Year of the writer and a writer's year in review

By the powers vested in me by the blogosphere (which is pretty much none) I hereby declare 2011 the year of the writer! 

And why not. We've come through a year of change - a crop of new e-readers, a weekly 'the death of publishing as we know it' article somewhere, and bookstores closing down - we deserve our own year. 


The earth will continue to rotate around the sun (at least until 2012) so we might as well do what we do best - write! Be it a blog post, a work-in-progress or ubiquitous revisions, 2011 will be the year of the writer (and publishing contracts!). Let's hear it for writers groups, bloggers, writing conferences, books on writing, Sasquatch writing caves and butt in chair time - it all leads to our development as writers so let's celebrate all of it.  


2010 was a great writing year for me. My second novel Dead Bird through the Cat Door (Gumboot Books), the latest in the Megabyte Mystery series, was published.  

I embraced the international organization that is the Society for Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) and attended the New York conference and the SCBWI Symposium in Bologna where I mused about what would happen if rookie publishing mistakes were met with medieval torture techniques. Along the way I met up with some fellow SCBWI-ers in London, Candy Gourlay, Nick Cross, Jenny Woolf and Jackie Marchant. 

I did a number of school visits and taught classes on Writing with Humour where I mused on the top ten reasons I love being an author. I also attended the Surrey International Writers' Conference which is where things started happening for me a number of years ago.    

Alright, I wasn't going to put this in writing, but my goals for 2011 are to eat so many sour ju jubes my eyelids twitch to finish the third book in the Megabyte Mystery Series Dead Bee in the Sarcophagus, finish a solid draft of a young adult work-in-progress that I won't reveal yet, and go to the LA SCBWI conference to get some feedback on the aforementioned y/a w-i-p. I also vow to occasionally wash my dishes and feed myself something other than sushi.

Here's to 2011! 


2010 was also the year we confirmed that cats are taking over the world cuddly, loyal animal companions.