How My Books Get Made

How My Books Get Made: So when a mommy book and a daddy book love each other very much... hahaha lol. It's more like plant reproduction. It involves only one person, lots of time, and then suddenly where there was once a tiny seed is a giant, complex tree.

These are 100% notes I have written down lol.

Welcome to Imagination Headquarters where such great ideas as Computers Screens Snake Attacks are born. Each floor is full of hallways full of closed doors. I found one that says "Morland" and I opened. After exploring it for many years, three books were created or uncovered. But there are more doors...

I got an explosion of ideas. Scenes about best friends, or estranged lovers. Scenes about super heroes and space pirates. Each character and story wanting their chance, wanting me to choose that door.

This is too accurate. Sometimes I'm scribbling out the scene in my head and before I'm even done the next scene starts talking over the first and I'm trying to remember everything I'm seeing. One of the many problems with getting inspiration this way is that it's impossible to reproduce. Once I lost all my notes for the evening and I could not remember one word I had written. The doors had stopped talking and I couldn't even remember the conversation. So I try to be quick or I have to let that one go knowing I may never see it again. Butterfly catching: Can't catch 'em all.

 If you want to write a novel I don't know how it can be done without Story Mill. It's so easy to organize. Want to write a book? Step 1: Buy Story Mill.

I hate copy editing!! So much. I'm not good at it and I'm too poor to pay for it. So I wrangle all my teacher friends and everyone who has ever used a comma correctly and make them edit it with me. It somehow gets done. Or well enough because there is always, and I mean always at least one typo in the manuscript. 

I'm pretty happy with Kindle Direct Publishing. I'll post more on that detailed process later. But it works for me.

How posture and migraine affect migraine- Migraine World Summit Blog Review

Another great couple days at Migraine World Summit 2019. Background information: my neck hurts all the time. All day every day. It's just a piece of my New Daily Persistent Headache. And I've tried sooo many things to make the neck pain ease, just a little (to no avail). So I found this talk FASCINATING.

The day 4 talk was discouraging. I get that neck pain does not create migraine or new daily persistent headache but I need some help managing it. His main point was treating the migraine will treat the neck pain because neck pain is just a symptom of the migraine. BUT what about those of us that can't treat our disorders because they are chronic or intractable. I would LOVE to just treat my headaches but nothing works. Nothing treats them. So in this guy's opinion I'm just stuck.  

But day 5's talk!!!! So so wonderful. Here are all my takeaways.

Introducing Headache Girl! Her powers include:

Nausea (the ability to want to hurl all night while you rock back and forth)

Light sensitivity (the ability to be annoyed by light leak from under a closed door)

Weakness and Fatigue (the ability to sit for hours and not feel rested)

Headache (the ability to look like you are trying to read minds while you trying to rip your own skull off by the temples)

These are by far the most fun/awesome/amazing pictures I have drawn in a while!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dodging False Promises and Treatment Claims- Migraine World Summit 2019 Day One

Wooho!!!!! I love Migraine World Summit time! So much information and learning and community. Here are my thoughts on Dodging False Promises and Treatment Claims with Elizabeth Leroux MD. So I don't have migraines. I have New Daily Persistent Headache but for the sake of Migraine World Summit posts I'll use Migraine and NDPH interchangeable. We are one big family and a lot of things apply to both disorders. Like trying to decided on which treatment to try next and keeping up hope in the mean time.

She started by says that it's natural to want to believe that we will get better. To Hope. I think about hope a lot. She then talked about the history of migraine treatments and how "natural" and "long-standing" treatments aren't always best.

Oh and don't forget leeches! Leeches stand the test of time! Side note: Matt was not impressed with my crocodile drawing but he did like my ducks (spoilers)

Man, I've fallen for a couple of these. It just sounds so good. But I'm always that 5% lol

Repeat this over and over. 

Doctors don't know why one medicine works on one person and not another. What factors are inhibiting relief? What is different about person A's migraine and person B's migraine? who knows. Migraine (and headaches) are weird.

So here is the awesome advice for the talk. Memorize this, Current Megan. And remind Future Megan of this.

Can't wait to listen to Day 2's talks!

If my chronic headaches were a... MOVIE!

If you know me in real life then you'll know that I 

L-O-V-E the movie Groundhog Day. I don't know how many times I've seen it. Something about it is just so rewatchable to me. (I guess that's ironic?) I've talked about how my headache disorder, New Daily Persistent Headache, is the Groundhog Day of headaches. 

But my shot post last spring has not emptied my headache+groundhog day reservoir in my soul. So here is MORE!

Flashback to April 5th 2011.

(I think you should be singing "I've got you babe" for the next couple minutes. Just to put you in the right mental space.😜)

Pro Tip: Changing your hair color often helps keep the crazies away. It's nice to be able to change things. Even small things.

As I like to say "It's a fine, fine life."

New Moms are Crazy (Sorry New Dads)

Here is a picture of our family's sleep cycles when Jane was 8-10 months old.

There were some good nights. There were many bad nights. 

I kind of boxed myself into a hard place. Jane would only nurse. No bottles. And I used nursing as my #1 go to soothing device. So Matt was rendered kind of helpless.

 But no matter what I thought when it was 4 am and she'd been up for hours, I did eventually get to her got to sleep. Call me Super Mom.

Trying to drive in rush hour traffic with a car full of monkeys screaming, playing cymbals, pouring water on your head, and pulling your hair. It can be done but it does make you go a little crazy after a while.

Snuggling a bunny in a cozy (bug-free) meadow in a fancy dress and you magically have long beautiful hair. In a word it's: Divine