It was just seven weeks ago, but it feels like a year.
On the last weekend of March, we went to the Scottish Association of Writers’ Conference 2026. Every welcome bag contains a Goals sheet like the one above for delegates to fill in and remind themselves what they mean to do by the time the next conference rolls around, and like every exam I ever went in for, I left it till the last few days before I checked the sheet from last year to check what I had (hadn’t) managed to achieve. Official verdict is… Not Bad.
I finished Shilling Cove, got it edited and got a cover for it. Published it on Kobo and Amazon as an e-book. I have even managed to sell a few copies – thanks, friends – and hope to do better with the paperback.
I started a new novel and completed several short stories and two short plays. One of the shorts and the plays went in to SAW competitions, as did the first 14,985 words of the novel. The entire advice aimed at authors is to find your genre so that readers know what to expect from one of your novels. I might need to set up a different author name for this one, as those who adore tense family dramas with a quaint seaside setting are unlikely to appreciate a tale of high-tech space flight.
Yes, I set myself regular writing hours, and it’s now accepted that I get three hours a week that is not open to any activity apart from writing. I write this with my feet firmly planted in one of my writing hours. I get active outside when it isn’t raining too hard – and it rained almost every day this winter. We’re on clay soil, so grassy areas have been shallow lakes while the one attempt at digging up weeds in February turned into a free mudbath with extra foliage.
The final commitment – to win enough to buy a pint of beer- was one I failed on right up to the day after I returned from SAW; when I got a royalty payment from the anthology I’d contributed to last November. £3.59. The price, exactly, of a 330ml bottle of Brigand, a Belgian beer of 9% proof. I laughed so hard, then I bought myself a bottle of Brigand.
I took a long time to decide on this year’s goals, but at least I wasn’t writing something along the lines of “Well, okay, doing what I failed to do last year”. Some of it came from the publication of Shilling Cove and the current struggle to get a paperback version out – no, I’m won’t get film rights, but there was a local authors’ fair last year that I’m hoping to add my name to this year. For an area that has precisely one bookshop within a ten mile radius, that’s about the best I could hope for.
The first two goals are new ones. ‘Bodgers’ was the novel that completely failed to impress the judge this year, but I like it and I think it deserves another go. ‘Unstable and Dangerous’ was a last minute effort aimed at the Janetta Bowen Chalice for best non-fiction book, based around my memories of riding a motorcycle.
Add to my goals for this year; to get my name engraved on the plaque, polish and cherish the trophy and train myself in advance not to stand up and do a small pagan dance if my name gets a mention next year. Yelling and dancing because I got second or third place is simply not… dignified. But fun. And hey, winning the non-fiction book award is something to yell about.
Julia Chalkley 