So, I failed to get a post written before midnight. It wasn’t because I was burning the midnight candle, either: at 10:30 I looked at my remaining energy (zero, despite lying down three times over the day, to include a 4-hour nap), and my number of words and ideas in head (zero) and went “nope.” Then I went to bed.

Sometimes, as the helicopter pilots say, you just gotta cut sling load.

For those of you who haven’t seen this (and it can look pretty dramatic), when a helicopter is hauling something on a long line, that is, dangling it below the aircraft, sometimes, things can go wrong. One way they go very wrong is if the load decided to start swinging, and making like a pendulum. This is unhappy-making in a crane, which is affixed to the earth, but extremely unhappy-making in a helicopter, where the tail promptly starts wagging the dog, and the load can destabilize the helicopter right out of the air and kill all souls on board.

So, you cut sling load. It goes AWAAAAAAY……crash.

And you don’t.

About a week ago, Sam Robb, who runs the most awesome Team… and More website, which is an aggregator for anthology open calls, was on a chat with me while I was exhaustedly, dyslexically, doing a rambling explanation of why some small presses mandate marketing in their author contract, and how that’s usually an acknowledgement of their small reach, not a malicious phrase.

He asked if I could write it up into an article for his site, and I informed him I am too sick, and too tired to do so, but he’s welcome to crib anything salvageable. Try again later, when not sick.

For the benefit of the authors watching on the chat, I then made sure to point out that he had asked, I had said no, and neither of us had an emotional problem with the other over it. It is very possible to politely, respectfully decline, in a professional way… and that it in no way prevented us from working together in the future, on other projects.

Know your limits. And when your limits abruptly change on you… cut sling load, and accept that project is going to crash.

And now that the anti-nausea pill has won the cage match in my stomach over the morning antibiotic, I’m going to go have breakfast, and take another nap.

Stay healthy out there!