{"id":759,"date":"2017-01-05T12:22:34","date_gmt":"2017-01-05T12:22:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dogpigeon.co.uk\/?p=759"},"modified":"2017-01-09T11:17:46","modified_gmt":"2017-01-09T11:17:46","slug":"happy-new-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dogpigeon.co.uk\/?p=759","title":{"rendered":"Happy New Year!"},"content":{"rendered":"

I know a lot of people don’t like January, and I can see it has its downsides: it’s long, it’s cold, it’s dark…<\/p>\n

But I rather like it. I welcome the opportunity to get rid of the Christmas clutter – the physical stuff like decorations and packaging and the head-clutter of lists and Important Things to Do. And I do see January as something of a blank page.<\/p>\n

Over the last few years, January has been a very productive month for me. In January 2015, I wrote the first draft of Jamie and the Joke Factory<\/a> and in January 2016, I wrote the first draft of Isabella’s Adventures in Numberland.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"jamie<\/a>
\nThis year I’m going to try and complete another first draft in January. The difference is, this is a 30,000 word chapter book, not an 800 word picture book. I actually started the book back in November, and managed to write around 2,500 words. I’ve just started on it again this week and am now up to 3,798.<\/p>\n

I’m going to have to speed up if I’m going to get the first draft completed by the end of the month. I thought if I shared my target with you, it might concentrate my mind. I will keep you posted on my progress via my Facebook<\/a> page. Wish me luck!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I know a lot of people don’t like January, and I can see it has its downsides: it’s long, it’s cold, it’s dark… But I rather like it. I welcome the opportunity to get rid of the Christmas clutter – the physical stuff like decorations and packaging and the head-clutter of lists and Important Things […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dogpigeon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dogpigeon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dogpigeon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dogpigeon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dogpigeon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=759"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.dogpigeon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":765,"href":"https:\/\/www.dogpigeon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759\/revisions\/765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dogpigeon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dogpigeon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dogpigeon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}