An Englishman in the Netherlands (Update)

As some of you kind souls may have noticed, I’ve been off the air for over a month now. So, where have I been? It’s very kind of you to ask, so here’s a quick follow up on NaNoWriMo, what I’ve been up to and plans for the New Year.

Quick recap for those who missed it, I was taking part in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) with the aim of writing 50,000 words of Relative Horizon during the month of November. We started strong and then…

crest-05e1a637392425b4d5225780797e5a76

Those of you who follow me on Twitter will know that, around the mid point of NaNoWriMo I was behind on my target, not massively, but just enough to be a paint. So, I undertook the #SprintSquad with the awesome Hollie Hausenfluck (https://twitter.com/HollieWrites13), amazing Tracey L Glass (https://twitter.com/traceylglass), talented Lsyliu (https://twitter.com/lsyliu), inspirational Aliyah Brody (https://twitter.com/aliyahbrody) and frankly genius Avrin Kelly (https://twitter.com/AvrinKelly) to catch up on our target. This happened over a weekend with the aim of being up to speed by close of the day on Monday. But, when Monday rolled around, plans went out the window.

Some of you may know that I am, in addition to writing my own fiction works, a freelance writer, web developer and much more besides as part of The Ninja Collective. Well, all of a sudden, I was swamped with a lot of urgent work, it crashed down in a deluge and… that was the end of my NaNoWriMo! It seemed that as soon as I completed a project and had time to get back to writing RH, another project appeared. Now, I am not complaining. Far from it. But it really ruined my plans. But that’s okay, I can get back into writing in December, right?

And then it was December; and then it was time to move from the UK to the Netherlands. Having planned for the move for over a year, we decided to move up our schedule and move just before Christmas. This lead to December consisting of sorting, cleaning, selling, packing and tidying, well, everything. As my partner is Dutch, we didn’t need much furniture as she has that covered, so everything had to be sold or thrown away.

netherlands

Which brings us up to date, I am now moved, settled in a temporary home and planning for the next year. Whilst trying to catch up with the last two months and regain some sanity. Then we’re back to the UK for a week in New Year then back to the Netherlands! Phew, all the miles on the clock.

Come January, when I am back up and running there will be a number of things to look out for. First off, I will be back to work on the case with this blog and Relative Horizon. The latter is at 28,000 words of first draft, so I am about 25% done I think, but we will see. I will also be completing a short story for Avrin Kelly’s blog (http://www.wickedshortsblog.com/), it’s going to be a sci-fi horror, working title of “Stowaway”. I am considering writing some blogs on leaving the UK, moving to a new country and my reasons for it, what do you think? Sound good? There’s also a number of other opportunities I am looking at for writing freelance, so expect to hear more about that too! All this, whilst learning Dutch! Phew.

Still, 2018 is shaping up to be one hell of a year and, if I have my way, Relative Horizon will be completed by the end of March, so expect more excerpts and thoughts on that.

Which bit sounds the most interesting to you? What are you most looking forward to in your 2018, as a writer, reader or otherwise?

 

Leave a Reply