Adventures with Adderall

My doc prescribed a daily extended release dose of 10mg, but an hour after I took my first pill yesterday, I was overcome by the sleepies and took a several hour nap. Profoundly unimpressed by the effects of 10mg, I took another 10mg. (I’m not just futzing with my dosage on a whim; the doc said I could up the dose to 20mg if 10mg wasn’t sufficient.) And yes, that did the trick. An hour after I took the second capsule, I sat down to write. Three hours later, Matthew drags me away from the computer and makes me eat dinner. After dinner I return to the computer and write for another two hours.

I stopped only when the waves of drowsies started. When the first one hit, I had to force my eyes open and was a mere pillow and blankie away from a nap. But the first was the worst, and it passed. I’m betting it was due to the gap in effective time between when I took the first capsule and the second. Back on the upswing I started being capable of productiveness again, but feeling decidedly tired and less alert. I also noticed that my ability to compose sentences nose-dived at this point. The story ideas were still there, but my brain was reduced to lizard-speak: Bob hungry now. Bob run. Bob scared. Not scintillating prose.

I also had problems sleeping last night. I tossed fitfully for a couple hours, then gave up and sat with my laptop for a while–catching up on emails and fiddling with some bookkeeping. Dozed off with Hobkin on the couch at around 4AM, and he promptly woke me up at 7 for breakfast, and here I am, profoundly not tired. The insomnia effect sucks goat feet. I blame the second, afternoon dose, I took. I’m going to see how two 10mg XR capsules taken at the same time will work out and then decide if I want to stick with 10mg or 20mg daily. No jitters, although there was a certain hyper-clarity which I usually equate with an excess of caffeine. Not a bad thing, but a little surreal.

After day one of Adventures with Adderall, I’m cautiously optimistic.

And also, everyone please welcome dream_wind to LJ-land. She’s been putting off and putting off getting herself bloggified, and now she’s finally gone and done it.

   


Writing Stuff

No mail yesterday. Stupid Columbus Day government holiday. I did hear from the assistant editor/slush reader of Realms of Fantasy. I’ve had several stories languishing there in various stages of slushy limbo so I finally bit the bullet and emailed a query to Shawna McCarthy. She passed on the query for her slush reader to reply to. Outcome:
– One story utterly and completely lost in the depths of the abyss. Invited to submit it again since there’s no trace of it. 235 days.
– One story rejected by default as it wasn’t one of those bought in the batch that was passed up to Shawna. Ergo, “Rejection probably lost in the mail,” which does not fill me with great confidence. Total time waiting on this one: 139 days.
– One story somehow falling between several slush cracks–old and new regime transition pains–and is slated to be passed up to Shawna at the next slush transfer. Days out and counting: 280.
WAH!

In more positive news, I did a Critters critique to keep my numbers up, and I’m definitely happy with the quality of my writing time yesterday.

New Words: 300 – 360
Did a major editing pass on “The Better to . . . ” and chopped out nearly four hundred words. Also made some good headway into the climax. Apparently, muse is a masochist. Must consider flogging muse more often. Or she’s a speed junkie. Or both.

Zokutou word meterZokutou word meter
6,222 / 6,500
(95.0%)

I think 6.5K for the whole thing was an underestimate, but I ought to be able to keep it under 7K. And there’s still the possibility of more judicious cutting.

Club 100 For Writers
      15

500/day
      78

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26 Responses to Adventures with Adderall

  1. jimhines says:

    One story rejected by default as it wasn’t one of those bought in the batch that was passed up to Shawna. Ergo, “Rejection probably lost in the mail,” which does not fill me with great confidence.

    For what it’s worth, I’ve seen this default response from Carina in the past, and often the stories which were “rejected by default” turned up months later, either as sales or rejections.

    • Eugie Foster says:

      Yeah, I’ve heard of such things happening. So I’ll keep a candle burning in the window, but hot wax notwithstanding, it’s off to the next market with this one! Rah. Whimper.

      • jimhines says:

        Of course, now you’ve got me wondering about my story in the Realms slush. I’m at 104 days, which may or may not put it in the same batch for a “default rejection”. Grumble…

        • Eugie Foster says:

          Yep yep. Anxiety, impatience, and nail-biting. Ah, the glamorous writing life . . .

          • jimhines says:

            Which reminds me, why hasn’t my agent answered my last e-mail yet? He’s had 2 or 3 whole days!!! What’s up with these people who aren’t leaping to fulfill our every whim and desire?

          • Eugie Foster says:

            Writers should have support groups to help us through our slush issues and waiting dysfunctions. “Hi, my name is Eugie, and I’m a writer.”

            Oh, wait, I guess we do. “Writing Groups” and all. Well crap, that’s not working for my neuroses. Need more pills!

            Calmblueocean. *pant pant pant* Calmblueocean, dammit! *twitch*

          • jimhines says:

            You want to know the really twisted part? I stress more about the story sitting in the Realms slush pile than I do about the fact that I haven’t yet gotten paid for my story in the June issue.

            Though now that I think about it, I should probably send an e-mail about that soon…

          • Eugie Foster says:

            You haven’t been paid for your story in June’s issue yet? You should definitely drop an email off to jiggle someone about it. I got the check for “The Storyteller’s Wife” last November.

          • jimhines says:

            And off goes another e-mail…

          • gardenwaltz says:

            heh, you didn’t think writing groups were about writing did you? 😉

          • Eugie Foster says:

            Mmmf! I guess was right. There’s simply no such thing as a sane writer.

  2. harmonyfb says:

    I’m not submitting to Realms again. There’s no excuse for the sloppy handling and extended wait times (esp while insisting that the authors not sim-sub).

    • Eugie Foster says:

      But it’s one of the few pro-fiction markets left! *wails* Plus, they’ve bought from me before, which always bumps any market up my preference list of places to sub to. I’m still rather dejected about the outcome of this last batch of stories, though.

      • wistling says:

        Well, I think you get a free pass-up because you were published, which is great for you. I’ll still submit to Realms but my address is still subject to change, which makes me put paper-submission markets with long response times lower on my list. So, I’m hoping to build up a repertoire among the e-sub markets over the paper-subs, until I get a permanent address. I think if the response time by snail mail is 2 months at most, I’d still submit through snail, but anything above that might get lost.

  3. dragonmyst says:

    My son takes 10mg adderall in the morning and 10 mg at noon after dinner, it works very well for him. *crossing fingers*

    • Eugie Foster says:

      I’m on the XR, extended release, capsules which I’m only supposed to take once a day in the AM. The theory is that they’re time-released to give an even dose throughout the day, although I’m still deep into the experiment-and-see-what-works phase, which is why I took the second capsule yesterday in the afternoon. Nothing like playing with psychotropics. Whee!

      • dragonmyst says:

        ahhh, I see. Good luck?

        I couldn’t really comment on the story situation, I haven’t submitted a story yet, still beating it into submission….err editing. 😛 am disapointed to hear that though.

      • whirl_twirl says:

        I take the same dose as to good effects (though non-XR.) It does the trick for me. I haven’t tried the XR version precisely because of the sleep issues. Even with the plain stuff, if I take the second dose a little bit later in the afternoon I may have trouble falling asleep (though not as late as you did.)

        • dude_the says:

          Adderall Users Unite. 😉

          I found that the XR was actually better on the sleep issue than the non-XR. Since you are only taking it first thing in the morning, you don’t have to worry about the timing of that second dose (which iin my case was often late because, well, attention deficit). But, as with everything, your milage may vary.

  4. keesa_renee says:

    Meep! I wish I had your rejection times…I think nothing of waiting five or six months for a reply, on average. :-/ What’s your secret?! (Well, okay, I think something of it; it gets the usual mailbox-checking, nail-biting, when-will-the-stupid-thing-get-here response. But it’s not unusual, is what I’m saying. I wonder why…)

    • Eugie Foster says:

      You wish you had my rejection times? My agonizingly long and torturously interminable response times? Agh? Why? I’ve waited years (no exaggeration!) for a response before. The uncertainty, the waiting, the endless trips to the mailbox and spastic clicks on the refresh email key, it’s enough to drive a poor writer to psychotropic medication–oh wait, already there.

      ‘Course, some markets, like F&SF simply respond faster. RoF, alas, traditionally has very long response times.

  5. pleroma says:

    How has the 100 Words Club helped you out? Just curious.

    Also, possibly this weekend we could all hang out? and I will probably want a break from working on my house.

    • Eugie Foster says:

      How has the 100 Words Club helped you out? Just curious.

      Well, mostly it’s instilled in me a feeling of guilt when I don’t write on a daily basis, which is a good thing (or so I keep telling myself). I think having a concrete goal of sitting down and writing something every day is a really good one to establish strong writing habits. The virtue of Club 100 is that it’s such a managable daily amount–100 words. Not so distressingly intimidating as 1-2K daily goals which is what I’ve set for myself in the past and gotten frustrated and disheartened when I couldn’t and didn’t make them.

      ‘Course I have yet to make 100 days in a row, and I even allow myself weekends, holidays, and sick days. But it’s sort of like those “X # of accident-free days” signs in construction areas–incentive to keep trying to improve and a little morbid too.

      Also, possibly this weekend we could all hang out? sruna and I will probably want a break from working on my house.

      That sounds like a really excellent idea. I’m drawing a blank, have you both been inaugurated into Firefly fandom via the DVD boxed set? Or if that doesn’t sound appropriate for the season, I’m sure we can come up with something. Let’s take this to email so we can include in the planning. I just sent you something different but related to this topic to start off the flurry of emailing .

  6. dream_wind says:

    Never having submitted anything, I don’t know what the waiting is like, but I imagine it’s rather like waiting for an essay to come back.

    The one I got back yesterday had been worrying me immensely. I slept LIKE A BABY last night, and for the first time in 3 weeks woke up without a headache. I’ve also taken the day off work to catch up on sleep. I didn’t get up until 9am this morning.

    Hope the new medication works out. I remember the pain of trying to find a medication for the Crohn’s that I wasn’t allergic to – so many of them are based on sulphur or a sulphur compound, and I’m badly allergic to anything with sulphur in it. And we’re talking anaphylactic shock, get this girl to resus NOW type of allergy if the sulphur is strong enough.

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