So, this is generally how the last hours of December 31st go, in my experience:
7pm: eat leftover Christmas food.
8pm: watch a cheesy film.
10pm: have a depressing conversation about what we hope the New Year will bring, but secretly know it won’t.
11pm: put on pyjamas and wonder why it’s so hard to stay up until midnight on New Year’s Eve when you seem to manage it far too easily every other day—particularly when you’ve got an 8am meeting at work the next morning.
11.45pm: peer through the window at the free fireworks show, provided by the neighbours, who seem to know how to do this celebration thing.
11.55pm: turn on the T.V. to watch the countdown.
00:00: attempt an enthusiastic ‘Happy New Year’ toast with a cup of tea.
00:10am: flop into bed with relief.
I have to admit that I actually quite like this lame build-up to the New Year; it prevents a massive anti-climax when you wake up at 7am on January 1st and the world isn’t one bit shinier than it was before and you’re merely a day closer to going back to work. Besides, September has really always been my ‘new beginning’. My entire life, so far, has run on the academic calendar; by the time I get to January, I’m actually a third of the way through the year and desperately looking forward to Easter.
I also don’t do the New Year’s Resolution thing. If I haven’t resolved to quit something, take it up or do it better already, then I am unlikely to do so in the darkest, coldest, most miserable month of the year. Starting anything on January 1st guarantees it will end, well… by January 31st. I prefer to make drastic lifestyle changes never in the spring—around April—when everything green and organic in the world is making a fresh start; it seems more natural and in tune with the rhythm of the world.
But this New Year feels a little different.
For a start, I actually spent New Year’s Eve with friends, so 2018 had a slightly more animated fanfare when it arrived.
Secondly, I don’t have to go back to work (I know—I hate me too).
Thirdly, I finished writing The Divinity Laws #3 just after Christmas. It still needs the living daylights edited out of it, of course, but the internal and external struggle to convert the creature into words, black and white, on paper, is over! And I feel pretty victorious: like-I’ve-wrestled-a-five-headed-dragon-into-submission victorious.
So—time to sit back, relax and focus on some gentle self-improvement then?
Umm… actually, I’d rather not.
Never mind ‘New Year, New Me’; I’m going for ‘New Year, New Book’.
Yep. New genre, new world, new cast, new themes, new joy, new pain, new challenges—a whole new beast to wrestle…
Huh. That all sounds rather familiar actually…
Although a blank page is perhaps the most daunting thing a writer ever has to face, I’m ‘pen at the ready’ for it! So bring it on 2018—but not too fiercely, please…
Wishing you all a very happy, writerly-reckless New Year!
P J King 