It’s been a fairly busy year for Dr Martin Austwick: I was wed, got a new job, released an album of songs about science (which got mentioned in BoingBoing), launched it at a beautiful old time music hall (thanks to Geekpop), wrote half of a new Sound of The Ladies album (it was meant to be out by now but RL/PS3/not being happy with all the songs [delete as applicable] got in the way), recorded songs for Spirit of Play, performed at the Bloomsbury Theatre, recorded the 200th episode of Answer Me This!, started a new academic podcast, wrote a jingle for Josie Long and Andrew Collins’ BBC6 show, and last but not least, learned to make shortcrust pastry and understand clues in the Telegraph cryptic crossword. If only it had been a less right-wing paper.

So what for 2012? As ever, no masterplan. I hope to finish the SOTL album, maybe a science EP if I can think of a way to make it different from the last album*, do more gigs with the band, find more ways to be creative and do what I do but better.

I can’t help admiring Darren Hayman’s January Songs project (where he released a new song every day in January 2011, later releasing it as a double-album) – that’s a proper work ethic and a really good way to strip away a lot of the barriers to writing by forcing yourself to write lots. There are a bunch of reasons I wouldn’t do that myself, foremost amongst them being 1) Darren Hayman’s already done it 2) I have a full-time job and don’t see how I would physically have enough time 3) I just don’t write that fast, the results would probably be really thin. Of those, 3) is probably the least convincing -  I probably could manage it. Certainly Jonathan Coulton’s Thing a Week project would be doable, if I set my mind to it and thought it would be a good idea.

The alternative I’m toying with is to record and share a cover version every day until I run out or get bored. This is not quite as good as writing them, but it has the advantage that I know a fair few covers and could learn others, so I could probably keep this going for several weeks if not months. I could bash them out quite fast, and this would be another way to force me to do stuff every day. On the other side… it’s kind of been done (I assume). And it would be karaoke. And promoting myself on the basis of other people’s songwriting talent (although maybe it would introduce people to some cool songs they’d never heard, who knows?). What do people think? Is this a waste of time? Would anyone listen to a variety of songs reduced to a guitar/vocals arrangement? Can you let me know in the comments, on email (thesoundoftheladies@gmail.com), or on twitter (@martinaustwick) – should I bother? Does this sound like a fun thing or something a bit shit?

*nothing wrong with Songs From The Scientific Cabaret, it would just be a shame to repeat it.