Yesterday I completed the last spread of a year’s worth of my nature diaries for the Dalesman. I’ve been writing for the magazine for 12 years now, once a month or bimonthly, so it now runs to 132 articles, more than 250 pages.
This is the first time that I’ve managed to get so far ahead. The icy weather at the start of the year gave me the opportunity to put in a good session and I completed six articles, which just made me all the more determined to get on with the remaining six so that I’d be a full year ahead.
My deadline is always 6 or 7 weeks before the month that I’m writing about so in that way I’ve always been thinking ahead but at the same time I’ve always looking back, looking through my wildyorkshire.blog posts for ideas from nine months ago.
At last I’ll be able to write and draw my articles in real time, in the present! But I’ll have to wait a year to see them in print.