I’m 20 days into my 30-day writing challenge. I can’t believe the time has gone by so fast. Where did March go?!

It’s been a pretty busy 20 days all told. My husband and I spent seven days in California, visiting San Francisco and San Diego.

And while it’s great to be on holiday and exploring new places, it’s not all that conducive to getting words down. However, having said that, I haven’t done too badly.

Out of the 20 days, there have only been five where I didn’t meet my target.

Four of the five I didn’t write anything (except for Facebook status updates and Instagram captions on photos of the places we’d visited), while one of those five days I managed about 130 words.

Four of the non-writing days happened on weekends. While one of those weekends was in California, the other was back home in Toronto but it was a busy weekend and I barely spent any time at a computer.

Out of the 15ish writing days I had, eight were spent on writing new material for my next book. This is probably the best thing to take away from this little challenge. As a result, I have written nearly 3900 words of new material that I otherwise wouldn’t have written.

Whether it’s any good or not, or will make it in the final cut is irrelevant. It’s got me thinking about the plot for the next book, and starting to feel around for a direction to head in.

As I’ll likely have to submit something for October (a scary thought indeed), getting this little head-start will help me a lot.

As for the rest of the days, they were spent either writing blog posts about my travels or promotional material for the upcoming release of Burning Blood.

Ideally, I’d like to get back into the habit of writing fiction every day (or five days per week). I think this is doable, especially with a low target of 500 words (which I can bash out in about 15 minutes).

Therefore, for the remaining 10 days of the challenge, the 500 words must be for the new book or some other piece of fiction.

I’d also like to get into the habit of writing anywhere, even if it’s jotting down notes.

I recognise the importance of routine and familiar surroundings into clueing the brain into performing a repetitive task, however, there’s nothing to stop me writing at other times and places. I’ll see if I can work that in as well.

I’ve also realised that I write a lot every day.

While doing this challenge, I’ve also been doing a minimum of two days per week on paid writing tasks, as well as editing and proofreading for others.

I also write emails every day. I put together social media posts for my own channels.

All up, that’s a lot of words so sometimes it’s not surprising that I run out of oomph to write something ‘creative’.

But, if this is what I want to be doing, then I’m going to have to just get on and do it.

Now, to finish off, here are some photos from San Francisco and San Diego. Enjoy!