A quick look at my credits for 2023 and 2024 shows scant new writing credits, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been writing, or working as a ‘writer’. After our big move from London to the North East of England in late 2022, I got busy with finding my people. First stop was Adam Sharp‘s excellent read Them Your Writes open mic nights in Newcastle, where I made lots of new writer friends and was a headline reader at the Read Them Your Frights Halloween special as part of Durham Book Festival in 2023. These nights are no more, which is a great sadness.
I soon discovered there was a lack of writing groups for ‘almost there’ writers like me locally. So I started my own. We have been meeting monthly in Newcastle for just over a year now and it has been an unalloyed joy.
In late 2023 I joined NYC Midnight as a resident judge for their rolling writing competitions where the judges both score the stories and give feedback to the writers. One of the most fun things is reading stories in genres I would never normally read and seeing how incredibly varied and inventive the stories are even when they are all written to the same prompts.
In October 2024 I ran my first local workshop, ‘A Sideways Look At Flash Fiction’, as part of the Weardale Wordfest 2024. A full house of witty, talented and engaged writers, we had a great time playing with unusual forms in flash fiction.
In between judging and teaching I’ve been chipping away at the novel. I’m still implementing the changes I planned, oh, three years ago now, but it’s happening. Just very, very slowly. And I’ve written a handful of flash stories that are currently out on submission. It can be hard balancing the paying work with my own creativity and that’s something I need to get better at in 2025.