We’re winding down on the month of November and I appear to be winding up on the amount of sick time I can possibly use this month. It started with my husband sharing his cold with me mid-month and while I thought I was getting better, I ended up with a sinus and ear infection that resulted in a round of antibiotics and a dang near an IV for fluids in Urgent Care. Dr did not seem happy with how dehydrated I was and it wasn’t for lack of me trying to input them as I was drinking huge amounts of water and Gatorade. I think it was trying not to snot everywhere and taking cold meds (not above dosage but for such a period of time, I’m pretty sure). In any case, now I’m getting better (again) but ugh, we’re in the trial of how many boxes of tissues can I possibly use in a single month. Every trashcan in the house overflows with white snow (running joke that when the dog gets into it, it looks like it snowed in the house).

In any case, all that crap has left me struggling to finish cranking out this book this month. I wanted to proudly say I’d finished it in one month, but perhaps that was never going to happen given I arrived at 53K on 11/12 and still hadn’t arrived at what I had originally thought was the main point of my book. I’m now at 71K and have definitely found my way to that part of the plot, but I’m starting to realize I got so absorbed in the hockey part that the romance part became secondary. That’s odd for me, a complete reversal of my usual, and it’s got me in a bit of a bind at the moment. I both want to write and am hemming and hawing around actually doing it. I know it’s because my mind if confused as to what I’m actually trying to accomplish now.

It doesn’t help all the character’s drama plots are kind of culminating at the same time and I feel like that’s a bit much, but they all progressed there at the same time and there’s not much I can do about it without rewriting around 26K of it, which, let’s face it, isn’t happening. As is stands, I have about 8K that’s going to get re-written because the last part I tried to write while really sick definitely crashed and burned. It’s disjointed and strangely foggy and just overall not quality. (I may extract it and save it for something, like to look back at and remind myself why when on day 9 of cold meds not to write.)

So, it looks like this is going to boil over into December. Maybe just as well, since I have time off and can spend some of it writing. I may also have to find my calm place to write that isn’t my breakfast place. I’m starting to strain the budget tipping per table that leaves around me since I’m taking up valuable table space over here. Writing at home is just so hard because even with rules about interruptions, I get them anyway, all the time. Dogs, cats, husbands, friends, the mailman, you name it. Here it’s a singular interruption of a lovely waitress asking me if I’d like more coffee and that’s that. I need a safe writing zone, it’s official.

Oh, and let me say, trying to rename a character 71K into a story because you realize you did a truly dumb thing with their name is like fighting with an angry badger. And that’s a background character, god help me if it hadn’t been!