If we were having coffee, well firstly I would have to apologise for the mess. We’ve got the builders in downstairs putting a roof on the sun roof [which now has an RSJ in it at last!] and the fiancee is busy ripping up floors and carpets upstairs to try and find the end of a cable so we can plum in new light fittings. It turns out that all the electrics for the sun room ran off a single extension-chord so we’ve got to sort those out as well.

So, as you can guess, the house is a bit upside down. Things are moving fast though. Building work started on Monday, the old roof is that pile of scrap on the decking, the new roof is going on as I type this, and by the end of next week we’re looking at being done.

My house will be functional once again, and more importantly, no part of it will be structurally sound. Cue mini-happy parade.

Aside from the obvious structural improvements to the house, 2017 is already shaping up to be a year for positive changes.

This week I started a new weekly feature for the blog, something a little outside of the normal scope for Writing and Works. The series is called Giggle Fit, which is something of an in joke between my fiancee and I. Part One went up on Tuesday and Part Two goes up next Tuesday.

I’ve decided that I’m going to be better about working out at home. Of course this week has been somewhat off-putting. Nothing like trying to do yoga while all you can think about is the building dust beneath your hands and knees, but I’ve managed a workout each morning since Tuesday so I’m pretty chuffed with myself.

Writing wise, this week has been relatively productive. I haven’t been able to get myself back to Shadow Dawn yet, but I’m hoping that this afternoon will change that. I have four writing goals for today:

• Write a post for the Weekend Coffee Share
• Finish Part IV of Solitary Creatures [mostly written just needs tweaking]
• Complete Chapter Twenty-One of Shadow Dawn
• Schedule the post for the Poetry Anthologia Part VI.

I’ve got quite a list of writing tasks that need sorting out but those are the three I’m most keen to get sorted today.

While I haven’t worked on Shadow Dawn as much as I would have liked, this last week has produced a lot of poetry, some of it a little more racy than normal. I managed to write a new poem for each weekday, and on Thursday I even wrote two:

• The Benefit Of Technical Issues
• Summer Girl
• Down By The Brook
• The Gardener’s Honeysuckle
• Midnight: A Choka
• Caught In The River

Summer Girl and Midnight are the two that ended up being somewhat steamy, Midnight more so than Summer Girl.

Overall I feel like I’ve moving into the new year with a more positive, and motivated outlook. You can change for the better at any time of the year, but 2016 was a year that was tainted with loss for me. With my Great-Grandmother’s death at the close of 2015, and the death of a close friend in August, the year was one of grief. 2017 hasn’t made those emotions vanish, but it does feel like a new chapter has started and I can move forward a little better.

That doesn’t mean 2016 was a complete loss of course. I made great headway on my novel, and I grew as a writer. The end of the year also gave me a chance to look back at my blog and see how things have progressed since I started it. Looking at my posting schedule, [which was non-existent] I can see why my stats suffered. For a few weeks I would post daily and then there would be nothing for two months, and then another flood of work. Therefore a resolution for the new year is to come up with a posting schedule that allows for dips in creativity and protects me from having large gaps between posts.

If you would like to have a look at some of my favourite bits from the last couple of years you can find them on my post Going Through The Highlights.

I’m afraid that’s all I’ve got to say this week. As always I’d love to hear how you lovely readers have been? Did you New Years go well? Did you make any resolutions or do you chose to avoid them?

Let me know in the comments below.

Happy New Year to everyone, and all the best for 2017.