I had my first good, solid writing day of 2010 today. Sixteen days into the new year. Well, better late than never, I suppose.

I'm taking an online, monthly, well - not workshop, per se, but advanced support whatever - with Bob Mayer, who was so instrumental in pointing me in the right direction for my paranormal novel in September. It's open to graduates of his other classes.

This month, he reiterated the most important thing: write what you are passionate about.

Oh. My. Word. Of course! Writing to the market is only part of a writer's job, if at all. Writing what you are passionate about is the only way to get through the endless revisions, to get through hawking it to agents and eventually, hopefully, selling it. I can't believe how often I've gone to explain a novel I'd written, and I'd wince, thinking it's unexplainable. I liked it, even loved it, but I wasn't passionate about it. It didn't sing for me, hence making it complicated and unexplainable, no matter how well-written it may have been. (And I'm an egoist - or is that egotist, I can never remember and am too lazy to look it up right now - enough to believe it was well written.)

I find the novels I write that I'm passionate about either make my eyes shine with fun, or shine with tears. And when I'm not so passionate, they don't shine and I fumble.

So I guess my goal for this year, since I don't "do" resolutions, is to write only those novels that I am passionate about.

Last year, within the span of maybe five weeks, I wrote two novels that captured my imagination. One of them might actually be publishable with more rewriting and judicious editing. But they were the only novels, out of the three or whatever that I wrote, that I was truly passionate about, that I could talk about for hours, that made (and still do) my eyes shine both with fun and tears.

I want to double that number. Four novels completed this year that I'm passionate about, and rewriting the one I did last year doesn't count in this year's tally.

When you're at the bottom of the writing food chain - wait a minute, let me rephrase - when you're aware that there is a writing food chain, but you haven't found it yet - there's nowhere to go but up. And eventually I'll be hanging on that bottom rung, unwilling to let go and working on reaching the next rung.

I think that's a fairly worthy goal for my 50th year on this planet.