‘Tis The Season

Yes, before you get started it does seem rather odd to be doing a ‘wistful looking back piece’ on a website that is younger even than my son, who has only just learnt to grip things in his hand and spends his days dribbling and looking adorable. But hey, ‘tis the season and all that. 2011 has been a really productive year for me in a writing sense, and so it seems prudent to look at where I’ve been this year, and to see where I want to go in the year ahead.

It’s been a singularly busy year, probably the busiest I’ve ever had. I’ve moved job twice, and spent the first two thirds of the year with an increasingly pregnant partner. This was then followed (predictably enough) with spending the last third with a newborn baby and all the attendant time constraints that places on you. So the fact that I’ve gotten anything done with my writing is something I can be pretty pleased with.

The main thing to celebrate is the fact that Blood On the Motorway (the novel) is in a much healthier place that it was twelve months ago. In fact, back then it was a couple of rough chapters from a completely different story that I was in the process of appropriating as the start of this story. On top of that I had no idea what the story actually was, save for it being a post-apocalyptic tale. Now it is the end of the year, I’m about 30k words in, I’ve got three entirely separate plot threads and a pretty good idea of where those threads are going. My characters are starting to become quite well defined, and overall I’m actually pretty pleased with how it is going.

There’s a long way to go, but now at least I’ve got a sense that it is something worth the effort. I think I’m improving as a writer as well, so by the time I finish this first draft I’ll be in a much healthier place. So on that front, 2011 is a definite success.

That’s not all. This year I’ve really started to take the whole writing thing seriously beyond just the novel itself. I’ve met some like-minded people online and I’ve joined a writing group (even if I’ve not been able to attend for a while) who have been able to give me the constructive criticism of which I’ve always been so terrified. Turns out it’s not so painful, and is a really useful tool. Who Knew? (Oh right, all of you, ok.)

I have started taking an evening class, which has again allowed me to improve my writing style, think differently about where to get inspiration, take on new ideas and actually directly given me an entire plot strand to the book that I wouldn’t previously have had. Not only that but I have learnt more about writing poetry and drama. Together these things have made me feel a part of a writing community I’ve never had any interest in joining before, and has actually validated me in some regard and made me feel that actually this is something I can do. All my years as a writer before this one have been spent very much in a self-imposed isolation, and in the end I had no idea whether I was deluding myself. It’s nice to be told I’m not.

Then there’s this place. Early doors it may be, but over the next year I have some very definite ideas about this fine .com that I hope I’ll be able to bring to fruition. But we’re up and running, and finally this domain is not just an empty space mocking me for paying for its upkeep.

But then that does squarely bring me onto this year’s disappointments.

At the beginning of the year back on my other blog, I set myself the challenge of blogging every day for a year. Well, I didn’t say a year, but that was the ludicrous aim I set myself in my head. Clearly this was never going to come to pass in such an insanely busy twelve months, but once it fell away in March, my blogging activities pretty much ground to a halt. On top of that my overall contributions to Demon Pigeon are in the single digits this year, and as a result of my absence and that of one of the other key people, that site has almost entirely ground to a halt. This is a damn shame because I think it could be a thing of almost majestic beauty and importance. Or at least as much as any website can be given its obsession with Pokémon. But if there is a disappointment to find in 2011, the paucity of my blogging is it.

I’m not going to beat myself up about it too much though, because it is not a lack of ambition that leads me to fall short, but instead a lack of time. Unless someone decides to provide me with a large wad of cash on a regular basis and instruct me to do with it what I will, I suspect that’s not something that is going to change. I just need to be a bit more disciplined in sitting down to do stuff.

So, 2011 good, on the whole, and we haven’t even spoken about the amazing event of becoming a father again and being handed responsibility for another tiny little human and everything marvellous that goes along with that. That’s a post for another time on the other blog. For now I want to look ahead to 2012, and set myself some targets that I can utterly fail to achieve.

1. Finish the first draft. Maybe I’m being a tad optimistic, but I want to have a working first draft in my hand when it comes time to write next year’s retrospective post.
2. Blog more. My blog (which you can find here) needs a bit more love next year. I’m not about to commit myself to the kind of ludicrous target I tried this year, but I must do better.
3. Reanimate the corpse of Demon Pigeon. I’m supposed to be the editor, and that has this year translated to one meeting where everyone came out re-enthused for a week and then activity trailed off again. I think I’m going to need to bring in fresh blood, but next year I’m going to turn things around, by hook or by crook, if for no other reason than I want to get Noel Oxford writing some more of his tremendous album reviews and to stop him writing about Pokémon.
4. Sort out this place. I’m predicting big things. But then I do that a lot. I’ll be happy if I can get readership into double figures at this point. Only kidding. I want to turn this into something more approaching my favourite online writers hangout Do Some Damage, but I need to think some more about how I’m actually going to do that.
5. Read more. Fairly obvious one this one. Good writers are good readers, and I’ve barely managed a book a month this year. I’m ending the year strongly, having read my first Hemmingway, reread the Great Gatsby and now onto American Psycho (on a bit of an American Classics bent as you can see) but still, I need to read more next year, and read more widely.

So that’s my wish list. Check back in twelve months and I’ll inevitably be apologising for not having done any of it, but that is for the future. For now, all is optimism.