Friday 28 December 2012

Bookends


My plan this year was to make myself write again, and to focus on submitting / sharing something each month to another website / blog or competition. Eventually the novelty of that wore off a bit, but I did keep writing, and have properly remembered how much I enjoy it. Need it in fact. Buoyed up on this little cloud of positive optimism, I fleetingly decided to make next years blog one of those 365 ones, where there's something new everyday. But then I remembered I still have to spend time with my family and go to work. "Maybe sometimes more than once a week" is my resolution. In many areas of life.

My wee personal highlights this year would be winning a signed copy of Meaning of Liff from John Lloyd for writing a new liff, having a story printed in the clockworks anthology, getting some Harry MacArthur material onto the comedy unit podcast Rough Cuts and getting to write a piece about Favourite Places for the Scottish Book Trust blog.

The most viewed piece on the blog though was my Wind in the Willows / War of the Worlds mashup. And my favourite search engine query which somehow brought someone or some robot to the page was "dog food murder".

But my absolute favourite things from this year were doing a story tweet for the awesome 3hundredand65 twitter graphic novel and working as part of the team on the Identity Graphic Novel project.

Kinga shinnen when it comes, and, at the years end, a final wee poem.


I am a casket of in jokes,
Of pot shards poorly glued.
A box filled with spent matches,
A subscription not renewed.

Blotting paper damp with ink,
Stained glass weathered back to sand.
Snow falling onto streams,
I am the ever open hand.