Extracted from original introductory post:

The Year of Creative Engagement (#yoce) will be my attempt to document my creative journey, put greater stock in accountability and output, while also showing what new work I’m reading or listening to. My monthly book reports already feature here on the blog, and this exercise will also appear on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram. These will be hashtagged #yoce

I’ve already begun this journey, for I’ve been participating in the Month of Poetry project, posting micro poems every day this month on Facebook and Twitter with the hashtag #mop14. Whether I can continue this throughout the whole year is unlikely, but I’ll try do to some here and there. My plan is to also attend more literary or cultural launches and gatherings (lucky for me, Melbourne is full of them; unlucky for me, I live so far out of the city).

Most of all, for me, creativity is about play, exploration, comprehension and embracing imperfection while in search for an artistic end or goal. It’s the lure of the computer keyboard, or the need to pick up a pencil. It’s why we makes notes in the margins of novels. It’s why we blog, make jokes and sing.

If you’re endeavouring to be more productive this year, more engaged creatively, if you’re getting up early, or staying up late, to write a novel or a screenplay, draw, anything, please let me know. Let’s band together.

If you would like to catch up, here’s the posts: January and February, March and April, May and June, July and August, September and October.

Where’s the November and December update? Here’s the thing – I’ve been too busy to be watch movies, which is what the other posts have – mostly – been about! Too busy, or too tired! I daresay once the holidays arrive, I might have a better chance, but at the moment – no.

Okay, question time.

How successful was the Year of Creative Engagement?

Overall, quite successful! Considering I had health issues throughout the year, and for a 16 week period I had to fit in marathon training, I think I did pretty well. The contemporary YA novel manuscript is now up to 40,000 words and my YA fantasy novel – the one I’ve been focusing on these past months – has been culled back to 111,000 words. But that number will go up again as I flesh out passages and exposition etc.

On top of this, I did the #miscpoetry project &  #nanowrimoprompt, wrote a handful of poems and short stories, submitted these about the place, and made semi-regular contributions to Essential Kids/Baby.

What could have been done better?

If anything, perhaps those check-in posts could have included a few more ‘teachable’ points that a reader could take away and apply to their own practise. Not to excuse myself, but I think I was under pressure to acquit my promise and so wrote them quickly on a ‘about me’ level while my head was in my other creative zone (writing). But I think I did okay, considering I made the choice to let blogging fall down my list of priorities.

What was the best part?

Apart from the relief, and nice feeling, of just getting words down on paper, I think I actually managed to achieve what I set out to do in this post – What Are Your Goals in 2014?

The goal was simple: strive for congruence. From that post: “Congruence means “the state achieved by coming together, the state of agreement”. It’s taken years, but I almost feel like that’s finally happening between this tug-of-war between blogging and writing.”

Part of the belief that I was able to come – close – to this feeling of congruence was partly by rolling up my sleeves and doing the work, and another part came via reflection. These might sound like opposites, but let me explain. In the periods when I was ‘quiet’, I was thinking and making plans. While I was sick, this was all I could basically do and it was important to concentrate my energy on getting better (or just getting by, on some days). Now I’m coming out of that funk, rather than be disappointed, I believe it was time well spent. I’ve got actionable things to carry on with.

I’m still thinking about what I want my 2015 goals or mantra to be, and I will write about that in another post. What do you want your next 12 months to be, or look like? Are you already setting plans into motion? Stay tuned to the blog because I will be putting up something very soon that I think will help if you need it. xx