It’s 2024, the start of a new year! Like most people, I’m using it as an opportunity to partially reset. Looking back on 2023, and seeing how I can make changes or improvements to ensure that 2024 is even better.
2023 was a good year! I set up this blog, and even remembered to post sometimes! I wrote a full-length one-person-show, I Have Sinned, something I’m immensely proud of. I volunteered at Iris LGBT+ Film Festival and met some wonderful creatives and queer peers, and my mental health is on a rocky but upward trajectory. To top it all off, I graduated from my Masters in Creative Writing! It was, in all, the best year of the decade so far.
But, there’s always room to improve. Unlike last year, I’m not building from scratch, I have some strong foundations to build on, so here’s where I aim to be by this time next year:
Build My Slate
I Have Sinned is, without doubt, the most personal thing I’ve ever written, and it’s also the piece of writing I’m most proud of. But a writer with only one project to showcase is an amateur with ambition.
2024 will be the year I write two more complete projects that showcase who I am, and what I can offer as a writer. My first project is in the early stages of its latest iteration, based heavily on a script I wrote for my Masters, but gutted and reworked within an inch of its life. What will my third project to complete the slate triumvirate be? No idea, but that’s the fun.
With three complete pieces of work, I’ll be able to fully commit to calling myself a writer and confidently showcase what I can offer.
Enter Competitions
Writers need to do more than write, we need to show off. It’s terrifying, spending months poring over pages of work, baring our souls, and then being presented with a choice:
Show it to people or suck up the day job.
Some people won’t like it. Others will offer valuable insights, but if I don’t start showing my work, I’ll never be a proper writer. There are many ways to get feedback, but seeing as I spend most of my week scanning BBC Writers’ Opportunities page for potential entries, it makes sense I capitalise on that.
Six competitions seems an achievable number. With a play under my belt, I can offer that around, and with a TV idea in the pipeline, that will cover most bases. Whether anything comes back from them or not, the fact of doing it is a proactive step towards making a career change into the industry.
The Blog
This blog has been something of a love/hate thing for me this past year. Initially starting with a big, ambitious, rolling story that showcased the prowess I have for transmedia storytelling, life and work quickly disabused me of the idea I could do it all. Some months I posted frequently, others not at all.
2024 will be the year I find a schedule, and stick to it. A mix between posting on the blog, keeping up with social media posts, and engaging on Linkedin will keep my name in circulation and hopefully widen my audience. When applying for jobs, or putting myself out there for competitions, I need an online presence so that professionals can look at to know who I am outside of what’s on the page.
In 2024, through blog and social media, I will essentially be character building.
Have Fun
The thing I’m most grateful to be taking into 2024 is a rekindled love of writing. I always knew I would write, but it had been a chore for so long that nothing I wrote was any bloody good. Ironically, by forcing myself to write something deeply personal, I seem to have totally freed myself from the monotony of writing.
I love writing. I’m genuinely excited to keep doing it. I write when I can, but never at the expense of living my life. I believe in what I write about, but never to the point of preaching (mostly).
That isn’t to say it wasn’t hard. I nearly stopped writing I Have Sinned more times than I care to count, but my love of the idea carried me through. When I wrote articles for the blog it was because I was genuinely enthused by the topic.
Putting structure to that love is going to be difficult, but then I’m going to have fun with the challenge.
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