Happy New Year...

I'm sure some of you will already have been writing since the calendar moved into 2011, but I'm not at that stage yet- unless you count writing this blog.

I haven't neglected it totally...

I've spent a few hours today looking at competitions I might enter and considering if I have anything already under construction that might fit with work or whether it will be entirely new.

I need to put a chart up to log deadlines this year. No good writing a story for a specific competition and leaving it late to post, with the possibility it may not arrive before the closing date. (Remember the snow recently? Many areas didn't have regular postal deliveries for a week or more.)

I think the chart will have to be a fold up version as I don't have the space for my own little writing room, or even  for a shed in the garden. My desk is in the main living area and I need quiet to write, so I keep to school hours on free days.

Wednesday is the postponed Awards Night at my writers club, so my novel entries with judges comments will hopefully be handed back. No doubt there will be work to consider...

I've set myself two targets to start with. Finish a short story that needs some rewriting and compose a 250 word story- there are 5 choices of song titles to use as the basis for a theme. The latter has a deadline of 31st January. (Thanks to Patsy Collins for highlighting the competition on her blog last month.)

So I better keep to my first targets...

Writers in the 2011 New Year's Honour List...

Literature hasn't featured much in the Queen's New Year's Honours List published today.

Congratulations go to:-

Historian and Author Lady Antonia Fraser CBE who has been created a Dame. She is the widow of  playwright Harold Pinter and wrote a memoir about their life together, Must Yo Go?: My Life with Harold Pinter, published earlier this year and serialised on Radio 4.

Professor Susheila Nasta, founder and Editor of Wasafiri-a literary magazine for contemporary international literature- has received an MBE for Services to Black and Asian Literature.

A fellow member of Nottingham Writers' Club, Ron Booth received an MBE for Services to the Community in Nottinghamshire. Alongside his many voluntary activities, a number of his books have raised funds for charities he has been involved with. He also helped launch a project to get a memorial to the twenty VC holders in Nottingham and Nottinghamshire.

If you know someone who you think deserves to be awarded an honour you can find details of how to nominate them here.

I hope you have a fulfilling and successful 2011.

Happy New Year.