I just added a 1000wordsaday badge onto this site, because I have finally begun to stop putting marketing before writing. I know that for months I have said that I would do this, but in January I finally did. I averaged between 500-900 words a day for the month of January, but in the first week of February I averaged 1400, so I felt I could safely enter this challenge set up by Debbie Ohi on Inkygirl.com.

For those of you who have been following my blog, you may remember that I wrote the first draft of my historical mystery, Maids of Misfortune, over twenty years ago, which means most of my fiction writing experience in those past twenty years has been rewriting. I am very good a rewriting, but I wasn’t so sure about my ability to write fresh material.  I forgot how much fun it is to get up everyday and tell myself a story. I think that one of the reason my word count has begun to rise is my growing investment in that story and the characters.  This is a good thing.

I have noticed that quite a number of my fellow bloggers have commented on the difficulty of maintaining a balance between their social networking and blogging presence and writing the work that all the networking and blogging is supposed to support. I am hoping that now that I am 30,000 words into the book that the balance will come more naturally, because I will be less likely to use marketing as a form of procrastination.

While I know I will never be one of those persons who write 2-4 books a year (I need too much sleep, and the hours it takes to keep my body from freezing up seem to be growing exponentially), I would like to believe, if only for the sake of the gratifying number of readers who have expressed a desire for the next book in the series, that I can start to develop a schedule where I can put out one book a year.

So, back I go, to write, write, write…