Someone, somewhere…is against me writing anything. I’m sure of it! I believe a rant is in order!
I remember back to Nanowrimo time, when I was all prepared to write and began on the 1st November with gusto, steaming along at a rate of 2000-2500 words a night, which is a good pace for me. I enjoyed it so much; it was far from a chore and my imagination was buzzing along at a rate of knots.
Monday November 4th hit and with it came the fireworks, starting at 7pm and lasting until 1am. This happened every night up until the end of the weekend, with some fireworks going off literally on our doorstep. It wasn’t that they were just disturbing me, but that they were waking the boys multiple times during the period I had designated for writing. By the end of that week I was at least 12k words down.
Just as I thought I may catch up a little, flu struck. Now, normally when people say they had flu, they did not - heavy cold, sniffles, whatever, not flu. I started out feeling a little rough, lying on the sofa with a mild fever and a sore throat. Within a few hours I was shivering and shaking and aching, veering between boiling hot and freezing cold, with raging fever of 40 degrees, feeling like I was dying. I still had to look after the children so I got off the sofa just to get them some food and then sat straight back down again afterwards. By the weekend, when I was allowed 3hrs in bed by Steve, I was pretty much delirious and kept having horrible nightmares. I couldn’t eat a single thing for 5 days, and lost a lot of weight, and it took me at least 2 weeks until I started feeling myself again. Worst illness ever!
Then - of course - just as my fever started to go down the boys got ill, and my goodness were they poorly. It was dreadful. Then Steve got it and after he struggled through work for a couple of days he spent a whole weekend in bed and I had to take care of him and the children despite not being too well myself.
So - around 3 weeks of Nano vanished without a trace! I did manage to catch up a little at the end but it just wasn’t to be and I failed, again.
Of course writing isn’t just for Nano time, so I wasn’t going to give up that easily - until the laptop broke.
Now, I do have a PC - but have you ever tried writing while sat next to a man with a voice like a foghorn who is either (a) playing Battlefield 2142 and yelling into ventrilo, (b) listening to extremely loud music whilst raiding in World of Warcraft or (c) moaning about me writing and ignoring him, and interrupting my thought every few minutes with comments and phone calls?
I imagine that to be a no. So for now my writing is at an end, except on those rare occasions he is out of the house. Handwriting is also no-no, as these days I can barely read it myself thanks to never really having the need to write!
I would love to write, really I would, instead of jotting down endless thoughts and ideas that never see the light of day - but I can’t ever see it happening. Perhaps when I retire, eh?
