Not usually a fan of New Year Resolutions, I nevertheless made some promises to myself, amongst them – blogging more. A few things have happened in my life since I last posted reviews and updates on my running (which is just not happening at the moment, but I’ve accepted that’s fine). 

One of them is that I’m in the second year of the Oxford Undergraduate Diploma in Creative Writing, and so yes, I’ve been writing. Consistently. Exploratorily. I’ve tried my hand at poetry, drama, movie scripts, but mostly settled down on essays and fiction.

I’ve submitted my writing to literary magazines and got my first rejections, but also some publications:

This piece about the Titan sub that imploded in June, and a short story “She Turned Out Okay” I’ve submitted for the Oxford Flash Fiction Contest made it to this beautiful anthology

(my first ever piece in print, so you can understand, I ordered three copies)

I’ve had the most wonderful time in July during the two-week of residency at the university, where I got to meet all my classmates in real life, and form friendships that I hope would last a lifetime. I also got to be a hungry student living in a dorm again, no kitchen but a laundromat (I love laundromats), childless and careless and with all the time in the world to spend on lectures and reading and socialising. In fact, socialising so much that we all got Covid. Ah well, that doesn’t impress anyone, anymore.

I hope you’re still here to read my musings and I promise to do better in the future.

After all, that’s what resolutions are for.

Happy 2024, and let it be the one that matters in the best way.

Image Credits: Photo by Walls.io on Unsplash, licensed under CC 2.0.