I’m happy to report that I’m now back to writing daily – or at least, daily in that I’ve been

It looks just like this, too. Maybe less green.
writing every day for the last couple of days. I had a slump after the election cycle where I couldn’t write much of anything – and a slow start getting the promotions out for The Country Alpha probably wasn’t helping.
(At some point, I want to write about where I might have gone wrong with The Country Alpha – but not this week.)
A few days ago, though – I got tired of the post-election writer’s block, and said enough was enough. I’ve had an 750words.com account for years, though I haven’t logged in for a while. It’s a good site, very basic: you log in, you have a nice, unassuming blank screen, and you write at least 750 words. There’s badges and challenges and you can save or print your work there, but really, it’s just a screen that automatically counts your words for you. And for some reason – even though I could very easily just do this in a word processing program – it works for me when nothing else does.
I think it’s the badges. I really like the badges. It’s entirely stupid, but the thought of earning another badge is enough to keep me coming back, even when I’d rather waste time on Tumblr. (And I am very good at wasting time on Tumblr.)

I mean, look at these pretties!
For months, I’ve been trying to write a holiday story. Everyone likes a holiday story, especially one with a happy ending. I tried to write a holiday story over the summer… and ended up writing a summer story instead. (You’ll see it this coming summer since I didn’t manage to finish it until the end of August, far too late to put out on the market!)
I had a germ of an idea… but it took until now, when holiday preparations are really kicking in, for me to actually do anything with it. It won’t be super long – I’ve got just under 7,000 words written, and I don’t intend for it to be much more than 20,000, mostly because I really want to have it done and out by mid-December. It should be a fun little story once I’m done – but I’m coming into it so late, I’m hoping I can get all the pieces together (like the cover, and the editing, and all the right marketing).
Nose to the grindstone, I guess.

Mmm, toasty.