I came down with the flu right as this year’s NaNoWriMo started and the effect was predictable: I didn’t write.
Now, I have written, even if you don’t count the existing words from the third version of Weirdsmith I’m using (now with the working title of The Journal), but most days I have lacked either the physical energy, the mental energy or both. And this has been one of those horrible, lingering flu bugs, with that feeling of tiredness being the most persistent symptom (others have ranged from light fever, loss of appetite, head and lung congestion, pressure headaches, and the always fun dry, hacking cough).
Normally this would be a disaster. We are at November 11th and with a daily word count of 1,667 to keep on pace, I would need to be at 18,337 words. Instead I am at 7,925 words.
To finish on time I would need to write an average of 2,214 words per day, a boost of about 547 words above the regular pace. This is actually doable, so there’s no need to panic.
More to that point, I have now finished my voice dictation setup and my coughing has settled down enough that I should be able to do it fairly reliably. I am curious to see how this can boost my word count (and how accurate the results are. Initial testing was pretty good, with a few lapses, though I’m not sure yet if it was me being mush-mouthed or Dragon being weird or some combination thereof).
I’m also going to pick up a digital voice recorder and use that during walks to also get in more “writing” time.
The hardest part in resuming actually has nothing to do with the way I am feeling, but that I had left the story off at a rather dull point–something that may be expunged in a revision–so I need to look past that and dive back in to the “good” stuff.
Onward I go. I will report as warranted, through tears of joy or despair.
