This is a post of two halves, with a little extra bit in the middle - you can skip to the heading 'Big Announcement' if you like. As I began to think about planning for 2026, I realised that this was also a good time to reflect on 2025, and also that January itself is …
Inching Gradually Forwards
(I have a feeling I've used this post title before - inching gradually is often the only way I can make any kind of progress!) Although I knew I would probably not be able to do a lot of writing during my scheduled hospital stay, I didn't realise there would be absolutely none, and very …
End of Year Report – Writing Version
It's the last day of 2024 as I write this. A lot has happened in my life this past year, and I have covered some of the other stuff in a post on my McCallum Ogilvy blog. But basically, although I've had to cut down on some other activities, I seem to have managed to …
A Sort of Retrospective
Because I'm in the middle of writing 'Pitkirtly XXVIII' [still no title but I'm hoping one will spring out and ambush me when I least expect it] I am keen to find any excuse for procrastination, and this is why I found myself thinking about which books I've most enjoyed writing. This often becomes clear …
Alternate Title(s)
Because I can see the end in sight for Pitkirtly XXIV, I've decided to procrastinate a bit by writing this post. It's not so much that I don't want it to end as that now that I think I've worked out a solution, I no longer need to go through all the steps to get …
Another year, another NaNoWriMo
I've taken part in the November NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) every year since 2006. The first time I did it, I was on a mission to prove to myself that I could finish a novel in a month. It was a kind of signal that I would start to take my writing seriously at …
Writing in Lockdown
I noticed there was an article in The Guardian the other day about the difficulties of writing during the pandemic - here's the link in case anyone is interested (it focusses mostly on writers failing to find anything to be inspired by during lockdown, but there is a mention of a problem I had about …
Cecilia Peartree - woman of mystery 