I’ve only just realised we are now a quarter of the way through 2016. Where has all the time gone? What happened to those last three months? More to the point: What happened to 1991? That’s what I want to know.

At the beginning of the year I set out some writing resolutions. So I thought I’d check in on how I have been doing so far.

And the answer is: Alright.

…given some creative thinking.

Here are the resolutions I made and my progress so far:

Spend at least four hours a week on the writing process.

I managed this for about two months. Have slacked off in March. Though I have spent 16 hours fiddling with this blog post. Does that count? Yeah…

COMPLETED

Join a writing group.

I have joined a writing group and attended one meeting which I enjoyed a lot. I missed the next couple of meetings however. I will try and go to the next one. But the point is: I joined! So:

COMPLETED

Read during half of my weekly commutes to work – books not twitter!

Well… no. I have been reading but more at weekends when I can settle down with a book for longer than half an hour.

NOT COMPLETED

Send out one finished short story a month to writing competitions or other opportunities.

So far, so good. In January I wrote a story about Judge Dredd and the Dark Judges and sent it in to a 2000AD / Judge Dredd Megazine competition. It had a lot of ideas in it and the first draft came in at 5000 words. I had to rewrite it down to 3000. This process made it a bit leaner, but I’m not sure the tone was quite right (Rather like everything I try and write it turned out to be a love story. Not between Judge Dredd and Judge Death though. It wasn’t that fan fiction.) I would have liked to rewritten it another couple of times. But I was pleased that there was a story there and it was fairly imaginative.

In February, I was booked in to read a story at Titter, the monthly comedy and story-telling night at the Caroline of Brunswick. I rewrote a story I wrote last year, hopefully improving it a lot. I’ll do a little gig report on that next time.

I haven’t done anything for March but I have a couple of days left so I might try and ping something off somewhere to at least keep this resolution alive.

So assuming that all works out…

COMPLETED

Blog a bit.

Well, as you can see, this is my second blog in three months so it depends on how you define “a bit”

COMPLETED

Learn by reading about writing a bit

Again it depends how you define “ a bit”. Does “a bit” mean the same as “not at all”? If so, consider this done.

COMPLETED

Listen to the song “Scott Pilgrim” by Plumtree first thing every morning for the rest of my life.

I seem to be doing pretty well at this one actually.

COMPLETED

I like the song “In the Sink” a lot too.