I could make all sorts of New Year’s resolutions. Every feed I subscribe to is urging me to ‘change the way you write’, ‘write your novel in 2013’, ‘get an agent in 2013’, ‘lose weight for real’. The last one reveals, if you didn’t know already, that I am a female writer. Bit bold eh? I’ll say it again, “I’m a female writer”. The Pole, Witold Gombrowicz, one of my favourite 20th century writers, used to say something along the lines of – to be a writer, you must act the part, dress as a writer, write as a writer, be a writer and I think there really is something in it.

It could, of course, be a need to reaffirm this after the visitation that is a New Year email from the publishers. It appears that I am back to square one in terms of an editorial board, I thought I’d escaped several years ago. The carousel that is publishing requires editors and publishing assistants to move swiftly through the ranks or else out, so I find myself explaining yet again why my manuscript (ms) seems to be in a black hole. So my New Year’s resolution is this: to get the ms published by this publisher within 2013, or switch publishers.

Re-reading that, it smacks of stamping my little foot in rage, but as so many of us discover, the gap between writing and finishing a ms and its publication can be huge, in my case a couple of years now – and counting. Unsurprisingly, my efforts have turned elsewhere and it’s hard to get excited about a project that mentally I’ve left behind. So here’s to 2013 as the year I finally see Witchcraft in Poland on my shelf and give it a good send off!