Make Me Good .... But Not Yet by Sheena Wilkinson

 Is anyone out there struggling with broken resolutions? Or are you all having great fun with Dry January, Veganuary, or any other form of abstemiousness? 

Sometimes January is like this...

Or are you, like me, eyeing up the last of the Quality Street and thinking, Well, if I just eat them then they’ll be gone and they can’t tempt me any more…? 

... but also like this

I am actually a great one for resolutions, and promises, and new beginnings. Although I thrive on routine, I also love change and self-improvement – or rather, I like the idea of self-improvement. I will do more yoga! I will eat less chocolate and more salad. 

it's hard to leave the stove

But I am also a realist. You have to do as things do with you, my granny used to say. This time last month I was preparing to go on a retreat, and at that retreat I wrote over 4,000 words a day – because it was easy to be productive; I had nothing else to worry about. Things did with me very well. When I got home, things did with me very differently: though I finished the book, as planned, by the end of the year, it was a struggle to carve out the time, in the middle of the holiday rush. 

a very clear picture of how things do differently with me on retreat and at home

So at the moment, things are doing with me nicely enough for the time of the year, but I’m not averaging thousands of words a day, or taking up a new hobby or reading improving works or learning a new language.  And that’s fine. 

It’s cold, and though the days are on the turn, you don’t always notice that when the countryside has been gripped by freezing fog for days, so everything looks grey. There is good stuff on TV. I have just discovered a Susan Scarlett novel I didn’t realise I hadn’t read, which has immediately bypassed the worthier stuff on my TBR pile and funnily enough seems to go particularly well with a blanket and a few Quality Street. And this morning, though I was meant to go to the gym at 9, I just couldn’t be bothered to spend ten minutes defrosting the car so the dogs and I went back to bed instead. 

beautiful but grey 

When the Romans measured the year in ten months, it started in March, with the days of deepest winter not assigned any particular month. Perhaps that accounts for the fact that January, while possessing only 31 days, always feels as though it lasts for about 67 and people often feel like hibernating. It’s a natural response. It makes sense to see March, the start of spring, as a better time for new beginnings. And even though there are 24 hours in each day, the days feel longer as we respond to more daylight and more sense of possibility. 

Daisy doesn't mind the wintry weather 

Of course I don’t intend to hibernate till March. For one thing, if I don’t get outdoors for a couple of hours every day I get very grumpy. For another, I have a book to submit this week, and then I’m excited about redrafting the one I worked on at the retreat. I have workshops booked into the diary, manuscripts to critique and student essays to mark. I’m actually quite a productive person. But I do intend to be gentle and realistic, at least until the Quality Street are all eaten. 

Stroller doesn't mind a bit of a snuggle by the stove

 

 

 

Happy New Year 2025 by Penny Dolan

Happy New Year

and warmest wishes 

for you and yours in 2025

from all the writers of the

Awfully Big Blog Adventure.

Earlier today – New Year’s Eve – someone in the family wondered what resolutions we were making for the year ahead. The mutters showed that any resolutions are for tomorrow, and not of any concern right now. I said nothing but I have, however, slightly started planning.


During December, my mind filled up with list after list. Things to do, or get, or sort or arrange or . .  or . . . or . . . . My head, inside, felt like the arrivals and departures board of a busy train station. No sooner was one list of tasks done and cleared, than another  long list flickered into view. I gave in. Apart from a quick exchange with an editor, and lots of frantic card-signing, writing was forgotten.


However, now, even as a Procrastinator-Superior, I have work and words I would like to get done in the New Year. For a while, for medical, eyesight, and other reasons, I have got into the habit of taking the days as they come. Letting the busy weeks pass by so often I've lost track of my writing time. 

I began to recognise that something does have to happen for me to break this block. I may have found an answer. Nothing very original, just a trick that can even starts with a ruler and pencil.

When January starts, I am going to note down my real-life week and weekend schedule on a sheet of paper. I will note down everything I do do - book-groups, library story-times, clubs & classes, house & shopping, daily meal-times, time with friends & family, etc, etc, and so on. Get those hours down on paper, mark them as they pass.

Then, once I’ve seen what’s there, I will block out some solid, reasonable and regular times when I can work on my art, on my writing. Will this plan work? I don’t know, nor how my timetable will fit into our IRL at home but it’s all negotiable, even paying back a missed ‘art slot’ with an extra session.

When the shops are open, I might get some gold stars to stick on my time table if and when I succeed. And I won’t get too disheartened if it doesn’t work: it’s my timetable and a moveable plan. I can adjust it whenever I need to. The important thing, right now, is to commit to getting art done, not letting the days drift as they were late last year.

I want to get hold of 2025, and make it work for me.

Hope the year works for you as well!


Penny Dolan

Writing resolutions by Tracy Darnton

It's mid-January. How are we all doing on the New Year writing resolutions?

Here are mine:

• I shall write every day   other day   at least once a week month
• I shall not waste time looking at Tweets on Brexit or Trump which tend to wind me up and make me incapable of writing anything
• I shall diligently update my website, Linked In profile and Facebook pages even though I am terrible at it and hate doing it
• I shall schedule my blogs in advance and solve why my photos are always blurry
• I shall file all my receipts immediately 
• I shall produce efficient To Do lists
  

• I shall plan any novel in great detail before I write anything
• I shall not bribe myself with Creme Eggs from the very handy Co-op
• I shall not distract myself from writing a novel by a sudden urge to clean out the cutlery drawer or put photos from the last ten years in albums
• I shall write an amazing best-selling novel forthwith
• I shall not endlessly fiddle about with all the lovely stationery I got for Christmas
  
• I shall not set myself unrealistic writing goals

Please tell me it's OK that all of them are broken already?

Tracy Darnton's YA thriller The Truth About Lies was published by Stripes in July. She has an MA in Writing for Young People. You can follow Tracy on Twitter @TracyDarnton. 

Reading Resolutions by Alex English

It’s the beginning of the new year, and, like many people, my thoughts have turned to plans and goals for the year. For me, it’s not just the calendar year that’s new. I’ve recently graduated with a masters in Writing for Young People, which has meant the end of two years of structure in an otherwise freelance life. The novel I wrote during that course has been polished and sent off, and I’m now eager to get on with new projects. So what should I do now? What should I write? What should I read?

One thing I loved about my masters course was being told what I should be doing. I loved working through the reading list, being set homework and having regular meetings with my workshop group. So this year, I’ve decided to set my own reading list. Here’s how I’m breaking it down.

Keeping up to date 

Because I write for young people, I do at least attempt to keep up with the torrent of new and exciting books that are coming out. I live in France so it’s difficult to browse English titles in bookshops, but I’m sometimes disappointed if I read the next big thing without dipping into it first. I’ve recently discovered the free downloadable extracts on lovereading4kids and will be using those to sample new releases before deciding which ones to read in full. The Lost Magician by Piers Torday is top of my list.

Lost gems 

At the other end of the spectrum, I’ve recently discovered a passion for out-of-print titles. There’s something very exciting about getting your hands on a copy of something old and unusual. Joan Aiken is one of my favourite authors and I am gradually working through her back catalogue, picking up secondhand copies of her out-of-print short story collections and lesser-known novels. I’ve also recently enjoyed Help! I am a Prisoner in a Toothpaste Factory by John Antrobus and Rebecca's World by Terry Nation. I’ll be seeking out more rare reading treasure in 2019.

Non-fiction 

I have got into the (bad) habit of only reading non-fiction when it’s research, but in 2019 I plan to change that. I received a clutch of interesting titles for Christmas and in 2019 I’ll be reading non-fiction with a sense of adventure and exploration, rather than searching for something specific.

Fiction in translation 

I’ll also be looking to broaden my 2019 writing horizons by reading more fiction in translation. Last year I read and loved The Beast Player, an epic YA fantasy by Japanese author Nahako Uehashi, translated by Cathy Hirano. I’ll be keeping a close eye on Pushkin Press for their new releases.

Just for fun 

And finally, just to counteract all that planning, I’m also going to read for the sheer fun of it, something that can often be forgotten once writing becomes a serious part of your life. I’m going to browse for unexpected books in real bookshops whenever I get the chance. I recently moseyed around Waterstones and picked up Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss and Ms Ice Sandwich by Mieko Kawakami. They don’t relate directly to anything I’m planning to write, I just liked the look of them. Sometimes planning to be spontaneous can be the best planning of all!

How do you map out your reading year? Are you a planner like me or do you just take it as it comes? Have you sniffed out any out-of-print gems or stumbled upon a must-read for 2019? I would love to hear all about it in the comments.

Resolving to write - John Dougherty

The end of January is an odd time to talk about New Year’s Resolutions, isn’t it? By now most lie, forgotten, where they’ve fallen behind the sofa or been carelessly dropped on a road that’s paved with good intentions. And the rest have mostly been assimilated into everyday behaviour and no longer draw attention to themselves.

But actually, it feels to me like a good time to review, and since one of my resolutions was a writerly one, I thought I’d share that review with you.

The last few years haven’t been easy for me in many ways, and one of the difficult things has been simply finding time to focus on my work. What with all the admin of self-employment, the duties of parenthood, and - to be frank - the all-too frequent struggles with depression, there’ve been too many days and weeks when I haven’t felt like a writer; when I’ve got no writing done at all or have only managed a little, forced out at pen-point.

This couldn’t continue; so I decided that 2016 was going to be the year when I remembered that I really am a writer. And I decided that the best way to do that was to write. Every day. Away with the excuses; gone are the days and weeks of writing nothing because other things get in the way.

Of course, some days - for whatever reason - it really isn’t possible to do much; but I promised myself that even if all I could manage was a sentence, I would write that sentence. Proper writing, mind you - shopping lists don’t count. Work that fed into my writing would, though, such as spending the morning - as I did recently - watching Julius Caesar on DVD and making notes, prior to rewriting it for a reading scheme.

So - how’s it going? Really pretty good, actually. Days 1 & 2 of 2016 were ‘not much done’ days; they fell on a weekend when I had the kids, and of course there was all that recovering-from-New-Year’s-Eve business as well. So I only managed a sentence on day one, and a paragraph on day two. 

Then came January 3rd - the day when the kids went back to school, and writing started in earnest. Normally, the first proper writing day back after a break is difficult. Getting focused is tough. If I’m lucky, I might manage 500 words of the work-in-progress, but 250 wouldn’t be unusual.

Not this time. This time I managed 3,800. Before 2.00pm. Enough to get me to the end of the first draft I’d been working on before Christmas got in the way.

Not every day’s been like that, of course; in fact, that’s my highest word-count of the year. It may in fact be my highest word-count of all time, in a single day. But every day on which I’ve written - which is every day in the last 29 - I’ve felt like a writer. It’s changed my view of myself, and my work, and has put all those distractions into sharp relief. And I wish I’d thought of it years ago.

How are your writerly resolutions working out?

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________

John's Stinkbomb & Ketchup-Face series, illustrated by David Tazzyman, is published by OUP.

His new books in 2016 will include the next two Stinkbomb & Ketchup-Face titles, his first poetry collection - Dinosaurs & Dinner-Ladies, illustrated by Tom Morgan-Jones and published by Otter-Barry Books  - and several readers for schools.

HAPPY NEW YEAR! by Penny Dolan

Welcome back to an Awfully Big Blog Adventure!
 

Opening the New Year always seems rather like opening a new notebook with all those empty, inviting pages ahead, which may be why it’s one of my favourite times of the year, although not in the wild drunken party way. Necessarily.

However, unlike a notebook,a year can’t be put away for best, unused, just because the space ahead looks so perfect now. The months won’t stay blank just because no ideas seem quite good enough to fit, or because I haven’t decided whether to use it for writing poetry (again), or for listing positive thoughts or collecting happy memories or useful quotes or any other ideas that might fit the beautiful pristine pages. The days ahead will just go on and events will happen, and the year’s brand new pages will end up, no doubt, rather like most of my muddled notebooks.  
Yet right now – January 1st- this feels a fine place to start, so here are a few of my semi-resolutions:

A Useful Device. 
I have bought a new timer in my room, which means there will be no need to search the house when I next need it to kick-start some words.(I cannot tell you how easily all versions of these devices break apart. Make that a working new timer.)

A Decision about Time.
 I now have so many books on my shelves that I really want to read, as well as all the longed-for Christmas prezzie books, that  I have decided  2016 needs to be less screen time and much more time with paper pages. I intend to do more real reading for myself, not just catching-up with the more sociable Book Group titles.

A Mood-Saving Avoidance. 
The grey, gloomy dog comes visiting for any manner or reasons, so I have decided to stop reading comments that follow online newspaper articles. The bile-filled spite-babble fills with despair about the human condition. Enough is enough! In 2016, I am, as they say, not going there any longer. The news is often bad, often grievous, but some take a sinister delight in making it worse. I will keep emotions for where they are needed.

Not Going it Alone.  
Another decision I’ve made is that more action is required and not just with the word-count.  Working alone can end up quite isolating, no matter how comfy the trackie-bottoms are each morning. During the year ahead, I will put more time into “refilling the well” from out there in the world, no matter whether this means writing in a new coffee shop, visiting a museum or exhibition or gallery, walking round a new place, trying out some new activity or experience.
I mustn’t forget, of course, to make time for meeting up with good friends and enjoying their optimism and determination despite everything the years bring. Genuine networking, though I hate that word.

The New Old Resolution.  
I have decided to follow the post-it note I stuck near my computer last year, which may be a quote from Dorothea Brande or from Einstein or any number of others:

“ACT AS IF IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO FAIL"

Yes, come 2nd January, when I get back to my desk, I will truly try acting as if I know what I am doing with this writing lark, and maybe the "acting" will become a kind of reality - and that's all, other than onward into those slightly scary blank pages of 2016!

Wishing you all a happy and healthy New Year, and if you have any useful resolutions, do share them here.

Penny Dolan

To Drive The Cold Winter Away by Tess Berry-Hart

It's still winter! The bone-shaking chill of a new January with its winds, ice storms, broken healthy resolutions and humourless deadlines (tax payments, school applications, etc) can make even the bravest of us want to curl up in a cave next to a blazing fire and hibernate until spring arrives.

And to some of us who suffer from depression (episodes of persistent sadness or low mood, marked loss of interest and pleasure) either constant or intermittent, winter can be one of the hardest times. Depression being a multi-headed hydra ranging from many states of unipolar to bipolar, I'm not suggesting that there is one single type of depression; for instance not all of us are affected by the winter or weather, while some people who don't even have depression in the clinical sense might be experiencing a mild case of the winter blues, or Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD).

Creativity is like a fire that we can stoke to drive away the cold winter (whether physical or psychological, internal or external). So I'm deep in my cave trying to work out ways that I can stoke my creativity without resorting to biscuits!

Bibliotherapy's been around for a while now, and is the literary prescription of books and poems against a range of "modern ailments" - including depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem. A form of guided self-help, it's not exactly a new idea - the ancient Greeks spoke of "catharsis" - the process of purification or cleansing, in which the observer of a work of theatre could purge themselves of emotions such as pity and fear through watching and identifying with the characters in a play. All of us in the modern world can attest to the feeling of connection and joy when an author so precisely describes a state that we are ourselves experiencing, and the nail-biting, cliff-hanging state of knowing exactly what our heroine or hero is going through. We root for him or her because s/he represents ourselves battling our own demons in an idealised meta-state.

But how does bibliotherapy work? According to the various proponents, it helps perpetuate a shift in thinking, so that things are not so inflexible (black and white thinking, for all you cognitive-behavioural depressives out there!) which is crucial to tackling depression. Being able to gain distance and perspective by viewing problems through the lens of fictional characters means that in real life our fixed thought-patterns which contribute to our problems can start to become unpicked.

And of course, identification isn't the only joy to be found in books; good old-fashioned escapism is surely the reason why many of us read so avidly. A new world, a new family, a new life, perhaps even new biology or physics, takes us away momentarily from the mundane world so we can return refreshed, hopefully to see our lives with new eyes.

I've obviously been self-medicating for a long time, but I always called it comfort-reading. By comfort-reading I mean a well-known book that you can plunge into at will like a warm bath or a pair of slippers. At school when I was anxious about exams or bullies I would find solace in re-reading the heroic adventures of Biggles or the magical quest of Lord of the Rings; at university it was in the dreamy memories of Brideshead and the vicissitudes of Billy Liar or Lucky Jim. When I started my first office jobs I would read 1984 or Brave New World (odd choices for comfort-reads but I think it was to remind myself that things could actually be worse!) but when I started writing my own books, I ...er ... stopped reading for some years. I think my tiny little brain could only take so much exercise!

I started comfort-reading again when we first had our children; during long and frequently painful breast-feeding sessions my husband would read my childhood favourites Charlotte's Web and Danny the Champion Of The World to me as distraction and encouragement. And these days my prospective comfort list numbers hundreds of books; for me, reading is re-reading.

So what could I take to bolster myself against the winter chill? I've written myself a prescription but I'd be interested in hearing yours!

1) A dose of James Herriot's short animal stories, to be administered when needed (they are nice and short so you're not left hanging after a few pages) or chapters from Jerome K Jerome's Three Men In A Boat, or virtually anything by PG Wodehouse;

2) A daily dose of half an hour "joy-writing" - half an hour in the morning when I can sit down and let ideas spill out onto the page. (If it ends up with me writing about what happened last night then so be it. It can often lead to something more ...)

3) A small creative project on the horizon, easily identifiable and manageable, that I can look forward to; in this case getting a small group of actors together to read through a new draft of a play that I've written (there'll be a blog post on this soon so stay tuned!)

4) Connection with others - I'm a member of a local book group, which not only makes me keep on top of what new books are coming out, but also participating in the joy of discussion; there's nothing more frustrating than reading a good book only to realise that nobody you know has read it!)

So I think that's enough to start barricading myself up against the January snows!

But what about you? What kind of comfort-reads do you enjoy to drive the cold winter away?

The Grand Clear Out

It’s late in the month to be talking about NY Resolutions. There’s already been plenty of time for them to be made, broken and forgotten til next year. I could apologise for bringing up the distasteful topic on the 13^th of the month, but I won’t because one of my resolutions – many years ago – was never to apologise insincerely.

new year, new resolutions 

This year I’ve resolved to lose weight – this time from my unwieldy monstrous work-in-progress as well as from my unwieldy monstrous body; to practise an hour day on my (beautiful, new, expensive – whoops, what happened to the resolve not to be extravagant?) guitar; to keep my accounts monthly and – to keep my study tidy.

In pursuit of the latter I spent several days having a Grand Clear Out. I had notebooks containing the planning and in some cases the first drafts of every novel I have written – and that means, I’m sorry to say, three more novels than have actually been published. Many notebooks. Pretty notebooks, because they were bought from Paperchase when I was working fulltime and therefore comparatively rich. And I happen, like many writers, to be a stationery geek. I couldn’t possibly destroy them. They were a record of years of hard work and hopes.

Some of these notebooks contain the first drafts of published novels. Some don't. 

Well yes. But they were also taking up space and gathering dust, and of no interest to anyone, not even me. I do have a few MSs that I show at author visits, but I don’t want to hang on to rough outlines of aborted projects. I don’t kid myself that some American library is going to make me an offer for them. I no longer wish to see anyone else’s rough first drafts, discovered and published after death – I used to, before I was published, but now I always feel uncomfortable reading something that the author didn’t intend to make public.

So the notebooks were shredded and left out for recycling. The bin lorry has come and they are no more. I have more space in my study, and am no longer surrounded by the ghosts of the-novels-that-never-were. If I get run down by the recycling lorry and someone has to clear out my house there will be fewer notebooks for them to tackle.

OK, I may have kept one or two. But there’s always next year’s Grand Clear Out.

And on Monday I called into Muji – their notebooks are gorgeous and just that bit cheaper as befits a struggling fulltime writer with a resolution to be less extravagant. I may have stocked up a little. After all, there's plenty of space now. 

lovely new notebook drawer

other brands are available

An Author's New Year Resolutions

I hope it's not too late for a New Year's Resolutions post. These are the same ones I make and break every year, they might strike a chord.

1. Stop checking Amazon sale rankings every five minutes. They don't even mean anything, and besides, you said were boycotting Amazon.

2. That didn't mean you could go on Twitter instead.

3. Take more exercise. OK, well at least try and stretch. Try reaching for that book over there without leaving your chair. Reach. Stre-e-tch.....Oh. I hope that wasn't a precious coffee cup. I'm sure the stains will come out.

4. Stop checking your email addictively. Remember that your publisher will reply in a minute, they're probably just really busy.

5. Wait, why are you on Amazon again? What did we agree?

6. Read some books. Yes, a book book, not a tweet or a blog or a photo of your friend's cupcake platter. You're on public transport, what kind of example are you settting, squinting at your phone? You can't sit there being all anxious about the decline of reading if you're part of it.

7. If school food is so inedible, why don't you prepare a packed lunch once in a while for your author's visits instead of complaining bitterly inside your head on the way home?

8. Are you really typing Amazon in to the search bar again? You only checked a few seconds ago. How many were you expecting to sell in that time?

9. This isn't your bookshop. Leave everything where you found it. Was that pile of your books in the window when you came in? I didn't think so.

10. Stop checking your email! They will reply in a minute, OK?

11. No, Facebook is just as much a waste of time as Twitter. Close that browser down.

12. Do some research in a library (if you can find one that is still open) and not all on Wikipedia. It's amazing what you can find out, and you might even stay on topic, rather than researching one place name and ending up reading about the history of the apple strudel for two hours.

13.  Go for a walk every now and then. Forget about it for a while. It's better for you than sobbing and beating your fists against the wall.

14. Come up with a clever answer for when people ask "And how many copies have you sold?"

15. Come up with a clever answer for when school children ask "How much money do you make?"

16. Come up with a clever answer for when your bank asks "Why should we extend it ?"

17. Yes, using the Amazon app on your iPad counts. Put. It. Away.

18. Take some deep breaths. The publisher's reply was fine. Yes, it was.

19. Wait, you want to contact the hacking collective Anonymous and ask them to hack in to the Amazon servers to do what? No.

20. You have friends and family, apart from the ones in your head and on the page. They might actually like to see you once in a while.

21. How on earth did you get hold of Jeff Bezos' mobile number? You are out of control.

22. Try not to sound quite so breathlessly excited every time your agent rings. It is only once a year, you could at least learn to feign cool.

23. There was something else too, it's on the tip of my tongue...which reminds me, make more notes, do a memory course, but get better at remembering all those brilliant ideas.

24. Try not to stare into space quite so much, especially in public. You're really freaking people out. Hang on a minute though...

25. That's it. You got there. Knew there was one last thing. Write more words, on the page. In fact, forget all the others, you're going to do them anyway. So just stick to this one. Write more.

 Piers Torday

@PiersTorday

www.pierstorday.co.uk

Keep it Simple – a Second Childhood. – Dianne Hofmeyr

My New Year’s resolution is to enjoy all the simple things I forget to enjoy.

I’ll enjoy the things at my feet.

And enjoy the things on my feet.

 I’ll watch cats play.

 And revert to a second childhood and play too.

I’ll think of my sister when I remember that huge moth on the red cement of her farmhouse verandah. 

I’ll look at the things in my kitchen with fresh eyes.

 I’ll get pleasure from plates of simple food and linger over their taste.

I'll make homemade pizza more often for the yeasty smell of dough rising and vegetables grilling and not care if they aren't perfect rounds.

I’ll enjoy my coffee not because I’m a coffee addict but because I love that first sip in the morning. 

I’ll enjoy the textures and simplicity of silvery displays catching the light in local shops.

 I'll look again and find texture in landscapes from scenes that have become too familiar.

 I'll watch clouds and I'll dream.

And while I’m doing all this I’ll forget about deadlines.
All the best for a great year ahead to anyone making resolutions. I hope you'll have a playful second childhood too.

www.diannehofmeyr.com

Please don't use my photographs without permission... especially the two with clouds as they belong to a good friend.