This dignified old tree lives in the field overlooking my house. Isn’t it splendid?
Happy New Year
This time of year is a time for reflection. I tend to chew over all the plans I made last year and never quite got around to fulfilling. But does that really matter? The most important things are the hopes I did fulfill. This is a time to rejoice with the friends and family and lament the passing of friendship I no longer connect with. And of course, this is a time to be grateful for the health and happiness of my loved ones.
I feel I have achieved loads this year. I completed my novel and even though I haven’t managed to drum up any interest in it yet, I am proud of the accomplishment. I have embarked on new pastimes; guitar and pilates. I have made new friends and joined new writing groups.
I continue to marvel at what life has to offer me and what I can give in return.
2008 is going to be a bumper year for me. I was born in 1958, so this will be my fiftieth year.
The First Fifty
Because I want to make this year special I plan to dig up all the dreams and desires of the first fifty years and try some of them out before the beginning of 2009. I don’t intend to get hung up on achieving a full list of fifty tasks, like the suggestions in those horrible list books “5 million things to do before you die and feel guilty if you don’t do anything” etc.
My list is going to be achievable and desirable (to me anyway). Things like; read ‘War and Peace’, play a game of Bingo at a proper Bingo hall, bake a souffle, watch Stirling Albion play at home, and plant a tree. Easy-peasy stuff but worth making the effort to turn my celebration year into one I’ll cherish for ever.
Moira McPartlin’s debut novel The Incomers, published by Fledgling Press in 2012, was shortlisted for the Saltire Society First Book of the Year Award. Over the next seven years Moira wrote her speculative fiction, Sun Song Trilogy novels (also published by Fledgling Press). The novels, set in 2089, reflect many issues we face today. Moira’s last novel, Before Now: Memoir of a Toerag, is written entirely in the Fife dialect and was published by her own imprint, Trilleachan Press, in May 2021.
In 2021 she became a writing fellow at Hawthornden Castle. In 2022 she was appointed the Scriever for The Federation of Writers (Scotland), and in 2024 was the recipient of a Bridges Award, a residency at Cove Park, Argyll. Her short stories and poetry have been widely published in literary magazines and anthologies.
Moira’s latest publication, A Thing So Delicate: The Hidden Voices of Scotland’s Mass Concrete Viaducts, is a collaboration with her husband, Colin. It is a hybrid about the social history surrounding the building of Scotland’s Victorian mass concrete viaducts. This includes creative nonfiction, prose, poetry, and photography.
Moira is listed on the Scottish Book Trust Live Literature Database.
View all posts by Moira Mcpartlin
www.moiramcpartlin.com 
It’s a Great Image!!Happy new Year!
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