Wednesday, December 26, 2007

New Year Resolutions

Every year after all the torn and ripped up wrapping paper is thrown away I start to think about New Year Resolutions and what mine should be.

There's been a couple of years where I've actually started on my New Year Resolutions in the middle of December. I learned in college that if you did something the same way, the same time, every day it would take two weeks for it to become a habit. But if you didn't do that same thing for two days the habit would be broken. So why not start early and get those habits firmly in place before the new year starts?

Unfortunately I haven't always been that prepared. But what I did find out was that whatever book I was reading at the first of the year would have an influence on my whole outlook for the year. Read a bad book? Have a bad year. This year I've got that covered. What I don't have covered is my writing resolutions.

I've tried "writing every day" and "write X number of pages a day" and "write for X number of minutes a day," but nothing has stuck and worked out for me. I've even done "write one short story a month" but when you have a few days at the beginning of the month you think you have all the time in the world. Next thing you know is that it's the 28th and you haven't written anything. And I thought that was a do-able resolution.

I want to make my resolutions something meaningful. And something that will stick. I want to change my life (at least where my writing is concerned). I could be just like those millions of other writer wannabes that say they'll write, but then never do. Or I could actually do something about it.

In one of the Letters to the Editor in the February Writer's Digest someone said they wrote a novel at 17 years old and kept rewriting the same book for 41 years. They updated it to make it more modern and such but they never got around to selling it. They were able to get an agent but nothing came out of it. They said they might still be working on their novel until they're 80 years old and I'm left thinking why? Why not put that novel aside and write another one? Take what you learned from that novel and apply it to the next one. If that ones doesn't sell, move on to the next one and learn for it as well.

Am I going to be one of those people who writes one book and never writes anything else because I think that one book is amazing and should sell so I spend all my time just rewriting it until it does sell? Or am I going to be that person who always talks about writing, but who never actually sits down to write anything of any value.

I don't want to set myself up for failure, but I'm not sure what's obtainable for me either. Like my title description says I've got lots of ideas, but a lot of writer's block as well.

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