Happy and well organised New Year

so Happy New Year for the first of many New Year celebrations that occur throughout the first six or eight months of any given year just ask Aunty Google. We humans are an interesting lot.
My New Year started out in the middle of a week of professional development. A great way to begin I am thinking. I have learned a whole host of technical things that I should have known a long time ago but somehow didn't. I now know how to put the meta data in my documents and how to go about watermarking my scanned art. I also have a working calendar on my computer which will help me keep track of all the things going on in my life and I have organised the new folders for the new art in the new year. To my friend Mica

There are many people who have made my life easier because they have been part of my journey. Nearby I have Helen, Ronda and Glenda  as well as Laura and Judith and the whole family headed by Janet who have all played a big role in keeping me sane and filled with enough tea and tucker to weather the weather. My sister Mim further afield and a whole host of others who play their part in the great jigsaw puzzle of my life. Each one no matter how large or small is part of the beauty of the whole picture and I thank you all. 

I finished off last year doing the kind of things that make me smile. I visited friends and went to a movie, ate good food in good company and helped with some jigsaw puzzles. I saw the final installment of the Hobbit movies which left me pondering. The pondering led me to think on series which go flat on the second or last book because the writer has run out of oomph. I felt a touch of that with this final movie. Still the same good actors and the visual beauty of the scenery but it felt to me like someone had fallen asleep at the wheel five hundred metres from the front gate. There were funny moments to break up the long serious bits but there was no time and space to grieve the deaths or even feel grief at the deaths. I was expecting to need two boxes of tissues at the demise of the house of Durin and instead found myself discussing the weather as I left the cinema. After the last two movies I spent hours, days, and months dissecting scenes with my offspring, quoting lines, drooling over the heroics, waxing lyrical over the scenery and arguing over how much leeway Peter Jackson had taken with the original material and I purchased merchandise. This time it was, okay I saw a movie what's for dinner? It was pleasant and I did laugh at one scene and it ties up the loose ends and is a neat finish for the franchise but...

On to other things. During my PD week I revamped my blog. Did you notice? I don't notice things like that either unless they are blatantly obvious and I can't avoid noticing. I do like the changes and I am learning more things along the way such as how to put in tabs so I can have art in one and stories in another and my book covers in yet another. I have to take a notch up in my skill base to push forward with this career path I have chosen.


So I wish to do a little round up of my last year to celebrate my achievements.
I had stories published in eight anthologies

I won a grand prize for 14:14 back in February which included a professional critique, books and a pep talk
I won some smaller prizes too...

I recieved art from two professional artists

I participated in(I bet I forget some)

• Start the Year Off Write
• Revision Month (Revimo) plus mini Revisions each month
• 14:14
• PB Marathon
• Rhyming Picture Book Month
• Chapter Book Challenge
• A to Z blog hop
• CampNaNoWriMo  twice
• NaNoWriMo
• Sub Six
• 52 week illustration challenge
• PiBoIdMo
• SkaDaMo
• HoHoDooDa
• Doodle Day

I also submitted to several of Susanna Leonard Hill's competitions both art and short stories. I submitted to several other short story competitions and have had my fifth story accepted for AntipodeanSF.
I submitted each month to Rate Your Story on their free days and have finally joined as a member.
I polished and edited and sent out two novels which I began writing in NaNoWriMo in 2013.
I started a rejections folder which now contains 13 letters/emails.
I have begun five more novels and completed 12 picture book drafts for 12x12 of which I have been a member at silver level all year.

I also participated in critique groups and became a member of a local writing group.

I have created about 700 pieces of art and attended art classes on and offline. Some of my art has been published in anthologies and I have created art for specific purposes for other writers.

 I attend a public speaking club where I occasionally act as coach.

Oh and I still keep my family fed and hugged, have cuppas with my friends close by and keep in touch with extendeds through social media.

Not a bad tally for the year.

Did I mention I became a grandmother twice over which took no effort whatsoever and boosted my joy level into infinity.

Just for fun a friend changed a meme for me and I am suspecting it may be worth thinking on.

Sunday again,relaxing with friends.

I like this little lizard. http://www.sharkbay.org/Thornydevilfactsheet.aspx that is the address for a good site for kids to find out more about The thorny dragon or thorny devil (Moloch horridus)which is also called other names. Wikipedia has a good page too. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorny_dragon I am enjoying rediscovering our amazing flora and fauna for this sketching challenge and adding a Holiday flare to them. I can't imagine being able to catch a thorny dragon nor adding a bell to it's tail. Speaking of dragons,I am looking forward to seeing the desolation of Smaug in the coming weeks and trying to avoid any mention of it by the doomsayers. I wonder sometimes why people expect entertainment to also be academic literature?
I have seen a lot of reviews, scathing reviews of books and films over the last year and it puzzles me. Why were they going to the movie in the first place? Why did they buy the book? Were they working for the united nations and looking for a way to change the world or were they wanting a bit of escapism and entertainment? I know why I went to see the Hobbit. Firstly because New Zealand is beautiful and Peter Jackson's work is visually delicious, secondly because the actors are gorgeous, thirdly because I have a huge crush on the character of Thorin, fourthly due to the entertainment value of a bunch of oddballs setting off on a seemingly impossible quest, fifthly because I wish we still had eagles that are big(that bit always makes me cry because I remember eagles that were much bigger than the ones we have now but people shot them), sixthly because the music is sumptuous and sends tingles down my spine and finally because I get to step away from all the day to day concerns of my life for three hours and follow an epic journey of the imagination.
In the past few years, or even the decade I have read the Twilight saga and seen the movies. I read all the harry potters and own copies of all the movies as well as all the books. I had five copies of the first book because we all read at different rates and no one was willing to wait for anyone else to finish. I read the twilights to my daughter as her bedtime story for weeks and she loved the books. I read and purchased several Dan Brown's and those fifty shades as well as more than a thousand other books and videos including all the George RR Martin winter is coming(Maybe it is George's fault we are having climate change?). I estimate that during my lifetime I have read fifteen thousand novels which works out to be one novel per day per week for forty years. I could read fluently by four years of age and my favorite memory of primary school was being able to sit in the library corner and read because I always finished the work well ahead of any other child and my reward was to read. I can usually read a novel in a night and know it takes eight hours of reading out loud to get through a Narnia or Harry Potter. So I am under estimating my number of books because my tally only included books I read for myself and does not include text books for the many many many courses I studied, nor does it take into consideration the hundreds if not thousands of children's books I read to, well, children.
I don't like poor writing. I don't like that poor writing is published and there are no gatekeepers halting the flood of substandard prose. I am saddened that the new generations are being encouraged to feast only on graphic novels and not encouraged to feast their brains on beautiful words that will fire the imagination and encourage thinking.