Resolutions

This year I’m not making new year’s resolutions. Last year I made quite a few and I think I did keep many of them – I said b I’d finish a novel and I did, I said I’d do Nanowrimo and I finished the month with over 100k words, and I said I’d think about losing weight and although I’ve yo-yoed a bit when it came to my weight I’ve ended the year lighter than I was when I started, so I consider that a success.

My reason for not doing resolutions this year? Its because all the things I resolved to do were okay, but they were minor successes compared to the things I never dreamed I’d do in 2012. I never imagined that I would write a short story that would get me a place at an awards ceremony in London and a piece in the Wicked Young Writers anthology.

I never imagined I’d get engaged in 2012, or that I’d do so well in my A Levels (one of my resolutions was to get three Cs, so getting ABB felt incredible), and I think the biggest achievement for me was raising over £300 with my fiance for Birmingham Children’s Hospital in memory of my brother, by running a half marathon on what would have been his fifteenth birthday. That was just incredible, and will always be my proudest moment.

So in 2013 I’m going to go with the flow and let life surprise me, because if there’s one lesson I’ve learned this year, it’s that the best achievements are the ones you least expect.

End of week 3/start of week 4 NaNo update!

So today, if I can write 1,000 words in the next three hours (which shouldn’t be too big an issue, as the words are flowing really easily right now), I will reach 100,000 words. That’s 100,000 words in 23 days, at the same time as maintaining some semblance of a social life, sleeping and that little thing called uni. I’m quite proud, but also quite tired – I think sleep will definitely be in order when I’ve finished, although it could be a while – it’s going to be a trilogy of quite long stories! December is going to be editing month; my chance to polish what I’ve written and get it into a non-Nano format. I’m going to lose a lot of my wordcount because I’m getting rid of some of the bits I’ve written, but I’ll still be well over 50,000 words even with those bits removed.
So this afternoon I’m going to do a little bit of blogging, I think. First of all there will be an exciting announcement regarding Christopher Maine, and then a post about what happens when your character is based on you – and you realize that you’re starting to become a little bit based on your character!

Why I’m Proud To Be From The Land Of Song…

I have never found a country that produces such beautiful music as Wales does, and this is one of the factors which makes me very proud to call myself Wales, to live here, speak the language and, more than anything, to sing the songs. To prove my point, I have a video of a choir – called “Only Boys Aloud” – singing in Welsh. If you’re in Britain, you’ll probably recognize them from the current series of Britain’s Got Talent. In the first episode, they stunned with their audition in which they stormed the stage (there was about 125 of them!) and sang “Calon Lan”, one of the most famous Welsh songs as far as I’m aware. For those of you who haven’t seen it, this is the video of their audition –

 

and this is them at what I think is the National Eisteddfod last year although if I’m wrong feel free to correct me 🙂

Listen, enjoy and realize why I am so proud to be from gwlad y gan 🙂