This always happens in the winter and I am always surprised: I get a bug: a cold, or a cough or a sore throat or a dose of all three with an accompanying headache. But it’s an absolute pest when you come down with something in the middle of trying to write a whole crappy novel in November.
The only thing you can do is eat loads of fruit and drink a lot and tell yourself that you don’t really feel that bad and (have the box of tissues next to the computer) another five hundred words won’t be too difficult to pull off and never mind that you can’t remember what you were going to do next or what your characters decided to do instead of that, which seems to be the way it has been going the last week or ten days. I decide something and the characters say, ‘bugger that for a game of soldiers, you’re not killing me off/ putting me in bed with that moron/ making me catch that train/ make that phone call. NO WAY. I’m doing THIS.’ And I have to run about like a blue arsed fly trying to make sense of what the hell they are all up to. Or not up to.
So I am over the 50k mark but still a long way off from the end of the novel – from the possible conclusion, I should say, and I need to pump out another 30k or so to get there.