While I was typing the title for the this post, I typed January. WHERE DID JANUARY GO? In all truth, I'm glad January is over. Why is it that my birth month never goes well? And it's soooooooo long. 31 days right at the beginning of the year. My husband has this New Yorker cartoon hanging up at work because it's so darn true! I think I'll buy and put it up in my office when I finally get an office.

Anyway, here we are in February, which is the shortest month of the year, but in the Northeast, it is also the most brutal weather-wise. I expect below freezing temperatures, bitter wind chills, and lots of snow. When March comes, I'm usually pretty desperate for warm weather.

The good news is that we have a vacation coming up in two weeks! But I'll talk more about that later.

This week…

We had a “historic” blizzard roll through, that turned into a pretty big flop, as I predicted.

Still, we feasted on blizzard waffles anyway!

The kids played in the snow.

I posted about how I stay productive. If you missed this post, go back and check it out. People on Facebook loved it.

AND THEN!! I finished my WIP! The first draft of the Tokyo Run book is complete! It even has a real title now and I've chosen an image for its cover. I'm going to work hard to get to everyone by Fall, so as soon as I have a blurb and cover I'll let you all know.

Sunday Word Count Check-in!

Goal achieved! Last week's goal was to finish my WIP and come in around 80k. Perfect on both fronts. And I already know what I need to do in revisions to make this book really strong. I hope to get to those revisions in March.

Expected Word Count (Jan 31): 46,500
Total Word Count (Jan 31): 50,919

This is great! Exactly the kind of numbers I was hoping for. I'm glad I stayed strong in January and really kicked but on my word count goals. I know I'm not going to be able to hang on to this productivity through February, though. Now that my WIP is complete, I have to work on Book 4 revisions and I only write a few new words per day into it, unless I need to add a whole scene. As soon as revisions are done, I'll be plotting out a few short stories and then I'm going to get going on writing those. Hopefully I'll be able to pick up on my word count goals later in February.

Goal this week: Make significant progress on editing Book 4 of the Nogiku Series.