I keep trying to do this, and I keep failing, but here we go again. One last time. I swear, if I fail to keep up with the blog this time, I should probably just wave the white flag.

The problem is that the amount of free time I have is very limited (between work, family obligations, and all those stupid grown-up things like house-cleaning and grocery shopping), and I have a LOT of hobbies. I have so far been unable to find a balance that allows me to fit the maximum number of hobbies into my very limited store of free time.

But of course, my main goal has been to write more. If I have only one or two hours of free time all week, and I want to write, I am going to choose fiction writing over blog writing. Just a fact of life. And that actually WORKED(!) for me last year. I wrote more in 2021 than I have ever written in a single year in my life. Over 200,000 words! I finished the first draft of one novel I started in Nov 2020, wrote the entire first draft of a novella, and then about ¾ of the first draft of ANOTHER novel in the second half of the year. So, writing has been going SHOCKINGLY well lately (*knock on wood*) (well, I say that, it HAD been going well until December and I haven’t been able to get back into it the last couple months), and I don’t want to mess that up.

That said, I also read a lot. And I do want to share what I read, and write reviews, and promote the books and authors I really love. I talk a lot about the books I’ve been reading on Twitter, but it’s not the same as writing a full review, and I know it. I want to do that for the authors I think deserve more attention. It’s just so hard to find the time! And yes, I know I could post reviews on Goodreads. But the amount of time it takes to write a semi-decent review is going to be the same whether I post it here or on Goodreads, and frankly, I don’t LIKE Goodreads, so…

In any case, I’d like to try again. I want to make this work. So, here’s my plan. I am going to try to give myself a strict schedule, and block out time specifically for blog writing/posting once a week. And I am going to wait to start posting until I have a few pre-written and ready to go to give myself a bit of a buffer (for instance, I’m writing this in mid-February but I probably won’t post it until I’m ready to get the weekly-schedule going). And am I going to try to keep myself to a weekly post schedule… I’m thinking every Saturday evening, for the moment.

Not every post will be a book review, of course. You’ll notice from my old posts that I did sometimes talk about other things, that will no doubt remain true. But I will be focusing most of my energy on book reviews, both of books I read last year and kept MEANING to review, and of books I’m reading this year. And I suppose… (*grumble grumble grumble*) I could maybe possibly make a new Goodreads account and cross-post reviews there. Maybe. I don’t know. I just don’t like Goodreads interface, or the attitudes of some of the readers/reviewers there, or the weird amount of power Goodreads has acquired over authors… Anyway… not my point, moving on.

So, I guess if I have any readers left (not likely, I realize, but one never knows…), this is your heads-up to start expecting posts from me again.