Normally people take stock of the old year in January, me, I wait until the middle of February, and I’m not even going to beat myself up about it. I had other things to deal with, and if it took me an extra six weeks to get things straightened up, then it took an extra six weeks.

I managed a total of fourteen writing submissions in 2020. Out of those fourteen, three were accepted, nine rejected, and two are still lurking in the ether waiting for spring and longlists to be announced. However, it’s important that we celebrate the small victories, to I’m going to use this post to cheer myself on for those three accomplishments. My poem ‘Credit Card Gal’ was accepted for publication later this year by ‘The Fieldstone Review’, my poem ‘When Mudesa Goes Shopping’ was accepted and published by ‘The Daily Drunk’, and my short story ‘Of Sharks and Jellyfish’ was selected as a finalist in the London Independent Story Prize’s fourth quarter. Yay me!

Aside from submissions, I also managed to draft the first 66,000 words of my novel during November. The rest is still unfinished, as the delight that is pregnancy nausea and exhaustion raised its ugly head. Pretty much the entirety of December and January was me slouching from bed to settee, grumbling about my inability to get comfortable. However, that’s a huge chunk of writing under my belt, and for once I actually hit that 50k goal and declared myself a NaNoWriMo Winner!

So all in all, 2020 wasn’t a terrible year for my writing. I may not have got to do any readings to promote my poetry collection, but I did finish the year out with a few more celebrations that I thought I was going to. Now it’s time to kickstart those 2021 submissions, keep an eye out for my short story going in on the LISP website, and work on finishing my novel before the baby arrives. That doesn’t sound like too much does it?