A new year, a new me! Yeah, right… But really, there are some changes I would like to take on this year. I’ve been approaching it more realistically and looking at what I can do to make me a better writer and a better human.
Last year was a wild year for me.
I earned myself a promotion at work.
My job is wonderful, challenging and keeps me getting up each day happy to start the day. I know not everyone has this. I try to not let myself take it for granted. It wasn’t that many years ago I was in a totally different place.
The promotion brings new challenges, which means the day job uses up a lot of the mental juices each day. I come home tired and unmotivated to write, more often than not.
I earned my very first publication.
I have to stop and remind myself sometimes about that, in a pinch me sort of way. It’s amusing it wasn’t a fantasy story, but I can completely live with that. It was wonderful validation that I write words others want to read. The best compliment a writer could ever receive.
Here I am, a published writer with great motivation to write more, but the day job gets to take all the juices. This is why there are some changes I would like to make. The day job gets to use that energy, as it keeps “us in our feasts and finery” as my partner likes to call it. But how do I set writing as a priority?
Cue The Overwrintering Writer that came out on Holly’s Writing Classes, by her daughter Rebecca Galardo. Twinning two of my favourite pastimes, looking at the accomplishments for the year and how to prepare for next year. What is/are the big bulbs, what are the seedlings and what are the seeds to plant.
What are your goals MJ? You ask? Well, let me tell you. They are humble, but they are truthful.
I will write:
- Tuesday for 20 minutes
- Wednesday for 20 minutes
- Saturday and/or Sunday for a total of 30 minutes
My focus will be working on the revision of Nathalia Ceres. I love this story, I love these characters. I love being in the world. I want to share this you, so I will continue to muster through.
I learned this year that only doing revision was slowly draining me. New to this year’s plans include to spread that time across new fiction. Focusing on more flash fiction, or short stories within Nathalia’s world. I will also get a chance to revise more, end to end, which I hope will help me get through the big novel as well. The last of the priorities is to write more for this space. I’d like to be able to share a series of flash fiction to any of those on my mailing list, as a thank you. I will make sure one writing session a week includes non-revision work, to let the muse out to play.
And that’s the plan. Humble, but I think honest. There will be days I need to switch things around. I also recognize that illness and injury happen. I occasionally have a social life that means I am not able to always write or revise. Revising also comes with a 2” binder with a ream of paper, a pack of note cards on a 1” ring, a 1.5” binder of supporting notes, and an excel file of support notes, which means also a computer. Not terribly mobile. Not impossible, but definitely one of the weirder people in the coffee shop…
Thank you for coming along on this journey with me. I wish you a happy start to the year.
Come along on the adventure with me! Let’s see where winds take us today.