So this was this year.
In February, I completely failed to mark the ten year anniversary of the creation of this blog. But when I checked, later in the year, it turned out to be true and I had been posting things here since February 2008.
In the Spring, I finished two longer slabs of short story that had been on my plate for a while. I will look for somewhere to publish these.
In May, I attended the Guernsey Literary Festival, but this time didn’t write anything about it here or anywhere else. Nevertheless, it still happened. My highlight was probably attending a workshop run by Daljit Nagra.
Towards the end of June, I started a new project that resembles a novel in size and shape. I aimed to write one page (roughly 400 words) every week day and give it to Rach to read whilst she ate her breakfast. The story slowly started nudging its way into existence.
In the Summer, my (informal, semi-regular) writing group set ourselves a couple of writing challenges and then met up at the pub to read them out (we also met throughout the year to discuss things in general, but there’s no section in this thing for things that happened throughout the year).
In September, I scurried away to deepest, darkest, dampest Yorkshire for a week-long experimental fiction retreat. The course was geared towards exploring and trying new things, not necessarily working towards a thing that was finished and complete and shiny. It was refreshing to have that impetus removed and to just spend some time playing and trying things out. I also met a great bunch of people.
In November, I read a short story to around 40 people at the inaugural Guilles-Alles Library Fiction Open Mic night.
In December, my short story, ‘An Ambulance’ was published online by the Mechanics Institute Review.
Later in December, I completed the project I set in motion back in June and found I had surprised myself by finishing the writing of the first draft of a short novel. This piece of work has been locked away to mature for a month or so, then I will look at redrafting it.
Digestive Press 