A Festive 2023 Roundup
It’s that time o’ year, innit?
Am I a Proper Writer (tm) yet?
I feel like it’s mostly proper writers that can get away with these kinds of posts.
Also, presumably, most people who these kinds of “year in review” posts can… remember… the year in question. I’m not entirely sure I can, but I’ll give it a bash — for fun, y’know?
I can’t start at the beginning, mostly because I have no memory of New Year’s Eve 2022/New Year’s Day 2023. It is highly unlikely this is because I was out partying — I am an old, old lady (both physically and emotionally) so I suspect I probably stayed up until midnight playing video games or summat equally thrilling. No doubt I had a nice time, mind.
Also, I feel like I am with the majority when I say that time has been weird since the pandemic started. I’m sure it was 2019, and then I blinked, and here we are now.
Anyway, in January this year, I decided firmly against “setting intentions” — partly because I’m a grumpy auld cow and partly because look, if you don’t make any resolutions, you can’t break any, can you? But mostly, if you read that post carefully, it was a massive clue about something else that happened for me this year — although from January, it took until November to fruit. Basically, that blog post was all about how tired I was all the time, right? Yeah, well, turns out I’ve had an underactive thyroid since at least 2020 and my previous GP just… didn’t tell me. I’m hoping to get my thyroxine sorted in the next couple of months, so with any luck, my general knackered-ness will be less of an issue in 2024.
(Which would be handy, because I actually am going to make some resolutions this year — pretty big ones, for which I’ll need some energy)
A lot of 2023 has revolved around two things when it comes to my writing: editing my debut, and deciding what to write next.
As this is the first time I’ve worked on edits in a professional, contracted, time-bound way, it’s been a really interesting process, and one which I decided to blog through, largely because that means I can look back at how far I’ve come at some future date. Maybe when the post-publication blues hit.
I’m very lucky to be in a group of other UK 2024 debuts on Twitter (yes, I know, but I REFUSE to call it anything else), and one thing we’ve all said repeatedly is that there is so much waiting involved in this game. I’m glad I have that community, because it’s SO true, and it’s SUCH a relief to know I’m not alone in noticing. To be totally clear, my publishers, editor and agent are all actually brilliant at getting back to my queries. I’ve felt nothing but supported, and even so, there’s a lot of waiting. It took a few months to get my contract finalised, and then a month or two to get the first round of edits, and then you do your bit and send them back, and it might be another three or four months until you get the next round.
I’ve actually just (today) had what we think are the last round of edits on my manuscript — and bear in mind I found out about my deal in November of 2022.
All of this is normal, so I’ve not been remotely stressed or worried about any of it, and I only really mention it to preface my next point: I’ve had lots of downtime between mad editing moments — which is when I’ve been thinking about what to write next.
Initially, I think my plan was to write a whole ‘nother book this year. Spoiler alert: that did not happen.
This isn’t to say I didn’t do a lot of writing —
— because I did! I think in total I must have written somewhere in the region of 120,000 BRAND NEW WORDS across the year, which is like, an adult fantasy novel, at least.
Unfortunately, my Shiny New Thing Syndrome struck hard, and I could not decide on one project to focus on fully, so those 120,000 words have been scattered shambolically across ideas. As illustrated perfectly in my Yorkshire Day review post. (Yorkshire Day, for the uninitiated, celebrates England’s best* county and takes place on 1st August every year).
*yes I’m biased, but it’s still true.
Well, through trial, error, and also by finally doing the sensible thing and running some ideas past my agent (which I should have done in the first bloody place), I’ve whittled those eight ideas down to two.
And that brings me to the end of my roundup — and, naturally, what comes next: resolutions for 2024.
(I’m still not calling them “intentions”, though.)
These fall broadly into two categories, although both matter to each other: health, and writing.
Health: I mentioned my thyroid troubles already — the other diagnosis I got in 2023 is confirmation of something I’ve suspected for years, which is that I’ve also got Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS). Underactive thyroid makes you tired and also messes with your metabolism. PCOS has brought me the joint gifts of hirsutism, insulin resistance and high blood sugar. I would, ideally, like to avoid both a full beard and type 2 diabetes before I’m 35, so 2024 will involve visits to my doctors and a bit of a health kick. If all goes to plan, I might have fewer migraines and more energy for writing, both of which would be gratefully accepted!
Writing: speak of the devil and it shall remind you to do something productive. Well, I’ve set myself an ambitious goal for 2024, which is to finish writing two new books. One of these is 45,000 deep so hopefully that’s pretty damn doable. The other is… an opening chapter, a synopsis, and a dream so, like, we’ll see about that, but by publishing this blog I am speaking it into the universe or whatever, aren’t I?
And that’s it, really. 2024 is a big year for me personally — it’s my debut year, and although I can’t promise I’m magically going to become a social media whiz I can promise I’ll occasionally update here with my news and occurrences. I want good things for all of us this coming year; I’m not a praying woman though, so I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.