SO LONG, 2016.

Well, it's been a year alright. If someone had written the events of 2016 as a novel, there would have been cries of 'stretching credibility' and 'bloody hell, this is depressing, even for a dystopian tale.' Maybe picking over the events of this year is a bit like circling a corpse, trying to determine the cause of death by kicking at it and tutting, but I prefer to think of it as analysing the past to learn from it - or at the very least telling ourselves next year won't be as bad. (It couldn't be as bad - could it?)

But wait! Let's see if we can't find some positives too. There must be some. Are you up for this? Okay, let's do it. Ladies and gents, 2016 was the year when...

1 - Politicians found out just how much The Masses hated them.

Politicians have been distrusted by the general public pretty much since the dawn of democracy (back when the word actually meant what it was supposed to mean.) This is not news to either party. However, 2016 was the year when the masses decided they'd Had Enough, and joined forces in big enough numbers to deliver a massive middle digit up to the ruling classes. It's not the first time in history this has happened, of course; the French aristocracy, for instance, got a nasty taste of what happens when you party like it's 1789 while your subjects are starving. What was different in 2016 though - largely due to the webbily-connected world we now live in - is that it happened over a short space of time, in two different countries several hundred miles apart.

It started here in the UK, with Brexit. After promising in the last election that he would allow the People of Britain to decide whether we should stay or leave the EU, David Cameron bit the bullet and called a Referendum. It'll be fine, said all the politicians who wanted to Remain. If there's one thing we know about the Great British Public, it's that they're a cautious little bunch of sheep. Change scares them; they don't like it when they don't know what might happen, and they don't know anything about how European politics works so they'll stick with what they know and vote Remain.

They were wrong.

The Great British Public might not know jack about European politics, but that very lack of knowledge wasn't going to stop them voting against whatever it was most British politicians wanted. Yeah, up yours, The Establishment - that'll learn ya! Power to The People! Of course, these same tickbox revolutionaries will be the first to complain long and loud when the ramifications of no longer being in the EU starts hitting them hard in the pocket and various other areas, but for the time being they're riding the wave of feeling like they Stuck It To The Man.

And just a few months later, on the other side of the pond, The Donald rode into the sunlight in a blaze of fake tan and rhetoric.

This guy was a businessman, not a politician. Heck, he knew sweet diddly squat about politics and cared even less. You'd think that would be something of a handicap for a man applying for the job of Running The Entire USA - but then, this was 2016 and Brexit had just happened in the UK, so logic and reason could take a vacation for the rest of the year. He was gonna build an effing big wall! He was gonna take back control of women's wombs, on behalf of all men and fundamentalist Christians! Best of all, he wasn't one of those evil Politician Types, who were totally in league with the devil - he was a regular dude! A stinking rich, narcissistic regular dude, mind, but hey...

And suddenly it was okay to be racist, sexist and homophobic again - because you were doing it for 'the right reasons.' It doesn't mean you're racist, sexist or homophobic just because you're supporting a man who clearly is, you're just Taking A Stand against the politicians and the politically correct who fence you in - and that's a far more noble cause that totally justifies trampling all over the lives of vulnerable minorities, right?

And so it's come to pass that, in 2017, the US will be acquiring a POTUS who tweets about 'unpresidented' acts and doesn't read the daily intelligence reports because 'he's already smart' (*sigh*... it's not that kind of 'intelligence,' Donald...) Britain will be splitting up with Europe in a long and acrimonious process that'll make breaking up with Taylor Swift look like a group hug session. And all the people who thought they wanted it will spit and froth when they realise the resulting brown stuff flying off the fan hits them just as hard as everyone else.

God help us all.

2 - Loads of really talented famous people died.

When it comes to those end-of-the-year round-ups of Celebrities We've Lost This Year, they're all going to have to book some extra time and space for 2016, because it seems like they've dropped like ninepins. Sometimes you can put that down to just getting older yourself, so that more of the famous people who ldie are from your own era and you're therefore more likely to have heard of them than some young twentysomething. But this year has been more deadly than many previous ones - or at least seems to have been - because a large number of truly iconic people have gone, people whose fame and talent spanned the generations. People like; David Bowie, Alan Rickman, Prince, Terry Wogan, Muhammed Ali, Ronnie Corbett, Victoria Wood, Gene Wilder, Leonard Cohen, Andrew Sachs... and in the last few days, George Michael and Carrie Fisher.

Some of them were genuinely elderly when they passed. Zsa Zsa Gabor, for instance, was within spitting distance of 100 years old, which is pretty damn amazing. There's some comfort to be gained that those who make it to at least their late seventies had 'a good innings.' But quite a few of the icons who died this year were relatively young - barely in their fifties. Thankfully the work they've left behind will live on as their legacy - and what a lot of brilliant stuff they've left for us.

Enjoy yourselves up there, guys and gals, and thanks for the memories.

3 - We did some super-awesome science stuff!

See, it wasn't all bad! This year we did stuff we couldn't have imagined possible even five years ago and stuff we've been hoping to do for decades. Not only did the LIGO Team detect gravitational waves in space for the first time, but other astro-sciencers also detected a planet orbiting the nearest star to Earth that sits in its 'Goldilocks zone' - which means it could, potentially, support life. Oh yeah, and a ninth planet was also discovered in our solar system - way, waay out in the deepest regions of space mind, but it's there. Looks like poor old Pluto aint getting back in the club anytime soon...

In the medical field, a young man who had broken his neck in a car crash was able to control a robotic arm via implants wired into his brain, another learned to move his hand again after cybernetic implants were embedded in his brain, and a group of stroke patients regained the ability to walk again after being injected with stem cells. A new blood test has also been devised that can detect even earlier warning signs of cancer than ever before.

On the environmental front, scientists devised an algorithm that can predict when, how and where tsunamis will strike with an accuracy never achieved before. It's early days yet, but hopes are high that it can eventually be used as an early warning system for coastal cities at risk around the world. And just for fun, we also discovered that fish actually talk to each other - and even have 'regional accents.'

It's good to know that, even if world politics appears to be taking a step backwards, science is still marching forward.

4 - And a few other miscellaneous (but no less awesome) things!

London got itself a new Lord Mayor - and rather than go with the old Etonian billionaire-type that seems to have been favoured in the past, this year they picked a man of the people. Sadiq Khan is the son of a bus driver who grew up on a council estate and worked his way up the world of politics - oh, and he's also a Muslim, a family man dedicated to encouraging unity in his borough.

Even better - the ozone layer has started to heal! Scientists monitoring the hole over the Antarctic have reported that, although it still opens from September to November, it does so more slowly. This is a result of the Montreal Protocol to phase out the use of CFCs though, so now we all have to hope and pray that a certain orange-faced president doesn't decide to do a u-turn on that because climate change is a unicorn or whatever goes on in his marshmallow-fluff-topped head.

For religion, the Church of England got its first gay bishop - and the world didn't end in a rain of burning hail and lightning after all! God's clearly mellowed out about such things - what a shame we didn't realise that like, centuries ago; we could've all saved ourselves so much time and heartache.

So there we have it. A lot's happened, but 2016 will soon be behind us, and 2017 is our chance to do better. I don't do New Years' Resolutions since they never seem to work out for me the way I intended, but I'd like to think we could all learn from the bad stuff of this past year and take the good stuff forward.

Here's to a way better 2017.

How Natalie Goldberg saved my Christmas (and possibly my 2015.)

Anyone who's been following my blog in a way that isn't accidental (and I'm saying that to qualify the statement that follows this one, not because I'm deluding myself I actually have hordes of followers) may have noticed a slight downturn in mood over the last couple of months or so. I even addressed it head-on in this previous post, although at that time I didn't offer any theories or suspicions as to why I'd got myself into that particular funk. I did say I'd think on it though, in order to Get It Sorted.

And Christmas, as it turned out, was a good time to do that. Mostly because I got so caught up in planning, preparing and doing all the crazy stuff required to make Christmas run so smoothly no-one believes any effort goes into the process at all, that the writing schedule I'd been adhering to like a good little girl for the rest of the year went... well, not just out the window, but down the road and probably into the nearest pub to get drunk and have a few fights, for all I know. I actually had one week - admittedly the actual Christmas week - where my tally of hours spent writing was a big fat zero. As in, nothing. Nada. Zilch. For an entire week.

I still can't look at that week in my spreadsheet without getting a lump in my throat and wanting to beat myself about the head with my copy of Stephen King's On Writing. Either that or go back in time and try and do it all differently, but I'm thinking the first option is probably more achievable. And what with the New Year chasing the heels of Christmas like a deranged stalker, the last two weeks of December inevitably became a time to reflect on the year that's just passed and take that wisdom with me into the year about to start.

And bloody hell, what a depressing five-minutes-that-felt-like-a-lifetime that was. In January of last year, I imagined draft two of Redemption being finished and that I'd be deep into the nuts-and-bolts editing stage by now. I imagined succeeding at this would give me such a boost my productivity would double and I'd be positively champing at the bit to get it beta-read. Most of all, I imagined saying I was a writer would be something I could do with pride, rather than with the vague suspicion that people were either rolling their eyes or laughing at me behind my back.

As of this moment, I have achieved precisely none of these things. And that, I have realised, is the skeleton of my current depressive slump. The meat on those misery-bones? Writing advice. Tons and tons and tons of writing advice. As I've also mentioned before, I've read a lot of writing how-to books this year. One big reason for this is that there are several gazillion such books to be found in Kindle form via Amazon, and the majority of them at ridiculously low prices. While the possibility of spending frivolously on ebooks is easily tempered when you're paying £7-£10 a pop for them (because you're able to make a more rational decision about whether you really want that book that much) when they're only 77p you'll happily trade that rationality for "Hey - it's only 77p! That's, like, a bar of chocolate!" And, to be fair, some of them were very good...

Trouble is, a book-diet that's low in story and fun but high in writing advice can eventually start to feel like a food diet that's low in fat and sugar but high in fibre. As in, you keep telling yourself it's doing you good and you'll see the benefits in the long-term so WHY THE EFF DO YOU FEEL SO EFFIN' MISERABLE ALL THE EFFIN' TIME THESE DAYS?

All those books, filled with all those rules, that's why. The 'should's, the 'must,'s the 'you'd be advised to's and the 'don't ever..'s. An endless list of all the ways you can fail as a writer - wait, no, not just as a writer, but as a person too, because if you can't even see that's how you're failing you must be an egotistical asshole as well! And after a long period on a low-story, high-advice book diet, you start to feel like you're being followed around by a drill sergeant who's constantly looking over your shoulder at your work and going "Not good enough, slacker! Try harder! Work faster! Move your ass, you worthless piece of shit!"

That's how I was starting to feel. About Redemption, about writing a novel - heck, about whether I had the right to think I was even capable of ever being a published novelist. All those endless voices, yelling in my brain about what not to do, how not to write... check yourself before you wreck yourself, Mrs Wannabe-Author... 

But then I got lucky. I got a Kindle book voucher for Christmas, which meant I could use it to buy two or three quality £7-£10 books without feeling like Selfish Mum. (Much.) And, right within that price bracket, were two new books by Natalie Goldberg: The True Secret of Writing: Connecting Life With Language and Thunder and Lightning: Cracking Open The Writer's Craft.

I first encountered Natalie Goldberg's writing some ten years ago, when I enrolled on an online writing course for which two of her books - Writing Down The Bones and Wild Mind - were required reading. This was in the days before e-books (that's right kids, but don't worry - we had moved on from gramophones by then) so my copies were made of dead trees rather than megabytes - but they were two of the most important books I've ever read. I know it sounds clichéd when people say a book 'changed their life,' but these two books truly did change mine. They were the first books I ever read that made writing and being a writer feel like an okay thing to want to to do and be - it didn't mean you were a nutcase, a feckless dreamer who failed at everything or a pretentious narcissist overestimating her cleverness. If I'd never read Natalie's books, I would never have gone on to read Julia Cameron's The Artists' Way, or Stephen King's On Writing... I wouldn't have gone on to write 100+ parody song lyrics and then progressed to getting a couple of short stories published, and I certainly wouldn't have even attempted to write Redemption. My writing life before I read her books had consisted of me standing in front of the Big Door To being A Writer, hoping that someday I'd be considered good enough to have the key that got you inside. Natalie was the person who said "Y'know, that door isn't locked. It's open to anyone and everyone - all you have to do is want to step inside." It sounds so simple, but sometimes the simple messages get drowned out by the everyday racket of dissenting voices all around you.

Natalie and her books are a lot like Marmite. Many people - myself included - love her enthusiastic zen approach to writing and life, while others dismiss her as little more than a navel-gazing hippie who peddles false notions that everyone has creative potential. For me, Writing Down The Bones and Wild Mind were like the secret letters from a best friend, passed under the desk when the teacher's not looking. They set me free, encouraging me to see my need to write as a positive thing rather than the delusions of an airhead who was too lazy to aspire to a 'useful' ambition.

If anyone could show me the way out of my current self-dug pit of crumpled confidence it was her. I started reading Thunder and Lightning on New Years Day, and, ten years after reading her previous books, I can feel her magic starting to work all over again. I'm only a third of the way through, and already I'm starting to recover; I've (re)-realised that:

- Writing Redemption until I'm happy with it will take... as long as it takes. And however long that takes... is perfectly okay.
- Not driving towards a goal of 'being able to fully support myself financially as a full-time writer'... is also perfectly okay. And not wanting to do so... does not mean I'll 'never make it as a writer at all...'
- When other authors say what writers 'should' be doing... they are offering advice, not laws. Their way is not mandatory, and not following it to the letter does not necessarily mean you 'can't be a writer in the proper sense of the word.'
Writing from the heart requires courage - but it's the courage of a lamb, not the courage of a lion. It's not about 'kicking ass' and 'taking no prisoners,' it's about going into the dark and neglected corners of your mind and facing your innermost fears.
- You write what you write because it's what you need to write - it's your heart and your mind on the page. Listen to advice from others about how to make it better, but don't let them try to grab your lump of clay and mould it into something else - something you never intended it to be.

 From a writing point of view, 2015 might not be any faster or more productive for me than 2014 was, but it's starting to feel like it'll be better. So thanks Natalie. You saved writer-me ten years ago and now you're saving me again. We've never met, so I can't really call you my best writer-friend, but that's how I've come to regard you through your books - you're the best writer-friend I'd choose if I was free to choose anyone in the world.

I can only hope that I might one day be as good a writer-friend for others. I'd take that over some stellar career as a high-flying author any day.

The Following Are NOT New Years' Resolutions...

Yep, now that Christmas is over it's that other Time Of The Year again.

You know the one; that one where you make yourself all kinds of crazy promises which you then spend the rest of the year breaking and making yourself feel like crap. I'm talking, of course, about the New Year, and our species' somewhat masochistic response of making New Year's Resolutions to mark the occasion.

It's a not even a particularly logical thing to do when you really analyse it. I mean, I know our calendar says that, on January the 1st, everything that's gone before in the last 365 days officially 'ends' and a brand new set of 365 days 'starts'... but does planet earth feel that way too? I doubt it. It's just us, the little evolved-monkey-people, deciding that's the way everything works. It could all just be a good excuse to get drunk and behave like idiots all at the same time and for the same reason, of course. Nothing wrong with that; why not, life is for living so bring it on and all that. But that obviously wasn't good enough for some hand-wringing do-gooder somewhere. No, they had to inject some worthy into the mild debauchery and thus the concept of New Year's Resolutions was born; set yourself all sorts of high-minded, self-improvement-y goals for the rest of the year while you're too deliriously wazzered to even slur the words to 'Auld Lang Syne' properly. Yeah - perfect time to think about how to sort your life out and become a better person, that is. Genius move.

If you detect the bitter tang of cynicism in those words, I'm not going to deny it. This is because every time I've ever made a New Year's resolution on or around the actual New Year's Day, I have not only spectacularly failed to keep it but actually achieved the direct and dismally opposite result to what I had resolved to do. The year I resolved to stop agonising about my less-than-sylphlike body and finally learn to 'love myself' for who I was? Yeah, well that was the same year I went on to become anorexic, so that went well... (don't panic, that was a loonnnnng time ago now.) But, in the interests of balance, when I resolved to lose all my post-baby weight some years later I actually put on another two stone instead, so at least it worked both ways, eh?

(I have since got back to a healthy weight, in case you're wondering. Not my ideal weight, obviously, since Media-Land is constantly telling me that if I have any sense I should be craving a size-zero body, and all the time I'm just an ordinary, under-confident female devoid of movie-star cheekbones who am I to argue with their 'wisdom'? But I'm digressing - where was I? Oh yeah...)

All of which has shown me that New Year is not the optimum time to make big changes to my world. I think when you take a Big Event and try to attach Self-Improvement Goals to it, there's a tendency to shoot for the moon rather than take more manageable baby steps to the same desired result. For example, at any other time of the year you can say "I'm going to stop buying chocolate biscuits and walk down to the supermarket instead of taking the bus" and do that with very little fuss or tears.

But at New Year - fueled by alcohol and communal belief in the 'oh-my-god-that-completely-arbitrary-switch-is-gonna-flip-any-second-now' - those simple statements somehow morph into "I'm going to get into a pair of size ten jeans by next December!" Because next December's ages away from now, isn't it? Heck, you've given yourself a whole year to achieve that goal, so it's not unrealistic at all...

Except it is, because it focuses on the desired result rather than the process needed to achieve the goal. There's no plan there - it's all about the reward. And that's the kind of thinking you often get into when you're:

a) Feeling like the world (and, in some subtle way, you) is a little bit crap at the moment - i.e. in the winter if you're north of the Equator, when it's cold and dark for a long time every day.
b) Feeling like 'time is running out' or 'life is passing you by' - i.e. at that solely-human-decided moment when the timer dings and the whole universe starts all over again, for another 'year.'
c) Aware that squillions of other people (most of the ones in your immediate vicinity and indeed a sizeable proportion of your hemisphere) are feeling exactly the same way as you are, right now, for the same reasons. Oh, the camaraderie - we must all be in this together!

And so I have not made any New Year's Resolutions and do not intend to do so. That's not to say I don't have any goals to aim for; I've certainly got those, but they are the same as they were last year, and remain ongoing from the non-New-Year-moment I first made them. I shall continue working on The Renegades and not give up on it, I shall remain committed to the conditions of the Writing Contract I first drew up for myself over a year-and-a-half ago, and I shall continue to think of myself as 'a writer' even though I may not have reached the status of say, Stephen King or Chuck Wendig or any other 'properly famous' writers yet. Yeah, they're just baby steps towards big dreams. But I can do them.

If you are planning to make resolutions yourself, I am cheering for you right now - no really, I am. Goals are good; if you don't fire off them arrows you are nothing but a person standing around with a twangy stick and some pointy sticks. However, you also can't call yourself an archer until you've spent some time practising with those twangy and pointy sticks. Keep it real and I reckon you'll be okay.