Authors Electric

As a fifty-something female, I'm feeling anxious about the UK's r apidly rising pension age  and have been turning my attention to other forms of income to get me through what looks to be a rather alarming financial hole (in my case seven years between 60 and 67 - though I'm not holding my breath). I've considered several options that might fill this hole. Go back to riding racehorses (I doubt I could still jump back on a fidgety youngster if I fell off in the middle of a field). Retrain for a completely different career with a proper pension scheme, like a clever friend who is doing a law degree in her fifties (might be useful for chasing publishers who default on contracts). Dust off my melodeon and try busking on the street corner (quite a decent hourly rate, actually, but my fingers get cold and I can only remember about three tunes). Sign up for the new Universal Credit (many writers do not qualify because they do not earn the 'minimum income floor' each...

I don't remember asking Santa for a penguin ... Yeah, a stuffed rat. Just what I wanted ...   Right, that's Christmas and New Year over and done with. But before you start looking forward to the orgy of chocolate otherwise known as Easter, there's just the little matter of New Year's Resolutions to grapple with. I'm not making any - I never do these days, as I'm so bad at keeping them and then have to deal with the guilt of letting myself, or worse still, others, down. Except for one, which is not so much a resolution as a brilliant writing tool. I am notoriously lazy about writing: I'm fine if I have a tight deadline, but when it is a self-imposed one it is far too easy to find a good excuse for changing it. Things like the egg timer never works for me, as I can sit there for the full allotted time fiddling with unnecessary stuff or staring vacantly out of the window. Then I was given the gift of Linowrimo. We named it after its invento...