Swine Flu and Novel Writing

Yeah... I'm sorry I haven't been posting at all during November. I wanted to keep you guys updated with my word-count goals and excerpts from my novel, but less than a week into the month, I got really sick. I never went to the doctor to get tested, but I had all the symptoms of the H1N1 swine flu. I had a fever for nine days, and felt poorly for over two weeks.

Of course, that didn't help with the novel writing. I've never been sick during National Novel Writing Month before, so it was a frustrating time for me. I wanted to make it to at least 75,000 words, and hopefully finish the whole story, but with several days in there where I didn't write ANYTHING, I was really behind. My parents kept telling me to give myself a break, but it was hard when I've been planning this book for months, and looking forward to NaNoWriMo all year.

It was also hard to accept that I would be writing alone this year. In all the other years of NaNo, my brother was writing with me, and then my dad tried it and my younger sister did it for a couple of years. But this year, the others weren't able to write novels for one reason or another, so I was alone. (And since I was sick, I couldn't go to any write-ins with local Wrimos.)

I did make it to 50,000, though, and then for the last three days of November, I wrote over 5,000 words a day!  Yay! My final count is 70,213 handwritten words. So even though it felt like a terrible month, it was not totally unsuccessful.

And yet, my book is not yet completed. *sigh* Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to write I go... And when I finish, I'll come back and post a few excerpts for y'all to pick on and admire. :)