Back At The Keyboard Post-Concussion

Two years, one month, and two weeks post-concussion, I am joyfully back to the keyboard. My characters have returned. They ‘peer over my shoulders’ and make observations that amuse, disturb, irritate, surprise and satisfy me. I had missed them and feared that their absence over the past two years was permanent.

When I resumed writing in October 2015, it was to assess whether I could still string words together. I could. With much effort. The posts I did were descriptions under the guise of theatre reviews. They were an intentional test of my ability to remember, assimilate and make sense of the productions I was seeing. Straight-forward productions were relatively easy to review; they took a few hours to write up. Others like If/Then were challenging. And some, like the the brilliant Broadway production of A Curious Incident of The Dog In The Nighttime, were impossible.

In the spring of 2016 I resumed work on my manuscript; I had last touched it in December 2014. To my great sadness, all I could do was edit… and edit… and edit some more. My characters had gone AWOL, and  I had no idea how to create bridging chapters from where I had left off  to the last chapter. I had written that chapter about two and a half years ago when I had determined that the manuscript was at the one-third point.

This past November, twenty-three months post-concussion, my characters, along with my memory, began to return. I’m more than relieved; I’m ecstatic. Over the next many months, creative rather than descriptive writing will be my focus . Please know, that the absence of new posts on this site will mean that I’m happily absorbed with, and distracted by, the process of story-making.  Signing off for now…

Bonnie Lendrum is the author of Autumn’s Grace, the story of how one family manages the experience of palliative care with hope and humor despite sibling conflicts, generational pulls and career demands.