How I Hurt My Knee Writing

Newsletter 2023-04-24

I wish I could tell you I hurt my knee fighting off a confused bison who mistook my gray van for a rival male. I wish I could tell you I injured it crane-kicking a group of ninjas who snuck into my home to steal my precious stash of blu-rays that I don't even need anymore now that all the princess movies are on Disney+. I wish I could tell you I damaged it by launching a game-winning field goal or dominating a hundred-meter dash or even performing an award-winning ballet. None of those things happened. Instead, I hurt my knee writing—WRITING—a process that, the last time I checked, shouldn't involve the knees at all. I have ascended to the top of the stupid injury pyramid, alone and unsurpassed in my capacity for unintentional self-destruction. This is peak me in my final form: pathetic, hobbled, and a little proud for accidentally damaging myself in a way that literally no one in the human race has ever done before. This is that story, shared at the expense of my dignity, because if I have to go down, I might as well get some content in the process.

It started with surgery, but not on my knees. They're both well past the point of medical intervention. Too many miles losing too many races left them with as much mobility as the Tin Man before Dorothy gave him oil. Still, they work well enough for walking around, which is what I mainly use them for when I can't pursue my two favorite activities, sitting and lying down. I discovered my hernia after a session in the weight room, and the only solution was the scalpel. The repair process didn't leave me feeling great. When the good drugs wore off, I was a shell of my former self. I couldn't straighten out or curl up my torso. Driving was out of the question, and I was forbidden from lifting anything heavier than a gallon of milk. I was also experiencing major swelling in what I'll euphemistically call a very suboptimal area. I'd say I was as helpless as a kitten, but those things have claws and fear neither God nor man. I wouldn't want to run into one in a dark alley. Instead, I was as helpless as a thirty-seven-year-old man going through his third surgery in eight months. I was incapable of doing anything even remotely useful to society. It was the perfect time to write.

It's a sad state of affairs when you view being too injured to do your day job as a great time to do job number two. The lifestyle of a published author is indeed a glamorous one. The day after my outpatient procedure, I was totally alone. The kids were at school, and my wife returned to work. You can only play board games with your recovering husband for so long before you realize that saving your marriage depends on one of you getting out of the house. That left me completely free from outside distractions. The horror. Let me explain. I love to write, but I also hate it more than anything in the world. That contradiction makes no sense, but any writer will feel it in their soul. I don't have any problem focusing for long enough to write a tweet. Even I can pay attention for fifteen seconds at a time. Watch your backs, goldfish. I can also handle writing two newsletters a week because I have something to show for it right away. I sit down at the start of the day and have a finished product by the end of it, ready to go out to a huge audience eager to catch all my typos. I strategically insert a few each week just to keep people entertained. That's a lie. Any imperfections you find here are the fault of my underperforming editorial staff. They think they can slack off just because they don't exist.

I don't get that same feeling of completion when working on a book. If I sit down now and write all day, the only thing I have to look forward to is a seemingly endless number of additional days working on that book. Then, a year later, some people might read it, but only if I spend months and months begging them to buy it first. It's the ultimate test of delayed gratification. I'd definitely fail the marshmallow test.

The bigger the project, the greater my resistance to doing it. I don't know if you're aware of this, but science fiction books are VERY big projects. The Chosen Twelve is 90,000 words. A lot of my regular readers went into that one with low expectations. For many, it was a pity purchase with, at best, the potential to be an entertaining train wreck. After all, how could I, a guy who does nothing but write about quirky, irreverent children, also write about quirky, irreverent children, but in space? To the surprise of everyone, including me, the book proved to be a sleeper hit that garnered the first critical acclaim of my writing career. I'm now under contract to write the sequel. My sci-fi debut has become a sci-fi series. It's a dream come true and also my worst nightmare. Now I have to actually do the work. The deadline for book number two is coming up fast. I don't know which one of you sped up the calendar, but you need to make it stop.

That was the scene late last week as I hauled my surgery-ravaged body to my computer chair. It was the first day I felt well enough to sit up for extended periods of time. The situation seemed perfect for productivity. Most times, when I sit down to focus on something that daunting, every fiber of my being is overcome by the overwhelming desire to run away. Sure, I could make progress on that book, OR—hear me out—I could flee into the woods, never to be heard from again. When you don't know where to start, the best move is to abandon civilization and become a hermit. This time, though, I was too injured to retreat from my responsibilities. The process of even shuffling to my front door sounded exhausting. There was no way I could stand there long enough to wait for an Uber. And what would I even put in as the address for the destination? Just drop a pin in a patch of green on Google Maps and hope for the best? That seemed like even more work than doing my work. There was no getting out of it this time. I had to actually write this damn book.

I called it chair jail. I sat down in front of my computer and set a series of self-imposed rules for myself. I couldn't get up, and I couldn't open any other browser windows. My phone was slightly out of reach, which in my physical state at that moment, might as well have been on the other side of the planet. One computer monitor had an open Google document, and the other had an endless loop of vocal-free techno. That was my world. I didn't have to write, but I couldn't do literally anything else. Staring off into space just kept me trapped in that chair for even longer. After a while, my brain was so bored that it had no choice but to make progress. Words started coming out, followed by sentences and even paragraphs. Finally, there were entire chapters, which is a unit of productivity I'd previously only heard whispered about in legends of old. By the end of the day, I was cautiously optimistic. If I continued to respect the integrity of chair jail, I might just make this deadline after all. Productivity hack: Let someone cut you open so you're too injured to procrastinate. It really works.

Then I stood up. Every ounce of optimism left my body. The post-surgery pain was still there, but now I felt something new. It was like someone had hit the inside of my left knee with a small, precise wrench. The pain was concentrated, sharp, and totally debilitating. Before, I wasn't going anywhere fast. Now, I wasn't going anywhere at all.

I retraced my steps to figure out how I hurt myself. There weren't any steps, which kept it simple. I spent the entire day sitting down. That's how I did it. I destroyed myself with chair jail. There was one other activity I didn't disclose. In addition to sitting, staring off into space, and sometimes writing, I leaned back in my chair just a little bit. That's all the farther it will go. My wife gave me the chair as a birthday years ago, and the age shows. The fake leather is falling apart, and it pops and creaks all the time, even when no one is sitting in it. It might be haunted. When I lean back, my heels are slightly off the ground. That's not a big deal if I'm in the chair for a short while. But if I'm there all day, I might never walk again. Apparently my knees are so weak that they can't support the partially dangling weight of my own lower legs. The constant strain over a sustained period of hours was too much. The discomfort built slowly, so I didn't notice it until I stood up. I'm not sure what I did differently between the two legs to make the trauma so concentrated on the left. I must shift my right leg around more or plant it on the ground from time to time to take the pressure off. But my left leg just sways in the wind, or, rather, the central heat. I can't wait until surgery number four when they amputate.

I thought this was a silly injury that would go away quickly. I'm now on day four of limping around. When combined with the residual pain from my hernia operation, I make for an impressive sight. My hobble game is on point. Before I move, it's fun to speculate on which body part will hurt the most. I should start a betting pool to recoup some of the surgery costs. The worst part is I still have to write the book. There's no opt-out clause for if my body falls apart. Next time—if there is a next time—I'll go to the negotiating table with a whole different set of criteria. I'll need automatic extensions in the event of surgery, alien abduction, and/or the appearance of any of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. I'm not afraid of the end of the world. I just get distracted by horseys.

This injury on top of an injury might be a blessing in disguise. I'm on course for the most prolific writing week of my life. I had to move chair jail, though. My body simply wasn't cut out for the maximum security rigors of sitting at my own desk. Now I have a minimum security setup with a laptop on the love seat in the living room. My privileges are still limited to writing and staring off into space. Opening other browser tabs is forbidden, and my phone stays tucked away. I'm also wrapped in about six blankets because I'm always cold these days. I suspect all this almost-dying has lowered my core temperature a bit. With luck—or perhaps with a lack of it that keeps me damaged and firmly planted on this cushion—I'll finish my sentence in time to meet the deadline. If not, I'm not sure what will happen. I've never missed one before. George R.R. Martin blows his due dates by decades and nothing bad ever happens to him. Then again, he's also worth seventy bajillion dollars. I'll have to sell a few more books before my publisher gives me that kind of latitude. If I keep hurting myself, though, I won't have to deal with that worst-case scenario. This is, by far, the dumbest way I've ever forced myself to get work done. I don't recommend it—unless you're really behind on that big deadline. Then do what you have to do.

Anyway, that's all I've got for now. Catch you next time.

James