Towards the end of every year I write down in my journal an extensive list of WRITING HOPES & DREAMS for the following year on the misguided belief that writing stuff down helps it come true.

My Writing Hopes and Dreams range from things that I have a high expectation will happen, through things that would be fantastic if they happened, but are unlikely to happen, to things that only a delusional optimist with no appreciation or understanding of reality would ever really expect.

So for example, one of my Writing Hopes and Dreams could be to finish my current WIP and I might have high expectations of actually achieving this.

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Another one of my WH&Ds might be something like getting an invitation to an overseas literary festival. This clearly falls in the highly unlikely category. Not quite totally impossible since it has happened before. Still, I’m not holding my breath.

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Then if I have a new book out, a third bunch of WH&Ds might be for that book to be long-listed, short-listed and then go on to win every conceivable literary prize for which it might be even vaguely eligible any place on the planet. This of course is a perfect example of the ‘delusional’ category. (Having one of my books get a movie offer, is another excellent example of this.) (As is having Ryan Gosling play the lead role in my biopic.)

Anyway, in 2018 my Writing Hopes and Dreams list numbered 32 different items ranging from the ‘probable/possible’ to the ‘have you been sleeping with your head in the micro-wave again?’.

I ended up achieving 17 out of the 32 and I was really happy with that.

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Getting over the halfway mark is always a terrific result. It usually means that as well as the things I had high hopes of achieving, some of those ‘unlikely’ and ‘delusional’ dreams must have somehow also come to fruition.

In 2018, the ‘unlikely’ and ‘delusional’ included Rodney Loses It winning the CBCA Early Childhood Book of the Year as well as the Speech Pathology Australia Book of the Year in the 3-5 years category …

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… Don’t Call Me Ishmael: The Musical becoming a brilliant, joyous reality …

… and being awarded a Queensland Writers Fellowship.

I’ve already written up my 2019 Writing Hopes and Dreams list. There are 48 items on it. Only about a dozen of them would I put into the ‘possible/probable’ category, and some of those, not very confidently.

That of course puts a lot of pressure on my unlikely dreams and delusions, but as they say, you may as well aim high. To infinity and beyond, right Buzzy?

And so thus endeth my first official blog of 2019!

Thanks so much to everyone who took the time last year to read any of my ramblings and rabbiting ons. Thanks too if you left a question or comment for me. It’s so lovely to get some feedback. Please let me know if there are any topics you’d like me to cover in future and I’ll try to oblige.

Happy 2019 everyone! I hope the new year is everything that you expect it to be and that many of your dreams and even some of your crazy, optimistic delusions end up coming true.

Cheers
Michael

ps: And my favourite read for 2018? This beautiful, surprising and challenging novel by an extraordinary writer. I’ll be reading it again in 2019.