Second Year Daily Diary Anniversary: August 31, 2022

Daily Diary, Day 730:

While I only started my daily posts on substack in April of this year, I started this diary on Facebook, and today, I will have been posting for two years, without missing a day. For someone who was never able to keep a diary for more than a few weeks at a time, this does feel like an accomplishment and a good time to remind myself of why I started this daily post.

In August of 2020, California had just completed the fifth month of the Covid shut-down (and it was clear this wasn’t something that was going to be over quickly.) In June, my husband had traveled up to Washington Sate to help out my daughter and two grandsons during the lockdown—and because of my health issues—he didn’t feel he could travel back and forth.

He wouldn’t come back home to San Diego until November. These five months were the longest we had ever been apart, and the longest I had ever lived by myself. So, reaching out to my Facebook friends was one of my ways of feeling connected. And it worked!

Because I was doing the daily post, I also learned to start looking for photos to take and share on my walks. This kept me walking every day, which was important for both my mental and physical health. Before Covid, my major form of exercise was water aerobics, which was no longer available to me. I also learned to enjoy listening to audiobooks, which has been a great way of keeping up with recreational reading, without interfering with my writing.

I wasn’t terribly productive during this first year in terms of writing, but I did write a short story, called Tomorrow’s News for a work shop, which I hope sometime to turn into a series of novellas. More significantly, I did start doing the research for my next mystery.

Looking back at my posts I saw that I started writing Entangled Threads in April of that first year of posts. One of the useful aspects of this daily diary is that I have a record of these sorts of milestones.

This second year of posts, there have been even more milestones.

I spent the summer and fall of 2021 finishing up Entangled Threads, which turned out to be my longest book ever, coming in just short of 140,000 words. I published it at the end of January, I am delighted to say that six months since publication, this book has sold over 3500 copies and has over 300 five-star ratings on Amazon.

In addition, after finishing Entangled Threads I immediately started into doing the research for the novella, Mrs. Stein Solves a Crime, which I published in July. Having this post to keep me motivated is what enabled me to research, write, and publish a book in less than six months. Mrs. Stein Solves a Crime has also been received well. It has been only out for a little over a month and has sold 950 copies and has over 70 five-star ratings on Amazon. Believe me, this kind of response to my stories does keep me highly motivated!

Another milestone for me is that in April I made the decision to start posting daily here on Substack as well as on Facebook. This, in addition to shifting my promotional newsletter over to Substack has introduced me to a larger audience and has been a more efficient way of getting the word out about my publications, which of course helps save time for my writing.

Outside the publishing realm, into my personal life, this has also been a productive year. My husband and I moved forward with long-delayed plans for making repairs to our house. We’ve lived here over 30 years, and it was definitely time, especially as we plan to age in place. We finished replacing the roof and gutters, had the whole exterior of the house painted, and had major work done pulling out all the weeds in the front and back yards. This sets the stage for some planting when we (hopefully) start to get some winter rains.

This year I also celebrated my 72nd birthday and my 50th wedding anniversary, all very satisfying milestones (smile.) A less enjoyable event was breaking my toe, which has meant I have had to modify some of my exercise routines. Evidently, Jumping Jacks are not a good idea anymore, now that I am in my seventies!

A much more welcome milestone I hit was that, after two and a half years of separation because of Covid, my daughter and grandsons came to visit last month. We had a lovely time, and it was amazing how much my grandsons (now 11 and 12) had grown in the intervening years.

As for the future, I plan on doing all I can to keep up the balanced life that writing this daily diary has encouraged. This means continuing to exercise daily, taking my photographs, and listening to my podcasts and audiobooks as I walk (and who knows, maybe I will fold back in some water aerobics to the mix.) I also hope we can start remodeling at least one of our bathrooms as part of our plan to age in place. Most importantly, I intend on finishing the book I am currently working on. If I can continue the 5000 words-a-week goal I have set, maybe I will even get two books out by next August!

Finally, I hope to keep connected to all of you on Facebook and Substack, because writing to you every day really does inspire me to keep on, keeping on! So, thanks again to all of you for being there. Mary Louisa Locke