Have read a fair few blog pages this past few days, many of them making public people’s resolutions for 2010. Some call them wishes; others call them goals. Seems to me that many of them are more positive than in previous years, a sort of pulling up of the socks and ‘let’s get on with this thing we do’ sort of approach. Don’t know if that is anything to do with something new starting – the new decade... but I am certain it is a good thing.
Last year I made a fair few writing resolutions; some of them specific (to write 365 flash fiction pieces – a form I have a love/hate relationship with still) and some of them vague (to hit high in competitions). The former I had some control over, the latter I did not except insofar as I could choose to ‘turn up’ or not.
A computer disaster in the middle of the year (total hard drive meltdown) set me back some so I may only have completed around 300 flashes in total and almost two thirds of those completed before June were lost in the crash. I have picked myself up from that and am beginning to move forwards.
In competitions I earned more this year than any other year even though I did not ‘turn up’ for some I had my sights set on after the ‘crash’: I won the Biscuit Prize, and was first in the Southport Writers’ Circle Short Story Competition; I was second in The Legend Writing Award and in JBWB’s Winter short story competition with ‘Poking Wasps with Sticks’, and second in Trowell and District; I was Highly Commended in Lorian Hemingway for the second year in a row, and in Cinnamon Press, Yeovil, Calderdale, Binnacle, Biscuit Flash, and a whole bunch of other listings and commendations including being a runner up in the Kathy Fish Fellowship and losing a competition I won because the judge made an error in thinking I had already published the winning story. I did not hit as high as I had hoped to, but I should not complain.
I completed a novel with a good writer, a collaboration that had sparks of brilliance in it. Reading it over made me dizzy it was so good. Then the writer pulled the plug on it. This is still a source of sadness – art should rise above personalities, I think. I have my half of the book and it is in my head to do something with it.
I have written a whole bunch of other stories and am nearing completion of another book for children and some adult stuff too.
Oh, and my first book for children was published – ‘The Chess Piece Magician’… a great cover by Nicola Robinson and sales are doing ok, I think.
There was a lot of mess in the middle of the year and I ruffled a few feathers here and there. I have blogged enough about it below. I lost ‘friends’ and made others over this. I learned a lot – about people and trust and writing; oh, and the need to back up my work on computers. I am a better writer than I was. I am clearer than ever before in my head about what I want from all of this.
I have several writing projects on the go at the same time and more ideas and plans than you could shake a stick at.
Next year will be better. I hope it will be bigger. I have a number of engagements pencilled in to do with the promotion of the children’s novel and I am resolved to ‘turn up’ at a few big competitions. I wish everyone out there and everyone turning up to read me here, a year of moving forward and collecting along the way shiny things to marvel at when you look back on the year in 12 months time… and don’t go poking wasps with sticks without expecting to get stung. 
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