What’s your word of the year?

December tends to be full to the brim, and I often find myself shoved into the new year slightly unceremoniously, with no resolutions made, goals written or birthdays entered into the new diary. One thing, however, we always do, and that is to pick our Word of the Year. If there’s one single thing you want 2020 to be about, even when all other goals fail, what’s it to be? Serenity? Optimism? Being Kind? It’s quite liberating to ditch complicated goal-setting (which I used to do with categories and sub-categories!) and create a single signpost for the new year.

Every novel has a ‘word’

And, unsurprisingly, it comes in handy when writing books, too. For every one of my novels, whether it is there at the start or becomes apparent throughout, I focus on a single word to capture the essence. With My Mother’s Shadow it was Identity. How does where we come from shape who we are, and what are we meant to be when everything we know about ourselves suddenly breaks apart? In Summer of Secrets, it was Love, and all the things it can be: fulfilling, smothering, hurting, healing. 

Freedom!

It cuts through noise and lends focus, shining a light on dark plot-roads ahead, and now that I’m in the last throes of Book 3 — my deadline is 31 January and any and all good thoughts are appreciated! — I find myself clutching The Word like a life raft. Freedom, that’s what Book 3 is going to be about. Everyone in the novel is running from something: a forced marriage, a devastating guilt, a dark secret. They’re all yearning to be free, my characters, but little do they know that freedom is always relative, and that, as in all good stories, what you wish for isn’t necessarily what you really need…