Thursday 25 December 2014

Merry Christmas!

It seems too clear and bright a day to be late December, but I guess the calendar doesn't lie. Where is the drizzle? Where's the howling wind? It doesn't feel like Christmas at all.

However you're celebrating Christmas (if of course you do), I hope you have a wonderful,  stress-free day. For me, Christmas has changed in spirit over the years, and I think I regard it these days more like the Americans' Thanksgiving Day. It's less about getting more stuff and gorging on rich food and drink all day, but taking time to be grateful for the things I already have and for the special people in my life. This year it feels especially poignant as I lost my stepsister to a brain-stem tumour in the summer, and although I won't see that side of my family for another couple of days, they're very much in my thoughts.

Writing-wise, though, it's been a pretty good year for me. I've had a couple of stories published, won a couple of prizes (including a first place at The New Writer), and finished the first-ish draft of my SF novel,  the first chapter of which was recently shortlisted for the Flash500 Novel Opening Competition - which was very encouraging. 2015 looks to be getting off to a good start, too - my story The You-Know-What in the Room will be published in Writers' Forum in late-January. And I have a brand-new novel to work on as well.

I'm not sure whether I'll get a chance to post anything before the New Year, so I'll sign off with my very best wishes for you all to have a fantastic 2015, full of good reading, good writing, health and happiness and all the other important stuff in life.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Dan.  Happy Christmas / NY.

Congratulations on finishing your first draft, it must feel good to have that under your belt.  And well done on getting straight on with a second - I'm currently reading Terry Pratchett's collected non-fiction writing, and that is exactly the advice he gives.  Good luck with the new piece of work.  

Dan Purdue said...

Thanks, Ric. I hope 2015's treating you well.

It feels like a big weight off my mind, to be honest. That first novel has been hanging around for so long it was really starting to feel like something I'd never see the end of. Of course, there's plenty more still to do with it, but I'm very glad to have got to the end, for a while.