I know, I know, I only recently started threatening you with mental stagnation if you didn’t get out and go to some readings.  I stand by my threats.  Not only does going to readings hone your knowledge of the literary landscape and allow you to network with other writers, it gives you the much needed stimulation that TV, radio, or your chinchilla just can’t give you.  You really should go out.

And when I say “you”, I mean you specifically, not me.

See, I’m sick.  Someone coughed their lungs out around me for 5 hours on Sunday.  On Monday, I got caught in the lovely Chicago rain, and yesterday, more coughing colleagues.  Shockingly, last night was a psychotic cocktail of Benadryl, cough medicine, throat comfort tea, and Vick’s.  I’m phoning it in at work today, and then I’m going home to pass out.

PEOPLE.  If you’re sick,especially if you’re contagious, stay home.  If the weather is terrible and you could care less, stay home. Despite romantic visions rumors of alcoholism and wild nights, writers need to know how to look out for themselves. Remember, the point of all this is to keep you happy, sane, and writing. One need only look to the examples of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Oscar Wilde to see how a supreme talent can be wasted trying to keep up with a crazy drunk wife/ boy toy.  Writers like Hemingway and Woolf were fiercely protective of their writing time and devoted at least 4 hours a day to writing, usually more. Stephen King and Raymond Carver wrote at similar rates without similar fancy inheritances.  One simply cannot keep up with that rate of productivity without downtime.

If you don’t take care of you, you’ll have a hard time writing anything.  So by all means, enjoy yourself.  But if you feel like crap, maybe an early night is a good idea.  Let your drug-addled brain have 9-10 hours of sleep.  You’ll write a better blog post next week.  And yes, this time I mean me.