NaNoWriMo: Day 10

Wednesday - the day on which I intended to post an update - reminded me of a quote by Neil Gaiman:

When writing a novel that's pretty much entirely what life turns into: 'House burned down. Car stolen. Cat exploded. Did 1500 easy words, so all in all it was a pretty good day.'

In my case it was: got three and a half hours sleep; tree loppers started chainsawing and woodchipping across the road at seven sharp; mother down with food poisoning from the previous night’s dinner I prepared; was obliged to dispose, all by my arachnophobic self, of the corpse of a spider so enormous that had I seen it when it was alive they’d have heard the shriek in New South Wales....

....on the plus side: able to wake from far too little sleep looking fresh as a daisy and put on a convincing show of being fully compos mentis; inherited my father’s cast-iron stomach; nearly finished my cover art; wrote 1,944 fairly easy words before the whole compos mentis thing came to a crashing halt shortly after 6pm. Which made me feel somewhat better about a day that otherwise seemed to be karma’s way of kicking me in the butt in retaliation for cooking a toxic meal and failing to succumb to it myself.

Though as it turned out, it was apparently not food poisoning but something contagious, and it struck me down on Thursday. I spent more than 24 hours sicker than I can ever remember being in my life, and days after that envying the energy levels of snails. The relevant upshot of all this is that I wrote nothing for five days, and as of this morning was 9024 words behind. It’s going to take some serious weekend wordcount heroics to get me back on track.

On a more positive note, it’s starting to come to life. I’ve had objects spontaneously materialise, my heroine (who I feared might be a tad dull) has shown some commendable spirit, and just this afternoon I had a minor plot hole pointed out to me by one of my own characters. By tomorrow evening I hope to have some cover art and an excerpt ready to upload (if the site’s working, which much to my frustration it currently isn’t).

Stay tuned, and wish me luck.