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At the beginning of this year I resolved to give the resolution concept a go.  I thought it was only right I share with you how I got on.

Goal-ution one: try to lose weight

Epic fail.

I developed a post-Christmas addiction to mince pies and discovered an excellent recipe to help me during the summer months.  I also won third prize in the local bake off after weeks of baking (and taste-testing) hundreds of chocolate cakes.

I’ve written to Santa for full body, head-to-toe Spanx that will give the illusion of weight loss at the in-laws this Christmas.

Overall (thanks to investment in magic controlling sausage skin suit): success

Goal-ution five: spend more time with my husband and stop giving preferential treatment to my son

This year every Friday I put down the laptop, turned off my phone, resolved not to change straight in to my pyjamas at the stroke of 6pm and made an effort to have a movie night with husband.

Overall: more arguments about his taste in films and movie snacks

Goal-ution six: spend more time with my son and stop giving preferential treatment to my husband

I bought my son a new toy tractor

Overall: success

Goal-ution two, three and four: finish my manuscript; be more thick-skinned about rejection; be more positive about getting published

I didn’t manage to finish my young adult manuscript due to irreconcilable differences.  However I finished four early reader manuscripts, several picture book texts and have plans for a middle grade series.  This year I won a prize for my picture book ‘Don’t Eat That, Phoenix’ and was shortlisted for my early reader ‘I Can Fit A Whole Tin Of Baked Beans In My Mouth And Other Fibs Nana Told In Assembly’.

I feel more positive than ever about my writing and can’t wait to see what the next year brings.

Overall: success

Goal-ution seven: recapture my nine-year-old enthusiasm for writing, despite the tedious assignments from hungover teachers

Over the last twenty-one years I can honestly say this has never diminished.

Overall: well done 2012 me!

Wednesday 8^th August:  Day of shortlist announcement for the Greenhouse Funny Prize

6:15am Husband’s alarm goes off stupidly early.  No movement from said husband.

6:25am No movement from husband.

6:33am Still no movement from husband.  Consider divorce for waking me so early.

6:36am Starting to think husband might be dead and glad as this will be much more profitable for me than divorce

6:37am Poke husband as I mentally spend life insurance on a yacht off the coast of South America.  Husband alive and does angry bear growl for being poked.

6:38am Groggy husband trips over stray Lego on the way to bathroom.  More angry bear growling.

6:38am and 10 seconds Son is now awake and is playing with his fire engine siren.  Note to self: silent gifts for Christmas this year.

6:45am Pretend to sleep as son climbs up on the bed with loud fire engine siren.

6:45am and 32 seconds Still pretending to sleep as son pokes me in the eye to wake me.

6:46am Son spots rare opportunity of an open door to the kitchen and is on the hunt for lollipops and ice cream

6:50am Quickly check emails just in case Julia Churchill and Leah Thaxton have been dreaming about the manuscript I submitted to the Greenhouse Funny Prize and sent me an early morning message.  No emails from Greenhouse.  Despair that I will never make it as a children’s writer.  Tell myself negativity will jinx my chances.  Decide Julia Churchill must still be asleep like most normal people and tell myself I’m still in with a chance.

6:51am Discover son on the floor of the kitchen.  Two lollipop sticks in mouth.  Four in bin.  Diagnosis: lollipop coma.  Treatment: naughty spot where he sleeps off his lollipop hangover and I polish off remaining lollies when he’s not looking.

7:00am Breakfast.  Relatively uneventful.  Only two attempts by son to stick cheerios up husband’s nose.

8:00am Finally get a shower.  Refresh emails.  Surely Julia Churchill will be up by now and emailing me.  No emails from Greenhouse. Despair that I will never make it as a children’s writer.  Tell myself negativity will jinx my chances.  Decide Julia Churchill must still be asleep like most normal people and tell myself I’m still in with a chance.

8:13am Refresh emails.  Surely Julia Churchill should’ve emailed by now.  No emails from Greenhouse. Despair that I will never make it as a children’s writer.  Tell myself negativity will jinx my chances.  Decide Julia Churchill must be having breakfast and tell myself I’m still in with a chance.

8:46am Refresh emails.  No emails from Greenhouse. Despair that I will never make it as a children’s writer.  Tell myself negativity will jinx my chances.  Decide Julia Churchill must be getting ready for work and tell myself I’m still in with a chance.

9:00am Refresh emails. Still no emails from Greenhouse. Despair that I will never make it as a children’s writer.  Tell myself negativity will jinx my chances.  Worry that Julia Churchill’s email account may have been hijacked and her email to me has been lost in an internet blackhole but decide Julia Churchill must still be getting ready for work and tell myself I’m still in with a chance.  Also decide to leave my phone at home whilst I get ready to take son to playgroup because I have repetitive strain injury from refreshing my emails and I’m being driven mad by the tension of awaiting the results from Greenhouse.

9:34am Son makes it to playgroup in one piece despite trying to dive in to the back of the rubbish truck twice.

11:45am Playgroup has been a success today: son did not eat any playdough, he shared all the cars, successfully wee’d and pooed in potty, sang most of the words during the group sing-song and didn’t tell anyone that I’d done a fart.

12:36pm Check emails.  One new email from Julia Churchill with the following subject header: Greenhouse Funny Prize submission.  Heart pounding in my mouth.  Read email.  I’ve been shortlisted!

12:37pm I’VE BEEN SHORTLISTED FOR THE GREENHOUSE FUNNY PRIZE!

12:38pm Reread email and send reply to lovely Julia Churchill.  Reread email to triple check that I’ve definitely been shortlisted.  On cloud nine.

12:39pm Call husband to tell him good news but he’s not answering.  Must be in surgery.  Annoyed that sick patient is ruining my buzz.  Reread email from Julia Churchill.  Back on cloud nine.

12:40pm Spend the rest of the day with a big grin on my face.  Today I feel proud of myself.

Epilogue

Monday 13^th August: Announcement of winner of the Greenhouse Funny Prize

8:00pm Finally get internet access again.  New email from Julia Churchill.  Heart pounding in mouth again but see the ‘sorry’ straightaway and realise I didn’t win.  Gutted.  Shed a quick tear on the phone to my sister.

Remind myself that I was shortlisted from hundreds of authors and I’m still proud to have made it this far.  Reread Julia Churchill’s email and feel incredibly encouraged by my future in writing.

I’m really chuffed to find out that I’m the picture book winner of the Tamarind Books ‘Aspiring Authors’ competition.  Of course it’s all down to my son who was the inspiration behind ‘Don’t Eat That, Phoenix’.

After today’s two-hour exhaustive hunt throughout the house and finally discovering the whereabouts of five missing Lego pieces and the batteries for the remote, I sense a sequel in the pipeline: ‘Don’t Put That in Your Nappy, Phoenix’.

The first day of March for the past fifteen years has marked the day children come together and celebrate books.  Obviously I was far too cool in my mid-teens to dress up as my favourite character or have a bake-for-books sale to rejoice the day but I certainly remember hours daydreaming my time away, lost in moments with my heroes from beloved novels.

However you celebrate the day, whether it’s in fancy dress, reading ‘Dear Zoo’ to your child ten times over in the same hour (if you have a son anything like mine) or if it’s leafing through a children’s novel for the first time in years, I hope you find yourself lost in the magical world of mystery, love and cliffhangers and slipping back to a time of youthful, carefree reverie.

Happy Birthday World Book Day!

My procrastination has taken me away from my current YA work-in-progress and has led me to children’s publisher Hot Key Books.  In a bid to convince author John Green to publish his books with them, they’re wooing the American this week by inviting other authors who have been rejected by publishers to suggest suitable castigations to be made public in the style John Green’s online Nerdfighter punishments.

Whilst I’ve had my share of rejection from the writing world, I have to admit, despite the tears and the following self-loathing, I’ve never been so horribly rejected that I saw need to inflict revenge on the publishing world.

It did, however, make me think about those that I had rejected in the past and whilst I’m not offering myself up for ‘punishment’, I thought I’d take the opportunity to say sorry for my most severe misdemeanors:

Sorry to my first secondary school: 

I rejected you by leaving you for a far superior school in order to get better grades.  I was right to do so because I aced my A Levels but I thought I was too good for you and didn’t give you any credit for moulding me in to the person I am today.  The bullying, horrendous school dinners, confusing colour coded one-way stairs system, and every time I called a teacher ‘Mum’ made me stronger and gave me the drive to get as far away as possible from the black hole of mediocre Hounslow.

Sorry to my date from ten years ago:

We’d been to primary school together and then you came back in to my life at secondary school and then when we met again at Office nightclub years later and we found out we were in university halls opposite each other,  I genuinely thought that the universe was telling me we were meant to be together.  The universe was wrong.  I rejected you because you were perpetually stoned out of your mind but I really shouldn’t have said I was going to the toilet and then never returned.

Sorry to my hairdresser from six years ago:

Firstly I didn’t bother to learn your name and I apologise for calling up and making appointments with ‘the last guy I had, check your records’.  I rejected you after you gave me a fringe and dyed my hair blonde.  You should’ve really known better not to dye my hair the same colour as my skin, because I looked like a brown Avatar.  I should’ve known better not to say ‘I’d like a change, it’s up to you’.

My Year Five teacher introduced me to New Year resolutions.  I suspect now, after a heavy couple of weeks of partying the Christmas school holidays away, he gave us the cop-out assignment so he could sleep off his hangover in a pile of PE bags in the adjacent storeroom.  It was Spring term’s equivalent of the first day of Autumn term’s ‘What did you do over the Summer holidays?’ essay.

I had decided back then that resolutions served no purpose.  Mainly because I had resolved that year to declare my undying love to my then crush but instead that September declared he was gross for trying to drink from the class gerbil’s water bottle.

Twenty years later I think I might give this resolution idea another go.  I’m going for a mash-up of resolutions and goal-orientated missions for the year and I’ll let you know at the end of the year how I got on.

Finish my manuscript for my young adult novel and submit to an agent

Be more thick-skinned about rejections

Be more positive about getting published

Spend more time with my husband and stop giving preferential treatment to my son

Spend more time with my son and stop giving preferential treatment to my husband

Recapture my nine-year-old enthusiasm for writing, despite the tedious assignments from hungover teachers

See you all in 2012!

I was sent a copy of ‘The Unforgotten Coat’ by Frank Cottrell Boyce from the Southbank Centre.  Unfortunately, thanks to the plague ridden two-year-old who had used my son as a hanky, I wasn’t able to attend Frank Cottrell Boyce’s talk at the Southbank but I was completely captivated by his latest read.  In fact I have read it twice this week already and for those of you who get your hands on the book, you will understand the need to do this, thanks to a lovely, endearing twist in the story.  I can’t recommend enough that you have a read of this beautiful book.

‘The Unforgotten Coat’ is an enchanting story of friendship, recollecting Julie O’Connor’s final year of primary school where she meets two refugee Mongolian brothers, Chingis and Nergui, who join her school temporarily.  The story is littered with stunning Polaroid photos that Chingis uses to charm Julie with the mysticism of Mongolia only for us to find out later that they are cleverly manipulated shots of Bootle, Julie’s English hometown.

The nostalgia of this book took me back to my school days.  I was reminded of a past crush who I found as completely fascinating as Julie finds the two brothers in this story.  My crush was neither Mongolian nor mystical, just a bloke who lived on the four-eight-two bus route to Southall.  He did however have a penchant for spinning a yarn.  In amongst his tales of being kicked out of his previous school for setting fire to the science labs (LIE) and being on the run from his father, who was trying to send him to army camp in America (LIE), was the wonderful untruth of how his great-great-great-great uncle had discovered India, backed up by an ancient map, apparently left to him by his dead grandfather.  I later found out that his grandfather was still very much alive and kicking and the map was torn out of the front of ‘The Hobbit’.  Whilst I blame him for my later years of nightmare relationships based on a deep-seated mistrust of the male species, I do thank him hugely for making me see the world in fiction and fuelling my love for writing.