Thoughts for Friday – 2nd January 2015

Firstly, I would like to thank the wonderful Kate Loveton for agreeing to step in for me over the Christmas period with her superb post ‘What the Heck is Boxing Day?’ Having guest-posted for Kate in the past, I all but guilt-tripped her into returning the favour while I had a jolly old-time at Christmas. As I predicted, Kate did not disappoint and she didn’t even break anything while I was away…

2014 saw many changes in my life and the Christmas period was no different. Living away from the family home meant that I spent my first Christmas as an independent adult. Okay, so that’s a bit of a white lie as I visited with my mother for a couple of days and spent Christmas Day with my mother, sister and her fiance. For once, I was not in charge of the meal preparation which meant that I could sit back with a Christmas tipple or two and watch on in wry amusement as those around me flapped about cooking times and whether there were enough ‘nibbles’ on the table for their guests.

Thanks to the generosity of my friends and family, I returned to my own home on Boxing Day laden with boxes full of gifts. Judging by the gifts I received, most people think me a unhygienic, alcoholic book lover short on underwear and with a thing for candles…  Gosh, these people know me so well!

So now we’re into the new year, what will it hold for me? Well, maybe I should start by looking back at what I achieved during 2014.

• I moved out into my first place away from the family home. At my age, some would say, ‘About time!’
• In January 2014 I attempted to write 50,000 words in 31 days. I managed to achieve this but almost ended up with a hernia for my troubles…
• I had a short story accepted for publication in a charity ‘zine. The ‘zine is yet to be published so I don’t know if I can count this as having been ‘published’.
• I submitted a short story to a writing magazine for their monthly competition and, although I didn’t win, the constructive feedback I got was very encouraging.
• I kept a running record of the amount of words written throughout 2014 which came in at a total of 403,127 words. During that time there were only 81 days in which I didn’t manage a daily word total.

All in all, I am pretty happy with how 2014 panned out for me, writing-wise. I saw my blog grow in popularity and have had work featured on a number of other blogger’s sites which have all helped to spread the word about my own blog. I would never have imagined, when I started this blog in 2013, that I would have the number of followers that I do now or that I would be producing posts that seem to connect with other bloggers out there.

I have some interesting projects in store for 2015, many of which I am going to keep under wraps for now until those endeavors begin to bear fruit. What I can say is that I am starting 2015 in the manner in which I intend to continue and that is with an eye to getting something tangible published in the near future. Whether or not that will happen is not up to me, but I hope that my continued hard work will eventually pay off and I will one day hold in my hands a book that I helped to create.

Here’s to a successful and productive 2015 for all of us!