{"id":17822,"date":"2013-03-14T09:20:47","date_gmt":"2013-03-14T13:20:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/?p=17822"},"modified":"2013-03-14T09:21:02","modified_gmt":"2013-03-14T13:21:02","slug":"writing-books-and-fighting-cancer-by-t-j-brown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/2013\/03\/14\/writing-books-and-fighting-cancer-by-t-j-brown\/","title":{"rendered":"Writing Books And Fighting Cancer, By T.J. Brown"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Teri wrote me asking for an interview for her book,\u00a0Summerset Abbey<\/a><\/strong>, which has a lovely\u00a0Downton Abbey\u00a0vibe to it — and in asking me about said interview she said, almost as a throwaway, that oh, she totally had cancer in the middle of this whole writing-and-publishing adventure and ha ha, oh, didn’t that suck. And I thought, “Well, my normal 10 Q’s don’t really cover this territory,” and I was afraid it would miss the boat on what she really had to say, so I thought, okay, maybe it’d be better to have her come by and pen a guest post not about the book but about being a writer who had cancer and what that meant for her. What follows is a funny, fascinating post — check it out, won’t you?<\/em><\/p>\n

When Chuck first suggested I write a guest blog, my mind was blown. Well, not completely blown because I had basically guilted him into it, though I find guilt to be such a severe word and much prefer the softer sound of, say, moral cajolery. By the time I was done with Chuck, he\u2019d have questioned his humanity had he turned me down. Like those clips on American Idol where they tell a story that make you feel so sorry for the contestant you\u2019d not only vote for them, you\u2019d give them your kidney, your liver and your gall bladder, all in one fell swoop.<\/p>\n

It was sorta like that.<\/p>\n

I had a hell of a story and it wasn\u2019t just your average story of the girl from Alfalfa making good. She was making it good in the PUBLISHING INDUSTRY, which as Chuck told you here<\/strong><\/span><\/a> is pretty damn hard. She got not one but TWO great contracts from two major publishing houses and she was just about as happy as a woman can be who has four back to back, mind-numbing, gut-wrenching deadlines. But deadlines schmeadlines! PUBLISHING CONTRACTS! UNICORNS! FAIRY DUST! KITTENS! CANCER!<\/p>\n

Wait, what?<\/p>\n

So it didn\u2019t turn out to be your average story and it sure as hell wasn\u2019t supposed to happen to me. One day I was signing the contract, the next I was turning in my resignation to the day job and the day after that, my doctor was telling me that the lump in my neck, which had tested NEGATIVE for cancer, mind you, was indeed, actually, CANCER. Oops. Sorry.<\/p>\n

No, no, no, nonononono. I had CONTRACTS. I had DEADLINES. I had LOTS and LOTS of DEADLINES.<\/p>\n

I had cancer.<\/p>\n

After two surgeries it was determined that my cancer was highly treatable.<\/p>\n

Me<\/strong>: (Hopefully) Oh, so it\u2019s not like real cancer? I mean, yeah, it\u2019s cancer but not like cancer, cancer, right?<\/p>\n

Doctor<\/strong>: Oh, no, its cancer, cancer, but luckily, you don\u2019t have to have chemo. Instead, the treatment is seven weeks of daily throat radiation.<\/p>\n

Me<\/strong>: (Baffled) I have lucky cancer?<\/p>\n

Doctor<\/strong>: (Shuffling papers) In a matter of speaking. But throat radiation is, uh, one of the most painful types of radiation you can have. We\u2019ll put you on a high dosage of morphine to help combat the pain.<\/p>\n

Me<\/strong>: (Perking up.) I get morphine?<\/p>\n

Doctor<\/strong>: Yes. And I won\u2019t put in a feeding tube if you promise to eat and not lose too much weight.<\/p>\n

Me<\/strong>: (Positively giddy) I\u2019ll lose weight?<\/p>\n

So cancer was like summer camp minus the hot councilors, and adding on the agony, nausea, and constant fear of a protracted and painful death.<\/p>\n

I won\u2019t go into the level of pure suckage here, because I don\u2019t generally focus on suckage. I\u2019m incredibly blessed and very lucky. My latest test shows that the cancer is completely gone and my doctors are apparently impressed with my supernatural healing powers. So instead of focusing on that which sucks unto the stars, I am focusing on what I gained. Taking a page from Chuck\u2019s book, I\u2019m making a list of things I learned writing the Summerset Abbey series<\/strong><\/span><\/a> while being treated for and recovering from cancer, and taking copious amounts of morphine.<\/p>\n

1. About Pain<\/strong>: Pain is more bearable if you can transport your mind somewhere else. For me, this meant opening the little door in my brain and letting the people of Edwardian England talk NONSTOP in their funny, stilted voices. I listened carefully, wrote down their stories and books formed. The experience was so intense and the voices so real, it quite took me out of what I was experiencing physically. While I\u2019ve had characters talk to me before, I\u2019ve never heard them with such pitch perfect clarity\u2026 which may have been due to the number of morphine drops I was swallowing. Just a thought.<\/p>\n

2. Cancer is the ULTIMATE excuse:<\/strong>\u00a0Whenever asked to do something I didn\u2019t want to do, I\u2019d just say in a loud, faux whisper. \u201cI\u2019m sorry, I can\u2019t. You know, CANCER.\u201d For instance, \u201cSo you want to drive five hours to the family reunion to make nice with people you don\u2019t know and who will ask you how that writing thing is going anyway?\u201d You can just say, \u201cSorry, I would LOVE to go, but you know, the CANCER.\u201d Cancer even gets you out of shit you have already committed to, like heading up the auction at your children\u2019s school, teaching Sunday school, or running that writing workshop for orphans. Not that I ever did anything of those things, but I\u2019m just saying. Seriously, it\u2019s the ULTIMATE EXCUSE.<\/p>\n

3. The Strangest People Work in Oncology<\/strong>: Now don\u2019t get me wrong. I love my oncologist and her team. I even dedicated book two of the Summerset Abbey series, A Bloom in Winter<\/strong> to them.<\/p>\n

But damn.<\/p>\n

The first time I walked into the oncology waiting room, I noticed a nurse sitting near the window. The nurse didn\u2019t move. The nurse was a MANNEQUIN. I glanced at the other cancer victims and their relatives, but no one seemed to think it odd that a mannequin dressed as a nurse sat in a chair in the corner. Before I went in for my consultation, I asked the receptionist about it. \u201cOh, that\u2019s Nurse Ann.\u201d Okay. Like everyone else, I got used to Nurse Ann, until I realized that Nurse Ann frequently changed her clothes and dressed up for the holidays. Now when I go in for my follow up appointments, I look at the seemingly normal medical assistants and think to myself, which one of you sick freaks dresses the mannequin?<\/p>\n

4. A Brave Person is Just Someone Who Didn\u2019t Know What Else To Do<\/strong>: People have called me brave, but I\u2019m not really. I didn\u2019t choose to have cancer like a person chooses to run into a burning building to save someone\u2019s life. But then again, maybe the person who ran into the burning building didn\u2019t choose their actions either, they just automatically did it. Maybe they felt as if they didn\u2019t have a choice. I wrote four books in a year and fought cancer because I didn\u2019t have a choice. Cancer was not going to define the career I had worked my ass off to get. WOULD NOT.<\/p>\n

See, no choice. I\u2019m not sure if that\u2019s bravery or just doing what you gotta do. Or the morphine. It could have been the morphine.<\/p>\n

But honestly, if I knew what propelled me out of bed each day to write those books, while feeling like a warmed over piece of death toast, I would so share with you. (Actually, I would probably bottle it and sell it like a snake oil salesmen, but that\u2019s beside the point.)<\/p>\n

5. I do NOT want to get cancer again<\/strong>: This comes with a long list of wilt nots and shalt nots. I wilt not smoketh again. I shalt not forget to drink my daily water. I wilt not forget to take my vitamins nor the gazillion other supplements that Dr. Oz says I should take for optimal health. (This is harder than it seems because the minute he mentions a product, me and fifty million other people run to the local GNC to pick it up. I once had to wrestle an old woman for the last bottle of gingko gingered cranberry extract of Himalayan Snake\u2019s Ass.)<\/p>\n

This is the paragraph where I\u2019m supposed to conclude with something brilliant and funny but I got nothing. Oh, wait, yes I do. Go buy my book, Summerset Abbey<\/strong> and Summerset Abbey: A Bloom in Winter<\/strong>. That would be nice. They\u2019re good books, even if they were written faster than lightning by a woman fighting cancer and high on morphine. Or maybe they are good books because of that? Who knows. Thanks for playing!<\/p>\n

Teri Brown:<\/strong> Website<\/strong><\/span><\/a> \/ Twitter<\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Find her books at Amazon<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, B&N<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, and Indiebound<\/strong><\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Teri wrote me asking for an interview for her book,\u00a0Summerset Abbey, which has a lovely\u00a0Downton Abbey\u00a0vibe to it — and in asking me about said interview she said, almost as a throwaway, that oh, she totally had cancer in the middle of this whole writing-and-publishing adventure and ha ha, oh, didn’t that suck. And I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-17822","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-theramble","8":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pv7MR-4Ds","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17822"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17822\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17825,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17822\/revisions\/17825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}