Days of Gratitude - Tea, Cafes and The Rocky Road To Manchester

Five more days.  The solstice will soon be with us and then Christmas.  And then the close of this year of gratitude.  I'm still undecided on what will replace the gratitude diary next year.  How about this:

http://thinkwritten.com/365-creative-writing-prompts/

or this:

https://dailypost.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/365-days-of-writing-prompts-1387477491.pdf

Each of those contains a writing prompt for each day of the year.  I think personally I prefer the look of the first set.  I also have a couple of books with daily writing prompts.
Maybe that should be the replacement.  A short piece of writing every day from a prompt.  It would be both enjoyable and a challenge.  I wouldn't be too religious about it or force myself to catch up if I missed it every day for a week.

At this point I don't know how my writing will develop in 2017, how much I'll be sitting in the Lit & Phil Library, whether I'll be entering any competitions or submitting any work in the hopes some editor will like it and publish it.

At this point I don't particularly care what I'll find out about those things.  I do expect my writing will develop, that I will be sitting in the Lit & Phil, and that I will probably see some competitions or calls for submission that look enjoyable enough to play with and not care about so-called "success".

So here, five more days of gratitude.

I type this while sitting in the Nexus Art Cafe in Manchester.  In a couple of hours I'll be back in Salford.  I arrived here at 10.30 for a not-church church thing called Sanctus and stayed to write and be in a nice place for a while.  If you're in Manchester I can highly recommend the place.  Unless you need wheelchair access or can't deal with steps.  It's in a deep basement - with a window into a back courtyard - and the place doesn't have a lift.  Apart from that, I can vouch for the toasties, the tea, and the cake.  Also the toilets.  They're pretty cool too.

I spot that I haven't posted anything apart from gratitude posts recently - unless you include Blob Thing's blog which has been a little wild recently.  I'll try to post something else soon.  I hope to get a story posted here by Christmas.  It's a Christmas story so it should be posted by Christmas!  I'm quite happy with it and, at 15,000 words, is by far the longest piece of fiction I've ever written.

It's all progress.  Looking forward to the progress of 2017.  It's going to be special.

11^th December


Grateful to have been able to spend more time than expected with a friend.

Grateful for her treating me to lunch at Tea Sutra.

And that she wrote something meaningful for me.

12^th December


Grateful the new printer works so I have been able to print the Christmas story for a friend so she can be the first to read it.

Grateful too for a year old memory shared.

Cheating - but it's the only photo!

13^th December

Grateful for a quiet day.

Grateful for new internet, and new electricity and gas meters.

Glad to have finished two of my many unfinished books. That's almost miraculous.


14^th December


Grateful to have found the item I needed to complete Amanda's present.

Grateful for everything said at the school parents' evening.

Grateful for comments about the last Blob post. It's the graveyard one at blobthing.blogspot.co.uk
Unless it's a .com.

3400 words of an event I don't remember.

15^th December

Grateful to have returned to Manchester.

Grateful for Megabus tickets and odd sights in Salford.