#21 – Happy New Year Writers

Happy New Year writers.

New Year’s resolutions are a great idea. They help us to set intentions for the months ahead and can kick-start new projects or breathe life into dormant ones. A new year feels like a blank slate with endless potential, free from the clutter of the half-finished drafts and scrappy short stories of the previous year.

However, we need to remember that resolutions are dependent upon a very important sidekick called Action. Without it, nothing on our bright shiny list will ever turn into a goal achieved. This may sound obvious, but often the very act of putting something on a list in some way tells our brain that it’s already done, finished! This is more likely to occur when the timescale is longer than a few days, or in the case of new year’s resolutions, a whole year. This may be because we feel there’s more than enough time to do the work and surely no reason why we won’t get everything done by the following December! By the time October rolls around, and we begin planning for Christmas, we often give up and resolve to start a new shorter list in January.

One way to improve our chances of success is to plan how we will achieve our goals, at the same time that we are setting them. Exploring how will help us realise the amount of effort and time required, and give us a moment to decide if the goal is realistic before we commit it to our list of resolutions.

January is also a great time to review the previous year. More often than not, we won’t have achieved everything we set out to do at the beginning of the year, but that may be because we were over-ambitious to start with, or that unforeseen circumstances changed our course. Either way, I’m sure that most of us can list some things we did complete; remember we can include stuff that wasn’t on our original list. Seeing all that we achieved in the past twelve months can be a great confidence booster for the year ahead.

Reviewing the past year can be very useful in planning the year ahead, especially in identifying areas we might choose to change. I have a full-time job and finding time to write is always a challenge. During my review of last year, I identified some ‘time suckers’, things that use valuable time and don’t have much or any real value (did social media just jump into your head too!). So one of my goals for the year ahead is to eliminate or reduce the time I give to these time suckers. It’s important to own our time; things don’t take time from us, we give our time to them, which means we can also take it back.

Beware of undervaluing your past year’s achievements. Every minute we spend on a writing activity brings us closer to our goals, whatever they may be. I thought I’d have published another book by the end of 2018, but a hundred thousand words later, I’m still knee deep in plots and character motivations. Other writers I follow churned out several books in 2018. I could compare myself to them and become demotivated and delete the lot. But the truth is, I like writing, I enjoy creating characters & situations, and I look forward to seeing how they turn out. And guess what? I’m still learning the craft of writing, so yeah, it’s going to take me a little longer than the Lee Childs and JK Rowlings of this world (I might as well aim high).

So enjoy making your plans for 2019 and if the doubts creep in, remind yourself why you want to reach the goals you’re setting, what achieving them give you and how will you feel when you get there.

Have a great year,
Harry

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