Happy New Year! 2023 is upon us and a fresh new year is a blank writing pad, or a blank first page in a Word document, to a writer.
As I always do at the start of a new year, I reflect and then assess. I have so many ideas for books I want to write – but deciding which one to prioritise is the trickier part.
Stories are no good stuck in a writer’s head. It’s better to have a first draft out than to be pondering an idea. Jotting down an overview to write later is a step in the right direction, or a chapter plan is even better. My goal for 2023 is to keep up the pace with my writing. I published two novels in 2022 and hope to keep up my output of at least one novel a year as a bare minimum.
Why? Mainly because if I don’t get my stories written down then they’re at risk of never seeing the light of day. It’s a bit similar to my to-be-read list; often I have a pile of books that I’ve bought, but not yet started, and then I buy more. The chances of some in the pile never getting read increases each time I do this. It’s the same for my novel ideas. I have a notebook of ideas with some from as far back as 2009 and I really need to start whittling it away, or a few may never get written. Of course, I always prioritise the ideas that grab me the most at any given time – The Fairy Lights, for example, was an idea I came up with in December 2021, wrote within six months and published in November 2022. I can imagine all my other story ideas sitting in that notebook for over a decade, shaking their papery fists in a jealous rage at my fourth novel for usurping them. Yet, it was the story that I was most excited about at that time, so I went with it.
What’s the goal of this post? Mainly to say that you can expect to hear about more completed novels from me in 2023 – or at least, it’s an expectation I have for myself. I hold myself to quite high standards. Let’s see how this pans out!
Leilanie Stewart 