2026: Seeing Into The Future
Oh boy, how I wish I could.
I began 2026 with the feeling that I am standing at the precipice of something transitional, in the best possible way. Have you ever felt that way?
Contrary 2025 when the year started with all the hopes of a good one which went downhill faster than Clark Griswold on a lubricated metal sled, I have something coming from my core. The feeling is more internal than external, more gut than heart and I do believe that to make anything happen you have to have guts. I have been rather risk averse in previous years, scared to look silly putting myself out there. Worried what people I know will think about me sharing my writing, making content and so on… 2025 gave me a little taste of getting out of my own way, putting aside my fears by creating style content and sharing it on Instagram. If I can do that with my style choices, why not my writing?
If someone would like to tell me that 2026 is the year I get an agent I would glady accept the premonition. Something I do know for certainty, and certainties are what my Capricorn self prefers, is my first book will be introduced into the world somehow whether that is the traditional or indie route. It’s a project I have worked on for four years this January, I am ready to draw a line under this stage of it in whatever form that might look like. Of course, taking the traditional route and seeing my novel in bookshops has always been the dream but finishing a novel and beind able to show something for the years of work is greater. Is there still a stigma around self-publishing? Perhaps, but I would rather put something out because I am proud of it than let it sit on a harddrive unpublished forever. So let’s see what this year brings.
As it stands I have one final batch of agents to submit Cry For The Living to, one final push. That’s three months preparing myself for that coveted “yes” or to take the book in another direction. A deadline. Certainty.
Alongside the search for an agent I am working on other projects, writing short fiction, working on a research and development funding grant for a play I want to write and produce. I am also working on my next book, it’s about motherhood which is a topic I always swore I wouldn’t write about. Although I suppose when I became a mother twice over it is so entrenched in my identity it was silly of me to believe I never would write about it in some capacity. I have written poems about motherhood before, but this novel explores why we want to do it, why society imposes motherhood on us, what we do when we can’t have it and how all of this impacts women, from mothers to the childless and the child-free. It’s a lot to unpack, there are four stories to tell and one long red thread that connects them all. I’m excited to really start working on this and who knows, even if Cry For The Living isn’t the book that gets agents banging down my door, maybe this one just might be.
Anyway 2026 is here and I’m ready, in amongst the daily tasks, remembering to take my medication, picking up kids from school etc. I’ll be quietly and loudly working away at it all, ready to step over the edge even if I don’t have a crystal ball to tell me it will all work out.
Jordan x