar Makes Us Fat

This is the name of a book I’ve been reading by David Gillespie. I’m not usually drawn to these kinds of books. I think they can send out the wrong messages to people, especially women. Our value is not defined by our weight. However, weight (of the excess kind) has been on my mind lately.

I’m now in my forties and I’ve definitely found that my metabolism has slowed these past couple of years. Last month I attended a wedding. When I pulled on my lovely black dress pants I discovered they were too tight. Oh, I could’ve gotten away with it, but they were far from flattering. Vanity is not generally my besetting sin (please don’t ask me about sloth and gluttony), but even I have to draw the line somewhere. I went out and bought a new pair of pants. And while I love clothes shopping, I don’t when it’s because I’ve outgrown clothes that I love.

Obesity has been a big problem on the maternal side of my family. When my great grandmother (a wonderful wonderful woman) died, she was so large it took four grown men to lift her out of her bed. Her daughter, my great aunt, cannot walk any great distance due to her excess weight. She needs two knee reconstructions but surgeons refuse to operate on her because of her weight. My mother is five foot nothing and has tiny legs, but a very round apple shaped middle. She has type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

I’m not obese, but during my lifetime I have fluctuated from a size 10 to a size 14 and back again. I’m roughly a size 12 at the moment. Problem is, over the last couple of years my weight has been steadily increasing.

Denial also runs in my family :-) so I’m refusing to bury my head in the sand about this issue. I do not want to develop my mother and aunt’s health issues.

Maybe that’s why Sweet Poison captured my attention (though I fear it may have more to do with the fact that the front cover bears a picture of a doughnut—my favourite food in the universe). I read it with a very healthy dose of scepticism, but…

So much of what Mr Gillespie said made sense, and he backs his claims up with research from reputable sources. His primary message is that our bodies have not evolved to process large amounts of fructose. Fructose is a sugar. Table sugar—sucrose—is half fructose and half glucose. Our bodies are designed to deal with glucose and lactose (the sugar naturally occurring in milk), but not fructose. Fructose is not detected by the appetite-control centre of our brain either, which means it’s very easy to overeat foods containing fructose. If that news isn’t bad enough, fructose is converted into fatty acids and released into our bloodstream. There is a lot of growing evidence that diets high in fructose are responsible for cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes, and other metabolic diseases that have been previously blamed on diets high in fat.

So, for the next two months I’m going to conduct an experiment and, to the best of my ability, give up fructose (this actually means not exceeding more than 10 grams of sugar per meal). This doesn’t mean giving up fruit or suddenly eating a diet high in fat. If Gillespie had promoted either of those things I’d have run for the hills (actually, I don’t like running so it’d be more of a lazy amble, but I’m sure you get my drift).

I do think women can obsess too much about their weight and I think rigid diets do more harm than good. What I want to achieve with my experiment is to promote good health in myself and, hopefully, avoid some of the health issues that plague other women in my family. I’m not going to deny myself the occasional treat if I’m craving one. It just won’t be a sugary treat. It might be some lovely Camembert instead. Also I am going to have a piece of birthday cake in July to celebrate my DH’s birthday. Will be interesting to see what a sugar hit will do to me after having abstained so long. :-)

In August I’ll report back and tell you how I’ve fared—if I’ve lost weight, if I feel healthier and more energetic…or if there is no discernible difference.

But I’d love to know if any of you have ever made a “healthy” change to your lifestyle, and what the outcome was. Or maybe you have a tip or two you could share about how I can avoid sugar for two whole months? Come on folks, I need all the support I can get. :-)

Michelle's latest release, The Man Who Saw Her Beauty, is currently available in Australia and New Zealand

A Song a Day

by Michelle Douglas

Reading: Natural Born Charmer by Susan Elizabeth Philips

Watching: Martin Chuzzlewit

Listening to: Dido

Making me smile: The songs on my IPod

If an apple a day keeps the doctor away then a song a day might just help keep the smile on your face.

Recent studies have shown that singing can make you feel happier. Some of the reasons are physical. For a start, belting out a tune releases endorphins, and we all know how good they can be. I'll confess to now wondering what kind of jogger's high one could achieve by combining singing with chocolate, but I digress...

Singing is an aerobic activity, which means it increases the oxygen levels in your blood, which in turn improves circulation, which in its turn promotes a good mood. Furthermore, singing requires deep breathing. What else requires deep breathing? Yes, exactly, meditation. So, singing can make you happy AND relaxed. Win-win.

And guess what else? Because you are gently exercising your facial muscles while you sing, one of the great benefits of singing regularly is that it can keep you looking younger (man, I wish I'd known about that twenty years ago!).

Given the above, is it any wonder that an Australian study revealed that choral singers rated their satisfaction with life higher than other members of the community?

Other than the physical effects of tra-la-laaing, there are some pretty hefty psychological ones too. It is very hard to worry and sing at the same time--go ahead, try it. Therefore, while you are singing, work stresses, family issues, and money troubles are momentarily on hold. That has to be good news for our stress levels, don't you think? And I can't help feeling that singing out loud and proud with gusto is an awful lot like play-a fabulous way to rediscover one's inner child.

Professor Grenville Hancox, director of the Sidney de Haan Research centre for Arts and Health in Kent, has been working to persuade the medical profession to prescribe singing instead of Prozac. "If we could engage more and more people in singing, I'm sure we would have a healthier nation."

Seriously, though, can singing really have that much of an effect?

Okay, the challenge is on. I want to find out if singing can increase my happiness. For the next seven days I am going to sing out loud (loud being the operative word) to at least one song a day. I'm going to keep a record of the songs I sing and how I'm feeling afterwards. Who's going to join me? We can report back in a month and compare notes.