My 2016 Writing Achievements

Now is the time of year I like to look back at what I set out to do during the year and what I actually did. Events

• Organised 2 write-ins and gave three craft talks at them for the Waltham Abbey Writers group I ran with Jean Fullerton. I also critiqued and gave talks on writing in various ways at WAW meetings.
  
• Gave a talk at London RNA chapter about marketing.
• Attended the Chelmsford RNA Chapter afternoon tea in Colchester.
• Attended RNA Conference in July.
• Attended and helped organise UK Meet in Southampton in September.
• Organised a budget writers retreat in a caravan in Clacton on Sea, Essex
• Organised, promoted and wrote content for Write That Book workshop all together with Virginia Heath, workshop on 21 January in London
  

Writing

• 2500 word short story about two men meeting on a ski slope in Levi. It was my entry to the Elizabeth Gouge competition.
  
• 62500 words on Hacienda Story
  
• 5000 words on Imploding Marriage MF story first 3 chapters. I submitted this to some agents I met at the RNA conference and received helpful feedback.
  
• 48000 words written and submitted on Ibiza story
• 38000 words written and self published on A New Life For Christmas
  
• 50,500 words written on m/f romance
  
• This is an approximate total of 202000 words of my own fiction.
  

Other writing

• 4 MA assignments including 1 critical essay, 3 pieces of poetry, a partial play, experimental fiction, non-fiction and 2 pieces of prose fiction and 1 dissertation which comprised of prose fiction and a reflective essay on writing that piece. Altogether this was an approximate total of 44000 words. I have officially received notification that I’ve passed the MA in creative writing which I started in September 2015. I'm planning to blog about the process of studying the MA in creative writing later this year. I wanted to let it settle for a while first.
  
• Ghost writing a novel using phone interviews with the client making a 60000 words autobiography (still to be completed)
  
• This is an other writing total of 140000 words.
  

Publishing

• Serendipity paperback was published as well as the ebook box set.
  
• A New Life For Christmas was self published. Hence ticking off ‘self publish’ from my goals too!
  

Reading

I’ve read a lot of books about writing as well as fiction and non-fiction for research purposes. I’ll write a separate blog about my reading favourites of 2016.

Other

• Read and written appraisals for 4 RNA New Writers Scheme submissions, total of approx 250000 words read and appraised.
  
• 3 beta reads for friends
  

Things I aimed to do but didn’t happen in 2016

• Co-authoring a story with someone else - any authors who are reading this and fancy working together, do let me know.
  
• Going to a new type of conference outside of the UK – time and money didn’t permit this.
• Logo for Liam Livings (strapline happened though)
  
• A lot of self-editing and also writing a historical novella – neither of these had deadlines whereas my MA assignments did.
  
• Writing first drafts of: Finland Story, Tenerife Story and Imploding Marriage – I wrote other first drafts instead.
• Attending Queer Company 2 event in Oxford. This was another victim of MA deadlines.

Now I look back at it, it's a good year overall. How do you think I did?

Liam Livings xx