What I’ve been doing:
I spent April getting ready for the Creative Ink Festival, working on some pay-the-bills projects, and doing final edits on manuscripts.
More of the same in May until the festival itself on May 18, 19, and 20. The festival attracted people from everywhere. Some of them came on planes. I can never get on a plane without somehow catching a cold. It’s been this way for years.
I’m not French kissing everyone on the plane, nor am I chewing their used tissues, nor do I create opportunities to lick door handles, so I blame the air-recycling systems used on planes for bathing me in a pestilential miasma.
Apparently I am now such a delicate petal that I cannot be in rooms with people who have recently been on planes without catching cold. (And again, before you ask: I didn’t French kiss anyone–not even the bartender who kept refilling my wine glass for free– nor did I chew tissues or lick doorknobs.)
Since then I’ve been trying to recover from what I suppose is just a garden-variety cold, complicated by my asthma and allergies. It’s been *seventeen* days. Argh. I keep coughing up things that would not be out-of-place in the movie Alien.
The Difference between “Aspiring Writers” and “Writers” . . .
It’s funny, but the solution, while simple, is not easy.
Chloe Cocking 