Author: Linda Nelson

Survived the Root Canal

by Linda Nelson, posted in ROW80, works in progress, writing

I did it… I survived my root canal.

I never did like dentists, but I am happy to report, the root canal was done last Friday. It wasn’t as bad as I had thought it was going to be.

The endodontist said that I had really hard teeth with four nerves and one really curved canal. It was so curved that he broke off a piece of his file way down deep inside my root and wasn’t able to get it out.

He told me that this would not be a problem and not to be concerned. He was able to get enough of the rubber material around the file piece to protect the root from infections setting in.

The root canal procedure was not very painful, just the initial jab of the needle of Novocain. I should say three jabs of Novocain to kill all the pain. He made sure I was pain free by putting a cold instrument against the tooth to make sure it was very numb.

Needless to say, when the procedure was done and I was on my way home, the mouth was not working properly.

Four hours later the Novocain wore off and I had a partially ground down tooth with a substance on top of it resembling a small white band aid.

All weekend I had to make sure that I did not eat anything on that side of my mouth. I had to do this to keep from biting down on the tooth and possibly splitting it in two.

Monday it was off to the regular dentist.

She made me a temporary crown for the tooth. This too was pain free. But why wouldn’t it be? There are no nerves left in my tooth.

The permanent crown will be in place just before Thanksgiving.

So that was my weekend.

Now for ROW80 Check-In:

I did not make my intended word count. The tooth proved to be too distracting.

What I did accomplish was about 2k or 3k words for the whole entire weekend. I guess that was better than no word count at all.

I was stuck on a scene, but thanks to our speaker at my writers’ group meeting this weekend I was able to push through the scene.

Hope the rest of you are having good progress with your work in progress. See you all next round.

Find my fellow ROWers with the Linky List.

Joni B. Cole visits The Monadnock Writers’ Group

by Linda Nelson, posted in writing, writing and poetry

Here we are in the month of September and fall is quickly closing in on us. Why is it that summer always seems to go by so quickly and winter, even though it averages the same length of time, drags on and on and on?

With it being September it also means it is time for my local writing group to begin its monthly meetings.

I belong to the Monadnock Writers’ Group. We meet the third Saturday of every month in the lower portion of the Peterborough Library.

Our group meets from September to June, and then we take a break for the summer months. All but two of these meetings are visited by a guest speaker and are open to the public.

September’s guest speaker was Joni B. Cole.

She is the author of Another Bad-Dog Book: Tales of Life, Love and Neurotic Human Behavior, which is not a book about dogs. This book is a book of personal essays about people. She spoke of how she has found her book of essays located in the dog book/pet section of book stores instead of amongst the other essay books. This was not of her doing and was surprised to find this accidental marketing happening to her book.

Joni is a writing instructor and speaker at conferences. She is also the author of Toxic Feedback: Helping Writers Survive and Thrive, and is known as the creator of the “This Day” series, which includes Water Cooler Diaries: Women across America Share Their Day at Work.

Joni published many magazine articles and essays in several literary journals and frequently contributes to The Writer magazine. In 2011 she was a Pushcart Prize nominee and has been a guest on CNN and many radio and news shows.

You can learn more about our speaker by visiting her website: www.jonibcole.com

She was able to give us a few writing tidbits. One of which was about writers’ block. She said, “One should not always follow a linear path when working on a manuscript. It is much easier to write the scene that is on one’s brain. This makes the writing process much easier and enjoyable.”