I have written 17,000 words of my 50,000-word NaNoWriMo novel, and holy crap is it ever boring. I think I mentioned that, as I usually write non-fiction, I would dip into fiction writing by making it as close to non-fiction as possible: I made it about a woman with four children, and she’s pregnant again. This idea sucks so, so bad. I start getting drowsy every time I try to work on it. Have you ever played that computer game The Sims, where you control little people? And if you don’t give them enough to do, they’ll stand their tapping their virtual little feet and looking at their virtual little watches? That is what the characters in my book are doing.

My main character is sitting around pregnant, wondering when the hell I’m going to let some action happen. I’m trying to follow the rule about “plowing through it” (not getting stalled when you have nothing to say, but just continuing to write anyway), but it’s hard to keep writing about the groceries and the sitting around waiting for something to happen. Finally out of desperation I let her be someone who came to the rescue in an accident involving screaming and blood, and the book STILL won’t wake up. It may be hopeless.

In the meantime, I am so tired of the queasiness. I can’t believe how it suffuses everything I do. All day long I am thinking about what to eat to reduce the queasiness, or what I can eat despite the queasiness. I am like a newborn, needing to eat every 2-3 hours or I start whining and crying. But a colicky, fussy newborn, who cries harder when you try to feed it.

I love tuna, and I have been wanting it, but I’m worried about the mercury. I ate a whole can of it tonight (the chunk light, which I don’t like as much as the chunk white but it’s supposed to be lower in mercury), feeling furtive and dangerous. Low-fat, high-protein fish! I’m such a maverick.

I don’t want to imply that I ate it plain right out of the can, as if I am a highly healthy person. No, I mixed it with Miracle Whip and salt, and I ate it on potato rolls. So when I say “low fat,” what I mean is “before I added fat to it.”