67
With all of my health related attempts put to bed for the year, I
spent the rest of Nineteen Eighty-Nine rebuilding my creative side
and working for the clubs. But this was complicated by my stroke
earlier in the year.
The several comic strips I had written immediately after the stroke,
which turned out to be pages of gibberish that I believed to be
hilarity at the time, were the first thing I tried to sort out.
After a few hours I finally unknotted the assorted words into
meaningful strip scripts. While slightly amusing I couldn't imagine
how I had ever thought they were so funny at the time I had written
them. Still, another artist had expressed interest in drawing
something for The Doctor Who Report and I passed the corrected
versions of the strip scripts for him to draw, if he wished. After
being embarrassed by handing the original gibberish versions to the
first artist to join the newsletter, I couldn't bring myself to ever
again talk to him about them. As I didn't think these strips were up
to my original quality of writing, I published them under a different
name once done. Still they helped to fill space in TDWR.
Also helping to fill space was the fact that I had finished three
Doctor Who stories before the stroke, allowing me to
avoid writing anything significant for the year as I sorted out my
long term reaction to the resulting agraphia which caused my writing
to now be such a jumbled mess. Serializing those stories would last
until halfway through the next year of the newsletters; though I had
originally not intended to publish one of them in the newsletter, it
was good enough to go ahead and use.
So my only writing for the year was for the comic serial needed for
the original artist of the report. After turning in a script that he
was thrilled with before the stroke, after the stroke I had lost my
train of thought for the following installment and instead just made
it a slapstick comedy attempt as I needed to cheer myself up.
He was disappointed with the abrupt change of style.
Fortunately, I eventually eased back into my original writing style
for the next installments and then he had taken on the responsibility
of coming up with the next two installment stories which reduced the
burden on me.
At first, no one at the writers' group noticed that I had abruptly
stopped offering work to be reviewed and I instead concentrated on
being a good reviewer for other people's stories. This worked out
well and people seemed to appreciate my input.
Of a batch of over one hundred query letters I had sent to agents
trying to interest one of them to represent me and my speculative
script for 'The Other Show', only one of them wrote back saying they
would. Another work I had written before the stroke, I sent it off
to her and never heard back. When I wrote her about it months later
asking what had happened, she sent back a strange letter that left me
wondering how much of a professional agent she was. And sure
enough she was apparently out of business soon after, leaving me to
once again go agent hunting if I ever came up with another script
idea and became comfortable enough to try to write it.
Suzi, the lady who hosted the writer's group at her house, had liked
the look of my desktop published zines & monthlies and asked if I
could teach her how to do it. I agreed to if, in return, she took
over assembling the monthly newsletter for the science fiction club.
I would still provide the editorial page and upcoming meeting
information and Daina with others would still provide the reviews.
She agreed and I put together the next two issues at her home using
her computer as she watched and took notes, then she took over from
there only contacting me for the occasional obscure question about
using the software to get a desired result.
While my writing skills were challenged, my visual skills weren't and
the artist of TDWR, who was also in a local punk band, asked if I
would assemble and create the cover for their first album. I agreed
and they supplied the front cover artwork they wanted and the
information they wished the insert to contain and I was off making
them a few suggested cover layouts and they picked a hybrid and it
was done. Now I could add the role title
of 'album cover publisher' to my quiver of nonpaying
'jobs'.
Where Daina had originally come over to my mother's mobile home when
she would be at work on a weekend to discuss and layout the science
fiction club's Quarterlies, now with my own apartment she could come
by after she was done with her day of teaching and we'd started to
visit and talk about other things as well. As always, I shied away
from talking about the ordeals I had been going through and just kept
it to light topics and she mostly talked about her school days and
some troublesome students. She again asked me if I'd like to go out
to dinner and I again passed, noting that I was waiting for the next
club's post meeting dinner.
Finally to fill my time in my apartment, I returned to coding big
time. An interactive compiler for the 'C' programming language came
out and it mightily sped up the whole writing, testing, and polishing
process of the coding cycle. I created a comprehensive check book
program for myself which some friends saw and asked for copies and
soon gave me ideas to improve it to track tax deductible items. I
also created a set of hard drive file reviewing, modifying, and
deleting programs which Jeff added to his online site as shareware,
effectively free software and if the user liked it enough they
could mail you a check for a suggested amount... I
never did get a check.
All and all I had settled into my new apartment life pretty well and
I was thankful every month for my disability check and the ability it
gave me to not have to remain squatting in my mother's mobile home
against her wishes, or otherwise face homelessness. The one thing I
did miss, though, was the hope of addressing my health issues
successfully, once again. But as the health coverage for Social
Security Disability would start early into the next year, I was
longing to have yet another crack at it.
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