Posted by: C.D. Reimer in 2009 on 2 Jan 2009
I don't think 2008 would've turned out to be a good year for writing without the bedbugs. I wrote approximately 80,000 words for nine short stories, one novella, and one-half of a novel (output for the previous two years was approximately 16,000 words), put together a short story collection of all my work from the last three years, and earned a magnificent sum of $3.02 USD for my first—and only—published short story, "The Uninvited Spook," in The Storyteller (July/August/September 2008).
The bedbugs was a personal nightmare from hell during the summer. When a rash broke out on my arms, I assumed that it was a milk allergy since I was eating more yogurt than usual due to the extensive dental work I was having. That went on for a month until I woke at 3:00AM to discover what I was really dealing with. Being eaten alive took on a whole new meaning when I saw baby bedbugs scrambling on the bedsheets.
I suspected that the bedbugs came through a wall gap next to the electrical outlet behind my bed. The apartment complex management denied that there was a bedbug infestation in my building, and suspected that I brought the bedbugs home from traveling. They seem a bit clueless when I pointed out that I don't travel and/or pick up hitchhiking bedbugs. When they scheduled my apartment for fumigation, I noticed that the work log lists "beetles infestation" as a common compliant. An adult bedbug does look like a typical beetle. My apartment was packed up for fumigation for a month, and the bug bombings was nastier than the bedbugs. The empty apartment next door was bug bombed at the same time, which management insisted was routine and that there was still no bedbug infestation in the building.
I put my life back together the following month. I tossed out my bedbug-infested, pesticide-sprayed mattresses, and replaced my bed with a wood frame sofa and canvas-covered cushions that made it difficult for the bedbugs to reestablished themselves. Sleeping on a sofa doesn't bother me since I slept on worse in my younger days. I been wanting to get a sofa bed to better use the space in my apartment (i.e., playing video games and watching movies). I started finding dead bedbugs around the apartment a month after that. On the bright side, my rent didn't go up and the old heater baseboard unit was replaced with a new air conditioner unit.
I took advantage of the opportunity to reduce the clutter and redecorate my studio apartment. Stephen King wrote in "On Writing: A Memoir of The Craft" that a writer needs a special room that has few distractions to focus on writing. I created a dedicated work area by painting two walls a light green for a relaxing atmosphere, and added a third wall with a couple of bookcases and a filing cabinet. After setting up my desks, computers, and bookshelves, I was surprised by how quiet my new work area turned out to be. My productivity shot straight through the roof as I developed good work habits for managing my writing projects.
What I want to accomplish this year is to build up my writing portfolio for when I go agent hunting in mid-2010: first novel and short story collection ready for submission, second novel finished in rough draft, and third novel started in rough draft. When I'm not working on the big stuff, I'll be writing and publishing the smaller stuff. I'm hoping to increase my approximate word count to 160,000 words. My long term goal is to write full time for a living within the next five years.