As I make preparations for my upcoming trip to Melbourne for Christmas with my family, I am taking a moment out of the "headless chook" routine to reflect on the year that has been 2013.
It has definitely been a year of transition for both myself and my husband, both of us making inroads in our chosen career paths and paving the way to achieving what we truly want. My passions have laid in genealogy and family history for over ten years now and it has brought me so much satisfaction. Not only have I learnt about how my ancestors would have lived and worked but I have made many living friends and found distant cousins along the way, for which I am blessed and grateful.
At the start of 2013 I made the same old New Year resolutions. The longest running resolution had to be the one about starting work on my heritage scrapbook. I have made that resolution every single year since my daughter was born and now that she has recently turned twelve, I can finally say that this was the year that I achieved my goal. It took me around two months from start to finish and the end result was a fabulous piece of family history which I am quite proud of.
The biggest and best achievement I made in 2013 would have to be e-publishing my debut novella Symphony of War. This novella has been five years in the making, and is quite a massive personal achievement.
I have spent those five years re-writing, shelving, re-writing, shelving (and almost binning) but for the past three to four months I have stuck to my guns and finally finished it. I had many hurdles to overcome, the biggest of which was my self-confidence. Even when I knew in my heart of hearts that I had to finish the novella I was still unsure of "putting it out there" and publishing it for all the world to see. After I participated in this year's National November Writer's Month (or NaNoWriMo as it commonly known) I bit the bullet, took the plunge and uploaded Symphony of War on to Amazon.
If you are interested, you can find my ebook here:
What will 2014 bring? I have written over 50,000 words for my next novel, and I am sure it will take much less time to refine, re-write and polish than my debut did! Also, I have plans to write a family history on my Humphries family line. This should prove especially interesting to research for as the family lived and worked in my favourite city in the world, London.
I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Love, Debra xx
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