My New Year's resolution? I'm going to write a new book

It is day one of 2018 and I am writing my second book.

There, I've said it. So now I have to do it.

My first book, Confessions of a Tinderella, came out in May 2015, which makes me the old timer here at Riff Raff Towers. Amy and I spend our days immersed in the very latest books, because our mission is to promote first-time authors and support aspiring writers. Confessions... wouldn't make it past the first hurdle. But three years on and I am wiser, older and certainly more wrinkled, and my second book will be all the better for it.

Amy is also writing her second book. She has flown all the way to Australia to do so and I can picture her now: shades on, legs up, pen and notebook in one hand and cocktail in the other.

My surroundings are slightly less exotic: I am writing this in my office, which is next to a concrete factory, and is currently empty save for the elderly, Polish gentleman who occupies a desk on a near 24/7 basis. I do not think he enjoyed my Spotify singalong while I was Blu-Tacking inspirational postcards to my wall.

But it doesn't matter where you write (right?) as long as you are getting words on the page.

It was inevitable that Amy and I would begin our second books in 2018. The Riff Raff has proved so consistently inspiring, so outrageously encouraging, that we couldn't not start writing. From the My First Time interviews to The Riff Raff Podcast to our monthly writers' event, we feel like we have taken a crash-MA in How to Write a Brilliant Book. Genuinely, we have accrued the kind of tips and advice that one usually pays thousands to obtain. Take a stroll through our archives – there is gold in them there hills.

Let's face it: 2017 hit some potholes. Trump. Terrorism. Brexit. Did I mention Trump? Which means that, firstly, 2018 can only get better (...right?) and, secondly, that words are more important than ever.