2010...how futuristic that seems

No resolutions for me. I beat myself up on a regular basis as it is. I'll be glad to just get through with no major illness, having written a little and still in possession of all my loved ones.

2009 was a great year for female singer songwriters. Bat For Lashes and Florence + The Machine are high on my most often played list. Long may they wail. I have discovered Amazon wishlists finally for all my booky wants. This is keeping my mind clearer from the panic of forgetting which books I would like to read. I have developed an engrossing new pastime of doing Jigsaws. This is quite embarrassing but I don't have enough followers to worry about widespread exposure. I have been drawn to finish one featuring Siberian Tigers. Consumed all my free moments. Given me eye strain and my dream fragments on waking are now jigsaw shaped. Then I am told it's Chinese Year of The Tiger, and suddenly it all feels ok. I have, however, just discovered that you can get Victoria Frances artwork as jigsaws. This will invariably turn me fully into an addict within the next month or so.

Ah, the creative ways I have found to distract myself from the business of writing! The MA new term starts next week, and I am grappling around for something to workshop. Prose poems I think. But are they any good? I honestly don't know, but best find out now. I also need to write an 800 word travel writing essay in the hope of winning a 10-day safari to Zambia. Worth a punt. I even have an idea! Shock.

I am going to set myself one writing target for the new year - to draft at least one new poem and prose poem every two weeks. I tend to work in flurries, writing 3 in a week and then nothing claiming it's just the way i work best but I want to get serious and write regularly regardless, I should be doing this for classes anyway, but I have been able to rely on my 'back-catalogue' to prop me up in quiet weeks, but I don't want to have that dependency this year. It's lazy. I also must submit more work. I keep saying I will and then I don't. How long will I keep making excuses.

Rejection - oh, how I will lament

uuurgh rejection again. I know this is the way things go, but really someone needs to write a book on creative writing rejection. In fact I might. It will be structured like this:

The Deflation Period, where you just want to print everything you've written and burn it. If you could be bothered that is. But as it is, you just want to pretend that you never liked writing anyway, it was just killing time and you really have more pressing things to get on with anyway. Like work.

The Post-Denial-Denial Period, convincing yourself that maybe switching writing genres will help. "Maybe I should start writing horror..."

The Alternative Pastime Period, deciding that actually you spend too much time writing anyway and that you've always fancied something a bit different, just not had reason to get round to it, see clay-pigeon shooting or long-distance swimming.

The Rehab Period, it should come sooner but always arrives late in the day when you're on the cusp of lighting the fire, or buying gym membership (the previous stages may come in quick succession).

The Melancholic Poet Period (protracted). Everything is dire. Several denial stages later you concede that it was all a defence and you do like poetry, you like it too much. It's a cruel lover. It's beating you but you want more! So you write-about how melancholy you are. About how life is just one tiresome Lancastrian winter. About the sorrow of the blackbird and your cold black heart. Aside from these crass examples, you may actually find you have written something half decent. Or at least you think so.

The False-Confidence Period. You have re-entered the atmosphere. Breathing poetry again. Someone says you're OK, so you write again, write beyond melancholy. Convincing the cruel lover that you can change, you will be better. Everything is a found poem. Every half-conversation is a story kernel. It's wonderful, it's magic, it's falling in love again....

Then you make the fateful mistake of submitting something. They tell you 'best of luck placing them elsewhere' and like a soggy balloon, seconds after the pinched end is freed and the air has rushed out, you find yourself deflated again, completing the circle, face down on the carpet, drawing in the Hessian!