Really pathetic here. A very bad cold, which is just my delaying tactic to avoid letting the book go. CR pointed out that I did it last time, too. If I were a really evolved human being, I’d probably figure out some more productive way of dealing with the end of a book, but hey–I’m a writer. I’m allowed a little drama, allowed to take to my bed, snuffling and wheezing, to watch movies and read books and drink tea and eat weird things because I really don’t want to let this book go. As a reader, you know how you don’t want to reach the end of a book, and you try to stretch out those last few pages? And then you sit and hold it in your lap for a little while, savoring that feeling of living there?
Like that. Only x17.
It’s not like this on every single book I write, and the ones I love insanely are not necessarily the ones that sell tons and tons (though sometimes they are–we all agreed on No Place Like Home, which sent me to bed for a week after I finished). This one has been filling up my life with the colors of pink and orange and making me laugh and just generally entertaining me for quite some time.
However, I do know the time has come to finish. My agent is tapping her toes. The baby is a big teenager with an eye on the horizon and her hand out for the keys to the car.
Hold my hand for the next few weeks, will you?
And in the meantime, I have to cure this wretched cold. I did take some green chile out of the freezer to eat with the tortillas CR brought me at lunchtime, dear creature. I took a hot bath. I drank a ton of tea. What else?
What are your best home cold remedies?
None. Just drugs. I hate pain. Give me codeine any day. 🙂
I love how you’re describing the book filling your life with colors– and pink and orange are such happy and warm colors too.
Since I’m at the beginning of a project, if I were to use your color analogy, I think mine would be a kaleidescope, just spinning blobs of color that I’m hoping will settle into something cohesive, at least long enough for me to capture the image. 😉
Feel better!
When I feel like I’m starting to come down with a cold, I take Garlicin CF (by Nature’s Way). Often I don’t get sick (even when everyone around me has it.) If I *am* sick, my only home remedy is fresh squeezed orange juice. Has to be the real thing from Mommy Nature. Not frozen or reconstituted. Has to have all the bits of sunshine and bioflavnoids that were meant to be in it.
Feel better! And, since colds are related to loss, I’d say CR is right on the mark.
Ooh, feel better.
I do have a home remedy to share, but you may think me crazy. I interviewed an herbal expert once and he said the best way to absorb herbs is by putting them under the tongue. He also said that garlic is one of the few foods with anti-viral properties. So. My next cold came, and I tried putting a small amount of pressed garlic under my tongue, but it nearly killed me – it was just too potent. I tried first putting an eyedropper filled with echinacea tincture under my tongue, then adding the garlic, and it worked great, buffering the sting of the garlic while still giving me the benefits. I do sometimes still get sick, but much less often, and I can literally feel my body rebounding after the echinacea-garlic treatment following those first hints of a cold.
Sorry so long. If you try it, I hope it works for you!
And good luck putting your book to bed…but first you’ll have to get out of yours. 🙂
Oh, I forgot to add that there are studies showing chicken noodle soup can actually help lessen the time of a cold. This isn’t a primary source, but it’s still an interesting article:
http://tinyurl.com/22luyg
Lots of lemon water, SrB! A tall glass of tepid water with the juice of a lemon — or a half-lemon, if you can’t take the whole thing to begin with. Lots of them all day long…will clear up the mucous.
I have more, but they all include making tinctures, so won’t help you this time.
The other suggestion of chicken soup is a good one also. Real chicken soup, though!
I actually spent the day trying to think of cold remedies. My best one is Lady Grey tea with lots of sugar and lemon.
And sitting in bed and whimpering.
You guys are the best! I’m going to try everything. The chicken noodle soup and lemon water sound especially good.
J.K Rowling opens her journal entry on writting the end of HP book with this wonderful quote from Dickens. Thought you might like it.
“It would concern the reader little, perhaps, to know how sorrowfully the pen is laid down at the close of a two-years’ imaginative task; or how an Author feels as if he were dismissing some portion of himself into the shadow world, when a crowd of the creatures of his brain are going from him forever.”
Feb 6 dairy entry at http://www.jkrowling.com
gina
Dear Lurker no more ( 🙂 ), that was a wonderful quote! I’m in good company with Dickens and Rowling (and what a fun website Rowling has–I could play on her desk all day!).