My New Year’s Resolution is to achieve more with my writing, ie put more writing out there.

Remember school timetables? We produced work on English grammar, English Literature, History, Geography, Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Religion. That’s 8 academic subjects. In a five day week of 6 hours a day.

My writing life takes place over a six day week of 5 hours a day.

I need to: make progress with novel; write new short stories; research slots for submissions; submit; do more to publicise my memoir; publish a new blog post every other week. 6 different tasks.

Research can be kept for sleepy afternoons or those rare times when I get to lie in. On Wednesdays I become our daughter’s dog-granny so the day is disrupted by walks. I’ll write or re-draft stories in the mornings when I’m fresh and use the afternoons for finding slots and submitting. I once, long ago, wrote a 5K story in a day. Exhausting.

That leaves Monday and Tuesday with Thursday and Friday as two sets of consecutive days to concentrate on the novel with a Friday add on if I need it. I’ll have a ‘free’ Saturday every other week when I’m not writing a blog.

I take 2 periodicals: Mslexia http://www.mslexia.co.uk and Writing Magazine. It has become a custom for my New Year Resolution to include a vow of faithfulness and submit something to both journals once a month. I re-new that vow and promise to keep it.

Finally, there’s my regular Christmas jigsaw puzzle to complete. Is it realy harder this year than in previous years or am I just getting older and slower. Heaven forbid. It is a well established fact that writers live long, productive lives. As Alan Bennet wrote, ‘Keeping On Keeping On.’ Exactly.

See you in 2 weeks’ time.