I took part in NaNoWriMo in November, but I never finished. No, it wasn’t just the usual: I gave up. I went through a really rough time when my cat was poisoned and died. She had been part of the way I wrote and actually contributed more than I had realised when she had been around. Every time I even thought about writing, I would crumble and cry uncontrollably.

It took me a month and a half to finally gather the courage to write without her. And then I could only work on pieces that contained no emotional content.

In the end, I had stopped my NaNoWriMo attempt at ±32 000 words. I was still perfectly on target at that point. If I had been able to keep going at the same pace, I’m sure that I would have succeeded in writing the required 50 000 words in 30 days.

Now, at the end of December (2012), I am about to go into labour and there is just no way I can predict how much I will be able to get done in a day. It might sound silly to someone who has never been pregnant, but it is really not easy to concentrate or gather enough motivation to write more than 300 words in one go anymore.

I’m super uncomfortable. I can hardly walk half the time (read up about “symphysis pubis dysfunction” if you think I’m exaggerating). My porridge brain is also pretty bad at the moment. My husband’s been laughing himself silly at the strange spoonerisms and incoherencies I have been committing. This is hardly conducive to meaningful writing.

It looks like I’ll have a pretty full schedule once my baby settles into a more predictable routine next year. I’m hoping to start getting back to about 500 words a day in April. So, the blog will probably also be very quiet until then. *sigh* Such is life, n’est ce pas?