Happy New Year!

Image by Vilius Kukanauskas via Pixabay

Here we are, on the cusp of the New Year, the time of looking back to what has been achieved, and forward to goal-setting and new ventures.

For Hornsea Writers the past year has meant building on skillsets learned through experience - between us we’ve plenty – and embracing different, and sometimes up and coming, areas of writing.

Shortform – in fiction, creative non-fiction, straight non-fiction, and journalism - has found favour, often for the simple reason that it can be fitted around longer projects. With judicious planning these shortforms can also be collected into longer works. No longer is creative output to be thought of as single-use.

In this respect, three members are successfully experimenting on the digital platform, ‘Medium’, where words and images work hand in hand behind a paywall. ‘Substack’, a somewhat rival platform, beckons with its integration of words, images, video, and audio.

Regardless of newer mediums, book-length works remain the mainstay of members.

After being headhunted by history publishers Pen & Sword, April Taylor is putting the finishing touches to a third title, and looking forward to embracing her novel-writing once more.

Joy Stonehouse, whose fiction springs from her genealogical research, launched the final book in her Yorkshire coast quintet, and is working on a collection of short stories and a epistolary historical drama.

Karen Wolfe is intent on completing the third novel in her Georgie Crane comi-crime trilogy, and is eyeing a non-fiction book – dog-related, of course, while Stuart Aken is currently polishing his latest SF novel.

The one sentiment that binds all members is the old favourite…

There’s never enough hours in the day,
either for the writing or reading we wish to indulge.

Perhaps that should be our 2025 priority.

How about you?

Wishing all our readers a very Happy New Year.