Sneezing season’s upon us, the mid-autumn malediction of coughs and sniffs which sets most Germans slipper-shuffling and clutching hankies to their faces. Being a Brit, I tend to skip this soggy ceremony, not wanting to rely on calendars and cough sweet adverts for my infections. However. Seems I’ve a twinge in the tonsil arena that’s more than the aftermath of a poorly chewed pretzel. I feel my sinuses starting to fill, have that “heady” feeling. The bed’s more appealing than usual.
Meaning? Here’s what writers do: we’re professional smooshers. We magpie what’s lying around — sentences, sentiments, tropes — and push them together, chewing corners if we have to, using force if we must. The best of us range far and wide over cities glittering with stuff. We nab and hoard and stitch and shift until we’ve reams of narra-fabric ready for our readers. It means we’re often distracted. Everything catches our eye. Everything except the thing we’re working on.
So? So colds make damp squibs of our minds. They can’t energetically entertain a hundred new ideas. They can barely draw a straight line from coffee to couch to computer. Ideal conditions for getting just one thing done. A dull thing. A deadline.
I drink my second cocoa of the day and see what it’s like to work with one eye shut. Maybe I can rest half my brain while the other half gets on. But which half? I’m editing a manuscript, so I need the analytical bit. I remember from teenage reading that that’s the left hemisphere, and because our brains are contralateral, the left brain steers the right eye. So I leave that one open and shut the other, giving right brain the afternoon off(*).
As I squint at my manuscript, I recall that in my 20s I read that the left brain/right brain dominance business was bullshit, much like the Women are from Venus and Men are Martians madness. I smile, close my other eye as well, and consider myself enlightened. I begin to doze(**).
Somewhere between sleep and slime I hear a voice: get back to work. It’s an unwelcome voice, and furthermore, I don’t recognise it. I counter with Stranger Danger and move my head to a less congested position.
The voice intrudes again, and this time I think I catch a glimpse of a polished cosh. I reluctantly dutifully open my eyes, wake my laptop, and resume. How many more pages do I have, anyway? Don’t look. Distraction. I advance, line by line, reading aloud. I enjoy myself. There’s a peace to being freed from the burden of overthinking by the ballast of congestion. I simply don’t have the energy to be a constellation. I settle for being a star.
Yes, my editor will be pleased.
—
(*) Yeah, not quite that simple. The left hemisphere may drive the right eye’s movement, but visual processing itself is shared by both sides: all the left-field stuff (for both eyes) is processed by the right hemisphere, and vice versa. Want an info dump? Here:
“In vision, retinal ganglion cells undergo partial decussation at the optic chiasm, where axons from the nasal retinas cross to the opposite hemisphere, while axons from the temporal retinas remain on the ipsilateral side.[14][15] As a result, visual input from the left visual hemifields are processed by the right hemisphere’s visual cortex, while input from the right visual hemifields are processed by the left hemisphere’s visual cortex.”
(Wikipedia, ‘Lateralization of brain function’.)
(**) That is, do Z e: apply yourself to the exponential growth of Z: go to sleep.
