Happy New Year blog readers!

Posted on 4th January 2011

I hope you all had a wonderful festive season wherever you were...

So, New Year's resolutions, aside from the usual weight loss/increased fitness regime... To be honest, I know I will struggle most with the latter, especially in this cold weather. Jogging? I think not! Sweating it out in the gym? Definitely not. Swimming? What and walking home with cold hair...?

I am going to try not to shout out loud when I see signs with incorrect apostrophes and definitely stop 'correcting' menus and leaving them where the proprietors can see them in the hope they amend them in time for my next visit (assuming I go back, depending on the gravity of the errors).

I also aim to stop purposefully misunderstanding texts/emails/tweets when people use text speak (or should that be txt spk). Language does develop, I just don't think LOL, LMAO or other such abbreviations should be part of that.

Maybe mine should be to write more entertaining and insightful blogs, but I wouldn't want to get your hopes up.

What about you?

For those of you who are looking to make this the year you write your first book, a useful article for you to read would be www.sobelweber.com - this covers some of the interesting issues facing literary agents in today's competitive and time-short world.

And if you are thinking of getting your work published, there are still plenty of publishers taking on new writers, www.thefictiondesk.co.uk (publishes a quarterly anthology of new short fiction) and www.silverwoodbooks.co.uk (helps writers get their work into print, offering self-publishing options or polishing manuscripts for submitting to literary agents or mainstream publishers) to name but a few...

And if your resolutions are about something entirely different, then good luck and here's hoping we all manage to achieve them!

Written by Kate Haigh.