Today, I wrote another 2,000 words in The Shadowed Land. I continue to surprise myself with this one. I deliberately wrote an outline that left a lot of wiggle room, and let’s just say I’m taking advantage of that wiggle room. It’s both exciting and a great challenge. How do I allow myself to improvise without undermining the plot I’ve developed?

I also had one of my characters say a great line today.

“I thought we were trying to avoid the dragon.”

Not much else to say. Everything’s coming along pretty well in my writing world. I’d like to get back up to 3,000 words a day when I have the day off from work.

I have to work eight-hour shifts the next three days, so we’ll see how much writing I can get done.

I’ve finally come to the decision that it’s time to get my writing career going. At the moment, I still have a few queries out, but I’m leaning more and more toward self-publishing. I understand that it’s not a path to getting rich quick. There will be a lot of frustration involved, and a lot of time spent marketing. But the freedom involved appeals to me. I’m not ruling out trade publishing. That’s why I’ve still got some queries out. But if none of those queries pan out, I think I’ll begin the first steps toward self-publishing some of my novels as e-books (and maybe as print versions if they do well enough).

I’ve done research into what makes a successful self-published author, yet I know that it will be a learning experience if I try to do it. First and foremost, however, I believe the number one thing is writing a book people will love to read. All the marketing in the world won’t do you much good if you don’t provide a product people want.

I’ve been working a lot on my writing over the last few years. The Absolute Write Water Cooler has become an almost permanent hangout for me. Through critiquing, receiving critiques, and absorbing the great advice around there, my writing has improved dramatically. I finally feel that my books read like real, published books, and that’s the biggest reason I feel it’s time to get my work out there. If it sinks, I’ll learn from it and improve with my next projects. Thankfully, I have no shortage of ideas. In fact, I have many more than I’ll ever be able to write.

For me, writing is about fun. It would be nice to make a living doing it, but I write because these are the stories I’m passionate about and I want to share these stories with others.

I hope you’ll take a chance on my stories.