The only New Year’s resolution I made in my adult life was when I was working on my first novel, The Mud of the Place, and was desperately afraid I was going to choke and not finish it. I resolved to work on it every day until it was done. Note that I did not resolve to write X number of words every day or for X number of hours. Sometimes I was so panicky that I opened the file at 10 minutes to midnight — and every single time I found something that needed doing.
Pretty much my only resolution is “Keep going,” and I make it every day. Nevertheless, I do like this list of non-resolutions and think I will give them a try. Maybe you will too.
New Year is often a time when we want to close one chapter of our lives and start fresh – with new ideas, with new energy and determination to fulfill our goals.
What usually happens, we do set new goals but as the months progress, so does our goals whittle along with autumn yellow leaves – until they become forgotten, unfulfilled and replaced by random events called life.
Instead of making a New Year’s resolution list, I have a different proposition for you. Why ‘hit your head against the wall’, and think of what and how you can accomplish when you are looking for the answers in the wrong place?
Here are 6 questions for your creative reflection exercise that can help you evaluate what you have accomplished in the previous period/year and maybe start from there? You might have a project that you could finish or idea that didn’t…
View original post 361 more words
Write Through It 
Susanna, this post could not be more timely. The material on the link is interesting, but more than that, your account of your resolve to work on your book every day is exactly what I need. I too have long moments of great fear that I will not finish my WIP, and various attempts at setting time quotas and word quotas have dwindled to nada. Doing something–anything–every day sounds truly workable and effective.
LikeLike
Oh yay!! This is pretty much the only approach that consistently works for me. If I leave a WIP alone for too long, I become convinced that it’s total crap, not worth saving, etc., etc. When I was working on novel #1, “too long” was 24 hours. But when I just mustered the nerve to open the file and start reading, I’d almost immediately start thinking “Hey, this isn’t bad” and pretty soon I’d be tinkering with this, playing with that . . . Often, when I didn’t open the file till 10 minutes to midnight, I’d keep going till one in the morning.
These days 7 to 9 or 9:30 in the morning is my writing time. Usually this means working on novel #2 (I’m on draft #3, and maybe because I’m an editor as well as a writer, I don’t find revising half as scary as first-drafting), but it might mean posting something to one of my blogs, working on a review or letter to the editor, or even, more rarely, posting a comment to someone else’s blog. Being self-employed, I can make my own schedule most of the time. My mantra is “Whatever works!”
LikeLike