HOLIDAY GIFTS TO YOU

Since the first daughter to come home for Christmas is arriving today, I hereby declare end of term at Crabbit Towers. Hooray! And you need a break anyway. Or, frankly, if you don't, I do. So, for your holidays I would like to offer you some gifts. In the spirit of holidayness, reward yourself each day by coming back here to see what new inspiration or amusement I have for you. There will be no work, I promise, but all the fun will be relevant. Your brain will be zing-fresh by the end of it, as long as you don't overdo it on the mince pies. Most days, I'll have amusing (or painful) videos for you, but today I have something more simple, something refeshing and non-technical.

My first gift to you is:

Permission not to write. A break is important. If you want to write, do, but you now have no deadlines, OK? Chill. Permission not to write is really important. Whether it's one day off or two weeks off, just take it. You'll write better after it.

I've given myself permission not to write, though that's partly because - smugness alert -  yesterday, on schedule precisely, I reached my target word count AND plot point for stopping for a break. I confess that I've a load of other work still to do, redesigning a website etc, but I'm done with writing proper until January.

EDITED on Jan 2nd - now that the holiday period is over, I've gone and collected all my Christmas gifts and pasted them all below:

No 2 was How Not to Behave in a Bookshop

No 3 was Lost in Translation - very funny! 

No 4 was Harlan Ellison on why authors should always be paid. He goes a bit far but the sentiment is quite right, in my view.

In No 5 I urges your to reward yourself and count your achievements, and I gave you this video.

No 6 was Ray Bradbury being inspiring.

No 7 is me being interviewed and winning.

I've lost No 8!

No 9, from Christmas Eve, was the terribly serious message from me and one from Jane Smith.

On Christmas Day, I gave you a little Christmassy thing, so we'll omit that as being irrelevant now.

No 11 was Captain Kirk over-reacting to a rejection letter.

No 12 was Lewis Black on Writing a Book.

Then we had the bizarre, over-long but thought-provoking video of a self-published author creating a funeral for her dream of becoming published.

No 14 was a truly excellent and very meaningful (and hilarious) video about how not to approach writing.

No 15 wasn't a video but a link to a hilarious and spot-on blog post by John Dickinson about living with an authors.

No 16 was some pictures of snowy scenes in my garden and the link to an article I wrote ages ago about the power of open spaces for creativity.

And then we had the New Year's Day post about resolutions, but I'll leave that up.

Finally, with my apologies, I brought you this silly kick-start to the new Crabbit Towers Term...