Katy McDermott

I haven’t been writing much this week. My reason? Simple: I tried to quit smoking cold turkey. As a result, I was a little – you could say – distracted.

You could also say that I was weepy. Constantly. Irritable to the point of committing a felony. Obsessed with food, especially chocolate (“Is that chocolate-covered lasagna you have there? Hell, yeah, I’ll try it!”) Prone to sudden fits of rage over the one sock that didn’t make it into the hamper. And so on.

In fact, I was so focused on myself – my own misery, my own determination to quit and stay quit in spite of said misery – that I didn’t spare my book or my characters the merest thought. But after 4 1/2 days, I figured the nicotine had finally left my system (and I was indeed a bit less of a freakazoid).

It was time to get back to writing. I’d missed it – quite a lot, actually. Even though it’s something I associate so closely with smoking, I thought I was strong enough to give the writing a shot without the cigarettes.

As it turns out, I was wrong. Yep, I’ve started smoking again. (And no, I’m not proud of it.) However, I did hit a milestone of sorts in the book (1/3 of the way done), so I guess that’s something.

Now all I have to do is figure out how to break my association between the two…