I seem to be getting this cold one symptom at a time. Monday was the day of sniffling and sneezing. Yesterday was the stuffy head. Today is the sore throat, and I’ve just about lost my voice. It is possible that I didn’t have much of a voice yesterday, since I didn’t have to talk to anyone, but this morning I had my annual furnace checkup, so I had to talk to the technician, and the more I talked to him, the less voice I had, so that by the time he left, I was down to a whisper. I don’t feel so bad, just tired, as long as I don’t try to talk.

I never did get around to watching Christmas movies yesterday. I ended up reading and napping and even did some work. I just wasn’t in the mood for watching anything. Maybe I’ll watch something today. There may be more napping, since I had to get up early this morning.

One of my bits of work yesterday was to finish re-reading the book I just wrote so I can figure out what to do with it in revisions, and I noticed that several characters changed names midway through. They were similar names, so I must have mixed them up while I was writing quickly. I had a master list of character names as a quick reference panel, but I guess I didn’t refer to it. One character switched names with another character in mid-scene (the other character wasn’t in the scene). Another got a different, but similar, last name. Another took on a different first name that had most of the same letters in it. I tried to fix them as I noticed them, but I’ll have to be particularly alert as I do revisions.

Today I think I’ll focus on research for another project because I’m a bit too foggy for critical thinking and planning, which I’ll need for figuring out what to fix in revisions.

Yeah, it’s definitely a cold, not just allergies, and I seem to be on the upswing, with most of the cold symptoms fading, but now left just feeling tired, weak, and foggy. So it’s the perfect day for that lie on the sofa and watch Christmas movies plan, which I’ll be getting to after lunch.

For now, I’m snuggled on the bed with some books and my computer. I may or may not manage to do something work-related. I have three chapters to review, but I don’t know how well I can focus. If I had to be sick, this was good timing.

I started feeling a little Christmassy yesterday when I put up the garlands on my loft and stair rails. This year, I got clever and plugged them into a remote-control outlet (that I normally have a lamp on so I can turn it on from the front door, since my light switches are in the back of the living room). Now I can click the lights on and off without having to go upstairs and grope around behind the chaise and the antenna.

I also went to the neighborhood tree lighting last night, which counted as exercise, since I walked over there (though I think the cocoa I had there might have undone the effect of the exercise). It’s fun watching the kids run around and play together before they light the tree. My neighborhood is in one of the most diverse zip codes in the country, so there are kids from just about every race and multiple nationalities all playing together, and it does the heart good to see that. I enjoy seeing the people of the neighborhood come together, and then I like looking at all the lights along the way as I walk home.

Today is a shopping day, but it’s an excursion for supplies. It’s my last Wednesday of children’s choir until after the holidays, so it’s also the last Wednesday night dinner at church. I figure that makes it a good opportunity for an Ikea run, since the church is on the way home from the Ikea, and there are a number of other stores in the general area of Ikea that I need to visit. I think I may do my actual Christmas shopping tomorrow in a big mall day, maybe even with lunch out and a movie.

And then I need to dig back into writing, though I’m tentatively planning a Christmas movies on the couch day next week since there’s supposed to be a cold, rainy day.

I’m sort of treating today as a holiday, since I worked throughout the Thanksgiving holiday and I finished my draft. I let myself sleep in, and I’m still hanging around the house in my fleece pajamas with a cup of hot tea. When I get up and going, I’m going to devote most of the day to cleaning house and catching up on the stuff that didn’t get done while I was frantically writing a book.

I may also get around to putting up some Christmas decorations. I don’t know if I’ll do a tree this year, since the place I would put a tree is right where they’ll have to do work on my baseboard and wall, and the contractor has already come out to take pictures and give the HOA an estimate on repairs. I figure if I don’t put up a tree because I don’t want to have to take it down if they schedule the work, the work won’t happen until January. If I put up a tree, they’ll contact me the next day about doing the work. I have some wheeled dollies of the sort you put under large potted plants, so I wonder if putting the tree up on one of them might be cheating. I could roll it out of the way if they need to work (probably removing the most fragile/valuable ornaments first) but still have a tree — but would that summon the carpenters or count as not putting up the tree, so it delays work until January?

I think I really like the book I just wrote. The heroine’s voice is a lot of fun because she’s really snarky, and one of her character traits is a tendency to blurt out something inappropriate when she’s stressed — she says the thing she’s thinking, and only realizes too late that she said it out loud. I like the town I created, and I’m intrigued by the supporting cast and the relationships that might develop along the way. I’m already figuring out ideas for the next book in the series. The plan is to have the second book just about ready to go before I launch book 1, so as soon as you finish reading book one, you can already pre-order book 2, with a teaser for book 2 at the end of book 1.

It seems my writing holiday may not last too long because the ideas are already spinning, but I do want to make it to the movies because there are several out right now that I want to see in theaters. And I’m rewatching the Star Wars movies to build up to the new one.

Meanwhile, I’m leading into the crazy time of the holiday season. Neighborhood tree lighting festival tomorrow night, choir rehearsal and children’s choir Wednesday, choir rehearsal Saturday mid-day, party Saturday night, cookie jamboree at church Sunday morning (for which I’ll have to bake cookies, probably Friday), two concerts I’m singing in on Sunday afternoon and evening, then a party Monday night. After that, things slow down a little. And then I’ll start revising the book, though I might start before then if I get ideas. And I’m kind of thinking of taking a mini vacation sometime during all this.

I’ll be taking the rest of the week off from posting, since it’s a holiday week and I’m trying to wrap up a book. Happy Thanksgiving to my American readers.

I’m close to the end, but I realized that I put something in a scene that makes it too obvious who the villain has to be. I need to move that scene later in the story because I think it’s going to be the heroine’s aha! moment. On the other hand, I figured out something about another character that makes her make more sense, so I need to add that.

I suppose I don’t have to meet my self-imposed deadline of a first draft by the end of the month, and I never officially signed up for National Novel Writing Month. But it is good discipline to force myself to keep up steady production. Oddly enough, it’s almost a break for me to do the 50,000 words in a month thing, since the daily quota to do that is about half what I usually write when I’m really into a book. I spend less time writing each day than I normally do during this push. The difference is that it forces me to make writing a priority and do it every day even when I don’t have a deadline. It serves as a reset of sorts to get me back into good working habits.

And I have about 1,700 words to get written today.