Kate Warren

It's been a difficult few days.  I've been having odd itching episodes.  Not the usual ones where you put your hands in the dishwater and your nose starts itching.  It was more palms and soles of feet.  Then Sunday night I felt like something was stuck in my throat. Didn't sleep well that night.  Next morning it was worse.  I could breath and talk, but it was very uncomfortable, especially when swallowing.  

So after getting the kids off to school we went to the clinic for walk-in hours.  They sent me over to the hospital where I was diagnosed with a nasty allergy to...something.

Don't officially know what I'm allergic to but we do have a short list of possible ones.  They mentioned epinephrine but as I could breath and don't like intra-muscular injections I opted for prednisone instead, along with a dose of benadryl.  Interesting note: I wasn't aware that hives can show up after the itching, brought on by scratching.  I always thought they came first or on their own.

Two days later I'm still itching but my throat is back to normal.  Trying to take only non-drowsy antihistamines, but they don't work as well as the ones that make me sleepy.  I'll see an allergist next week and hopefully we'll find out that my allergen(s) can be easily avoided.  


I was ahead for NaNo before this hit.  Now I'm back to just keeping pace, but that's ok.  I'm going to take some more medicine now. 

Kate

Well readers, I survived the first week without falling behind.  Whether that holds true for the weekend remains to be seen.  Weekends are more difficult for getting the writing in, as the kids are home and in need of attention.

The story is progressing quite well aside from one gaping plot hole I noticed.  I'm writing partly about the royal family of Frandia and I realized I left out a whole prince!  Oops.  And I need him in a critical scene later in the book.   I added him to the scene I was writing at the time, and I will go back and add him to others when I start rewrites.

It occurs to me that I may have to cut subplots and possibly characters, including some of my favorites.  But if they're that interesting they can always have their own book.  It may become a series, instead of a trilogy with a prequel.  Would that be a quadrilogy?  If there's a fifth book will it be a quintology?  I apologize.  I'm rambling, aren't I?

Anyway, overall it's going quite well, so fans of The DeFord Chronicles, Part I can look forward to the sequel finally being finished, and hopefully published within a year.

I'm off to start dinner for the family, and then to help my NaNoWriMo region crack the top  on the total wordcount scoreboard.  Go Wisconsin: Elsewhere!

Kate

Ladies and gentleman, National Novel Writing Month has commenced.  What does this mean?  It means I will actually be writing every day.  It also means I will not be participating in Six Sentence Sunday during the month of November, unless by some miracle I finish my WIP early.  I will miss it, but I won't likely have time.

On to the fun.  If you've never participated in NaNoWriMo, you might want to give it a try.  If November doesn't work, you could try one of the summer Camps instead. 

Or do your own personal NaNo.  Just take 50,000 words and divide by the number of days in the month to get your daily wordcount goal.  Write that many words or more each day and you will have a novel-length work by the end of the month.  Granted most novels published these days are longer, but the traditional minimum wordcount for a book to meet the definition of "novel" is 50,000.  You can write more if you want to.

What do you win?  Really cool bragging rights, a neat certificate, special offers from select sponsers, and the fact that you've written every day for a month.

I've posted a Guide to Genres specifically for NaNo participants.  It has its own page on the site.  It's somewhat tongue-in-cheek.

Must grab some breakfast before I get down to the business of seeing what I'm going to write this year.  That's right.  I don't decide until day one.  I sit down, start typing, and see what comes out, and that's the story I go with.  Not very smart perhaps, but its worked for me for the last three years.  I have a feeling I'll be continuing last year's novel, but I never know for sure.

Updates will be posted here, on my Facebook page, and on Twitter.  Happy NaNovember everybody!

Kate