Thursday 2 January 2025: 2024 Review & December wrap-up!

First of all, Happy New Year! A big thank you for reading over the past year (and before), and welcome on board (again!) for the coming year. Let’s hope it’s a good one. For all of us.

I’m not going to do a full yearly wrap-up for 2024. Most of you have all already seen it all anyway and I don’t want to bore anyone. Here are just a few highlights, and some lowlights:

Highlights

• I wrote 12 brand-new short stories for 12 Stories in 12 Months, and got a shiny new badge for my trouble
• We finalised my mother’s Probate. after only 16 months…
• I wrote 2 brand-new novelettes for the Great Novella Challenge
• Words Worth Reading, my bookazine, was rebooted (Issue 2 out soon!)
• We bought Peggy, our new campervan 
• We went away 6 times in said campervan
• After 14 years, the country ousted the Tory government
• I was able to accompany the poet 4 times on business trips
• We visited Poland
• We visited Ireland
• I finally switched to Apple Mac
• We saw the Northern Lights for the first time
• Scruffy, our disabled magpie in the garden, survived the year

Lowlights

• We lost our beloved Rufus at the beginning of May; our hearts are still mending
• I got shingles in May, but I’m *still* feeling it
• The weekly UK fiction market took a massive nosedive
• The poet had a shadow on his lung that had to be investigated (it was fine, just an infection!)
• Microsoft killed my PC and ended my 40-year relationship with the PC (good work, there!)
• The poet broke his voice and Monkey Dust had to cancel 5 gigs at the end of the year (we think he’s fine, his voice is just coming back now)

This year I might update one of these as I go, so it more accurately reflects 2025.

December wrap-up!

That, then, brings us on to how December went:

• create graphic for Hello December ✔️
• create graphic for December wrap-up ✔️
• new word-count spreadsheet for December ✔️
• Writing Prompts for June 2025 ❌
• newsletter ❌
• pre-write standalone novelette (Great Novella Challenge #2) ✔️
• write standalone novelette (Great Novella Challenge #2) ✔️ 
• 12 STORIES IN 12 MONTHS ✔️
• write 1 short story for Words Worth Reading Issue 2 ❌
• (week) daily blog post ✔️
• (week) daily tech declutter ✔️
• weekly diary work ✔️
• weekly finances ✔️
• weekly market work ❌
• monthly date work ❌ 
• Monkey Dust admin ✔️
• Diane’s gig list admin every Thursday ✔️
• Monkey Dust gig (all being well) ❌
• monthly schedule planning for January ✔️
• advance finances for January ✔️
• update 12-project spreadsheet (week) daily ✔️
• grand-doggy #1 coming ✔️ 
• publish The City of Glasgow Wordsworth Short 36 ✔️
• publish Take Your Pick Wordsworth Flash Fiction 11 ❌
• finish publishing Words Worth Reading Issue 2 ❌
• entertain Pest Control for a 3^rd and hopefully final time ✔️
• 2 weeks holiday ✔️
• Christmas shopping ✔️
• write and send Christmas cards ✔️
• prepare for 10 people on Christmas Day (inc. 2 vegan and + 2 dogs) (they didn’t all make it) ✔️
• enjoy Christmas! ✔️

Extras

• wrote, submitted and had accepted 2 stories on Medium

I wrote 25,864 new words in December and revised 0 pages.

How was your December?