New Year's Resolution - Write about writing

I used AI for this illustration. I, like her, have short, bleached, pixie(ish)-cut hair, thick, squared, black glasses, I wear mostly black and I read, write and take notes. I look nothing like her other than that.

Day 1. Thursday 1 January 2026

Where do I start? Better to have written that pointless question than had a blank page with a flashing cursor because, whoop, I've started my year of writing about writing on day 1, New Year's Day, as planned. Go me!

For 2025 I wrote an entry per day about my day’s food (I didn’t post it), which means that, when I finished it today, I basically, without thinking about it, had finished a whole book. I was inspired to do that daily writing by having read bits of Stanley Tucci’s What I Ate in One Year, though he didn’t write every day and his life is more exciting to readers than mine. Unlike him, I quite often resorted to “for breakfast I had … for lunch I had … for dinner I had” which wasn’t how it was supposed to be. Though few things are. There were a few days when I wrote my thoughts connected to meals I’d eaten or markets/restaurants I’d been to; those were the kinds of entries I probably hoped to write but which I rarely wrote. Most of the time, I bored myself. And wrote far too much about the weather.

The plan here is to document my writing process. I have done this in the past (again, not published) but only the odd write-up, for example when an agent requested the full manuscript of book #5 and I wanted a record of my giddy excitement.

Seemingly unrelated, but I have also been thinking about what to do photography-wise. I used to post on Instagram every day I travelled, then with the pandemic my work changed and I was no longer away for half the year. A few years ago, I also posted a photo every day for 365 days, something my friend Fiona messaged today about her doing again this year (we had been discussing whether new year’s resolutions were a good or bad idea – we’ve decided that overall they’re bad).

A lot of my writing and editing days incorporate a walk, quite often to allow me to chat to myself as I walk, either with my characters or about something I’m working on. So I might post a photo from each day I write, most of which would be of the remote Scottish countryside around my current home.

See that little chunk of white house in the middle? That's home, in the middle of Scottish Borders, 45 minutes by car from the nearest shops

The main purpose of this year of writing about writing is, however, to document my writing life.

So who am I? Why would anyone read what I have to say about writing?

In terms of being a published author; nope, not me. I don’t have an agent, though as I mentioned earlier, I did get kind of close in mid-2024 after Juliet Mushens (super agent and one of my top three, if not top one; very exciting) requested to read the full manuscript of Infinite Possibilities, my fifth novel. She then gave me invaluable feedback, which I took on board. We had brief but positive email communication over the following seven months, during which time I rewrote the book and changed a lot. She even read it again, the new version, but said it still wasn’t right for her. I read somewhere that she receives more than 8,000 submissions per year and that in the year she asked for my full manuscript, she had only asked for 30 unsolicited manuscripts, of which she only took on three. So, yeah, I think being one of 30 of 8,000 to have been read by her constitutes a genuine “close” to getting an agent. But it’s not enough.

So here I am, in the midst of book #6, starting a blog of the year ahead, during which time I hope to finish the novel (spring?), send it out to agents, secure an agent (gulp, no pressure), get a publishing contract … and move house, find a “proper” (paid) job and navigate my way through some other challenges in my life.

I have written a pre-draft draft of this novel, Crime Writing for Beginners, and I then rewrote it, which is what I’m currently working on. I have read it through twice, the second time making handwritten notes along the way.

My previous job was as a stenographer, indeed I still consider myself a stenographer, and I have stenoed both versions. I will explain how that’s different to handwriting or typing in a future post (maybe for a day where I largely sit around thinking about all the editing I could or should be doing).

In the meantime, hurrah, day one of my year of writing about writing and I’ve actually written and posted on the same day. I just have to keep this up (I’m not planning to write every day, just the days when I do actually write/edit/research/think about writing or editing, and in general I expect to actually post the day after the day I'm writing about).