I do hope you get the chance to catch up. When you are - there are others in the collection that I've already shared... :-)

Yes, 1000 is definitely a good start for an essay - 2000 even better.
I guess for me, 1000 words means I've almost replenished the amount I shared in a fiction post. 2000 makes me feel really good and anything over that is a bonus - for days when I have to work on something else like editing or character indexing as I've been working on the past two days...

Thanks so much for the entry!