Happy New Year, everyone!

2024 was a mixed bag (feel free to read my honest review of 2024 and it’s ups and many downs here). 2025 is as yet a bit of a question mark. BUT, I do have plans.

Big plans.

The current ‘WIP’

This is my Sea Book, the one I’ve been teasing for a good while but then ended up writing a few others first. Whoops.

I’d say I’m about 10,000 words from the end of this draft. It’s a first draft, but an edited one. For the first time, I’ve been doing a bit of editing as I go, for better or for worse. It’s in such a better shape than my trashy first drafts usually are. My main focus in the next round of edits will be to simplify, as it has a bit too much going on at present. Even though my process is different this time around, one thing is still very true. Moving into the second draft phase is all about finding out what your story is truly about, and then planting seeds, and pulling out the weeds.

I’m hoping to send a decent edited-up draft to my agent in March, and then I’ll do further edits until early summer. And then it’s time for it to do the rounds in the publishing machine in the autumn. I hope.

Poetry and art

After my current WIP is done, I plan to do a bit of work on a slow-burner I have in the works. It’s arty. It’s poetic. It’s got goblins and fairies and body parts in it.

By then, it’ll be autumn, and I’ll be able to do some serious autumn vibin’ as I write it. Which will be bloody perfect.

A secret side ‘thing’

I don’t know how much I can say about this one. I actually have an exciting Google Meet tonight with a collaborator about one part of it. But I will say that having two very small children, and understanding better how they learn about the world through stories has genuinely blown my mind.

I consumed more books as a child that I have done in my adult years. I practically swallowed them whole. I’d stroll out of the library with arms full of them, and all my pocket money went to bookshops (and let’s face it, bookmarks).

Even as a tween. Remember the glory days, when a Goosebumps book cost £2.50? I do!

I LOVE reading to my children. Little N is almost four now, and littler R is nearly one and half. She’s just started to become obsessed with stories – particularly ones about fish or ladybirds.

And then, obviously, this meant I started writing for them.

I’m hoping something comes of these stories, and more people get to read them. I have so many ideas, now. But at least N and R get to hear them.

This is something I’m constantly tinkering away with, but something I plan to focus on for a little while in the summer, when I’ve HOPEFULLY finished the WIP. I’ll keep you all updated on this one. 😊

Words for the year

I’ve always made New Year’s Resolutions, and more or less stuck to them. Perhaps the trick is to make many of them, so you’re more likely to hit the mark than not! But in the last few years, all of mine have been rather repetitive. And this isn’t inspiring.

So, this year, I’ve decided to choose some WORDS that’ll capture how I want to be. Then, when I’m inevitably overwhelmed with everything, I can come back to these words and be guided by them.

There they are. Make meaning. Breathe. Design. Deliberate.

I’ll keep coming back to these this year. See how I’m sticking to them. To hold myself accountable, too.

That’s it for now. I’m off to cosy up with a blanket and work on the Sea Book.

Until next time…
C.x