New Year Goals

Happy New Year, beautiful ones!

How did you spend your New Years Eve? House Party? Beach Party? Camping? Clubbing? Wandering the streets of your nearest city in search of fireworks?

Or were you tucked up in bed or on the couch with a nice DVD?
Lots of people in my area DID spend the night on the couch, though not as many as your average Saturday night. How do I know this? Because I spent New Years Eve at Blockbuster!

I was going to a house party after work but then it was moved another hour away from me so I went home instead. And did a load of laundry and went to bed watching illegal fireworks outside my window. I challenge you ALL to beat the hard-core of my New Years Eve.

I do have some goals for the new year though. You wanna hear them? Okay I'll tell you.

1) Write and publish 30 short fiction ebooks including this:

Cover art not final

and this

Cover art not final

2) Write the road trip book.

3) Edit The Kiss Off and the zombie book

4) Advertise my editorial service more

but most importantly, my New Year goal is to HAVE MORE FUN.

How about you?

For those of you like me in the southern hemisphere - try and stay cool, for those of you up top - don't freeze, okay?

Love,

Sairz

New Year Decision Making

Happy New Year my lovelies!

December 31 2010 for me was filled with less potential death by drunken stampede in -16c weather in Edinburgh and more singlets and shorts, bean bags and camping chairs on the back deck as the 40c weather in Melbourne Australia slowly cooled to a balmy 20c. There was possibly one-million LESS people in attendance this year which was nice. And yes I'm talking LITERALLY one million people.
How was your New Years?

My resolution for 2011 is simple: To stress less. In 2010 I was a bit of a stress head and I vow to make 2011 much breezier.

That said, it is January 3rd and I am stressing. I took December off from writing, as a bit of a holiday, as a month where I didn't think to myself whenever I watched TV or goofed around "Hey - you've got work to do! You should be writing!" and knew that when January came I would crack the whip and get back to it.

But I have a problem, you see. What do I work on? The rewrite of a middle grade contemporary comedy with a spattering of magical realism or the first draft of that dystopian I've been itching to get stuck into?

At the moment they both feel huge and hard and overwhelming so I have been content seeing friends, visitng the fam, going to work and discovering fab new TV shows and books instead. I mean, technically I AM on my University holidays after all...

Sairz

My VERY White Christmas and crowded New Year

I'm tuckered out.

Haven't had much computer access since I left for Christmas in the Scottish Highlands.

What had been going on before I left...oh yeah, there had been a teeny weeny bit of snow in Leeds and I was all "OH MY GOD IT'S SNOWING THIS IS FRICKIN AWESOME".

Aw bless. I knew NOTHING about snow then. See, in the Highlands in

Scotland? Tons and tons of snow.

On the first day of my trip we went for a walk in a park.

You see what I'm sayin'? It was like Narnia. You know, in the bit when everyone's all depressed and the evil Witch is all power trippin'. It was like Narnia but happier.

So Christmas was pretty awesome and amazingly beautiful and we had Scottish men in kilts serving us at Christmas dinner so really, what more could you want?

The only bummer about snow - okay thinking about it I've learnt there are a couple of bummers about snow, in that it's hard to walk on, I'm a champion at NOT seeing black ice and falling over on it and snow's FRICKIN cold! - but the bummer I'm talking about is that you can't actually SEE any of the countryside. You can see the snow covered countryside. So I don't know what Scotland usually looks like, but I know what it looks like when in shades of white. And it sure is pretty.

My friend Bec arrived in Edinburgh to party with me at the biggest Street Party in the world, which is Hogmanay (New Years) in Edinburgh and it was a lot of fun...to start with.

Yes. There were LOTS of people, but also pockets of space and we were quite happily watching one of the free bands in the street party, having a good time. But then more and more people came. And most of them were drunk. And they were very pushy. As in they would walk and shove you aside. And the crowd got so big that there wasn't actually anywhere for you to be shoved to.

And this photo is from when the crowd was manageable.

I was nearly trampled at one point, standing beside the bit of a trailer that connects to a car, I was pushed by the crowd from behind so that my legs got caught on the trailer, the guy standing on the other side of the trailer was holding my top half up, screaming at the crowd to stop pushing. But they didn't. I was worried I was going to break one of my legs cos it was getting bent in a direction it really shouldn't. But I managed to get it free and stand up again. That was when the police arrived to ask if I was okay. I am - I'm fine. I just have some doozies of bruises on my legs. It's been over a week and they're still purple. That's probably bad, right?

So um, Hogmanay was great before that little hiccup.

I do really like Edinburgh and Scotland though. Must see it in the summer sometime.

Happy new beginnings!

Happy New Year to everyone, whichI know has been said and said and said again by every random person you come across, walking down the street. But I do mean it. It feels good, don't you think? Like the beginning of something new.
It's the first day of the rest of your life (actually, EVERY day is, but January 1st really FEELS like it) so what are you going to do with it?

Me? I've decided to keep up the productivity. Though most of the time it really feels like I'm not getting anything done, I am, which is good.
This is the year when I get paid for my writing. I can feel it!

I'm in the process of making those edits to send in a second draft to Allen & Unwin with the fingers and toes crossed hopes that this will be it. My first "By Sarah Billington and no one else" book published. And I imagine there's probably some money involved.

But I gotta say, it's hard. Not just hard because I've added a new scene where the two main's actually have a good, honest to God talk...and then the bit after it one is really mean to the other, which now with the new scene comes out of nowhere and needs to be changed...but then with that changed what happens after it might need to be changed and it's just this big old spiral into helll....but it's hard because I have a bunch of other books I'm wanting to be writing, but feel I SHOULD be concentrating solely on Life was cool until you got popular. But I'm a writer! I need to be writing, too! But the books I'm writing are so vastly different that it might be a good idea to erm...not be writing at the moment. I have a YA Urban fantasy on the go and a middle grade book about a super hero as well as a middle grade book about a klutzy wizard's apprentice.

I go through phases of being really interested in history and then being into pop culture and which celebrity is dating who. I've sort of moved into the history side of things again at the moment. But surprisingly, that's not making it hard to write Life was cool scenes.

So because I'm not supposed to be focussing on WRITING a book, I'm getting into bad habits of not finishing one but writing millions at the same time.

Ack! Where was I?

I ended the year on a high, too. You know my before-New Year resolution, of wrting 5,000 words of my new book, and finishing one assignment? Well I got my 5,000 words done and wrote...check this...TWO assignments. So I'm on fire, wouldn't you say?

How did you end your year? I got home from work on New Year's Eve at 11:54pm, so I guess you could say I was being productive. And I've started the year productively too, by sending out a couple of short stories to publishers and magazines.
So we'll see.

The web site is purty, but I'm not able to get the 'my publications' downloads...erm...downloadable. Sit tight. I'll get there.

Enjoy the summer weather while there is some!

Sairz