New Year Resolutions

Evidently the top ten resolutions are – lose weight/get more exercise, keep to a budget, reduce debts, have more quality time with family and friends, find a soul mate, stop smoking, find a better job, learn something new, volunteer and help others, and get organised.

All very laudable, but – it seems to me - all very vague too. They are general aims rather than specific objectives or actual targets.

I started to wonder whether, as writers, we should have general aims (e.g. to finish that novel, to get published etc) or whether we should set ourselves attainable objectives/targets. Not just as a New Year resolution but all the time.

Write 1,000 words a day? Sounds good, doesn’t it? At that rate, you could complete a novel in 2 months. But isn’t it quality and not quantity that really counts?

So how about “I WILL write through writer’s block, or when I get stuck on a plot, or a conversation, or about how to get my characters from A to B”.

But does that work? Sometimes it’s better to take a few days break, do something else, and come back to it feeling refreshed (even if you have been thinking about it in the meantime).

So what are my targets? Mainly, I suppose, to stop ‘wasting’ so much time on Facebook when I could be writing!

And to write something, even if it’s only a paragraph or a short piece of dialogue, every day.

Achievable? We’ll see.