List alert: A bright new year

We had a fantastic 2015. In May we were married in Gretna Green, and had a wonderful honeymoon, first in Scotland and then in Cyprus. Our very busy life started to ease off a little, and my writing work was made much more businesslike. In November, of course, I finally completed my first ever NaNoWriMo, and my first full-length story since, well, Night Crawler.

The holiday has given me time to assess how the past year went and what I’d like to achieve in the new year – workwise and personally. But I’m not going to bore everyone with a list of so-called “resolutions”. Instead, I’m just going to cover some changes to Baggins Bottom.

I’d like to have a grid on the front page with just the opening of each post visible and a continue-reading/read more-type option. But this current theme is quite a new one, and one I quite like, and it doesn’t seem to be available. I shall, however, research it further, and change it if I find it.

In the meantime, here are some new regular features that may or may not eventually be turned into non-fiction books, with added extras, such as OS maps for a walking book:

  • Wormy’s kitchen – including recipes and gadget tests/reviews
  • Walk of the week – including gear reviews and product tests
  • Kitchen garden from scratch – including step-by-step projects
  • Our lane this month
  • My fat year (fitness diary)

Each of the posts will have the topic name at the start of the post title followed by a colon, like the list alert on this one. The first post in each category will be an introduction with background where necessary. Come June, I’ll have a good idea of how much material I have and whether or not some of them can be converted into book proposals that can then go on their merry way.

The writing work is being moved up a gear in 2016. I’ve pretty much decided that I don’t want to write articles or features any more, other than nostalgia pieces that insist on being written and maybe readers’ letters. I do have some writing projects already started and I’d like to polish or finish some of those. Then I’d like to concentrate on the non-fiction ideas above.

Here is what I’d like to achieve in 2016, writing-wise:

  • polish Mardi Gras (my 2015 NaNoWriMo project)
  • finish Catch the Rainbow
  • start The Beast Within (a Marcie Craig mystery)
  • write at least one short story a month for fave short story market (and so eventually lead towards Twee Tales Twee …)
  • write at least one piece of work a month for the fiction writing course the poet bought for my birthday last year

All of this will monitored and documented and added to a new blog, Words Worth Writing … (do you see what I did there?) There’s not a lot on there at the moment, although I did secure the url a long time ago. But here is where you’ll start to see Diary of a Freelance Writer too, although I’ll probably duplicate that for a while until everyone knows how to find it. In fact, I might duplicate this post over there too, to get us started.

And then there’s the editing/self-publishing side of my work. I have 4 books to republish in 2016, under the new by-line:

  • Night Crawler (a Marcie Craig mystery)
  • Baggins Bottom Best Bits Books 1 & 2 (that’s 2 books)
  • Twee Tales

I still have the following to knock into shape:

  • Baggins Bottom Best Bits Book 3

And I have this one to start collating:

  • Baggins Bottom Best Bits Book 4

And then in February … (joke!)

So that’s it for now. All that’s left for today is to wish everyone a very merry new year. Good luck for 2016!

6 thoughts on “List alert: A bright new year

  1. I opened this and went WOW. Clean, fresh, bright, professional. Love it! It’s easy on the eye, uncluttered and gentle colours. Excellent!

    1. Thank you!

      I hadn’t realised it was set up that the first comment from someone had to be moderated. I’ve changed that now. 🙂

  2. Another busy and no doubt sucessful year for you in 2016. Good luck with it all (not that I think you will need it)

    1. Thank you! The new blog posts have already started over on Baggins Bottom. There will be something else to read on here tomorrow. 🙂

Comments are closed.