It’s 2024 ( apparently). I never thought I would live to see the day, given the number of near-death incidents I’ve had in my life- but that’s another story. Now is the time to look forward - and to a box fresh new year on Boot Camp.
First, I would like to point Boot Campers to this link, offering reduced-cost mentoring for a limited period.
Hope you will take advantage of the offer as it expires this Sunday 7 January.
In other news, I will resume posting my Saturday essay on Saturday 6 January. On Tuesdays, I will publish writing tips and on Thursdays there will be archive posts - either from my back catalogue as a journalist or earlier Substack posts freed from behind the paywall.
I hope you will let me know in the comment at the end of this post what you hope and expect from Boot Camp in 2024. I personally would like to see more community participation, in the form of Zoom talks and sharing your writing, but the last time I tried the response was disappointing. If there is enough interest I may start my Emerging Writers Club again - so do post here if you would like to see that happen.
In the meantime, for the whole of January, all my posts will be FREE, so please share them when you get them. My subscription numbers have been static for a little while now, so I am hoping they can get a boost this year to keep my motivation high. Also I have, for a limited period, reduced the cost of my paid subscription to £5 per month, or £50 a year.
You can also book a personal consultation with me here:
Book a meeting with Tim Lott
My new year’s resolution is to write a play and a new novel, so the effort I put into Boot Camp has to justify the time I spend on it. That’s all down to you and your support - as ever , this is a reader-driven publication, which I enjoy doing but which takes a lot of effort.
Hope you all have a great new year, and see you for my first post on Saturday.
Hi Tim, I've just been charged £50 by you, and i never agreed to paying for this as I'm no longer a paying member of your Bootcamp. I'm super strapped for cash as well as pissed off because it came as a shock since I never agreed to this. I've spoken to my bank already and they said I'd be refunded when i explained the situation, but I'll have to speak to them again since its showing up as £50 charged. I've enjoyed your bootcamp but have stopped ages ago to get on with my memoir, a struggle. Might join up in the future.
Writing on two Fronts Tim?
Or, perhaps, writing a play that revolves around a novelist turning over fresh leaves or a novel built around the theme of writing a play?
Whatever, bon chance with your intention(s) and here's a single sentence story to set Boot Camp's Bagatelle Ball rolling and rollicking it's unpredictable way around the newly fangled Pin Ball Machine I notice you've had installed in the Campers' Club House in the quietude of the Frolicking Festive Season:
"He awoke, wet with night sweat, relieved to find he'd lived past the perfect storm of passing portents this New Year: his father having died at home on that Eve fifty years ago, finding himself looking hopefully towards the prospect of experiencing himself being seventy this time next year, having outlived his mother's departure at sixty-nine and awakening alongside his by then eighty year old and best loved wife, and with both of them enjoying another six day countdown to the sore footed, refracted and saddle camel sore arrival of The Magi bearing sweets to lob out, with delightfully un-regal glee, towards the hordes of over excited Spanish children bearing carrying bags to harvest the bounty of future tooth rot on this latest traditional and processional Andalucian Twelfth Night."
That's it. Over and out for me. For now.