New Year’s Resolutions: The Eternal Quest of Self-Improvement

It’s that time again. I wrote out my great and grandiose plan for next year.

Ironsfork Trilogy Line edits, rewrite sequel, and draft book 3—sequel is in second draft form. If I have time, finish a spin-off that needs another 50K to complete.

Tree Gods Quartet  Revise Tree Gods pending Beta feedback, rewrite sequel—all of this series is already in first draft form.

Rewrite Flipping Completed the first draft on 12/29. Hope to pick this one back up late March or April.

Draft Dark Water (just a concept, light character work, and a query letter at this point)

Work on a short story every week. Goal is a finished one about every month or so.

Work through 4 craft books, doing all the exercises

Read 52 fantasy books. I set no limits on non-fiction, other genres, Beta reads, or graphic novels. I can read as many or few of those as I want.

Take one week off of writing every four months.

I don’t know how much of that will happen. I know that sometime in January, most likely, I’ll get my eagerly-awaited line edits to work on, and then I’ll be rescheduling all of the above. Yes, I already have a schedule in mind, and even have a month off in there to do some character work and goof off. I can do this! But that last one I’m having trouble with.

Short of anesthesia and a few sick days, I haven’t taken a day off of writing in around ten years. I don’t like going a day without writing. If I’m not drafting or revising, I’m composing a poem, writing in my journal, interacting with the writing community on Twitter, or chatting craft with some of my writing buddies on Slack.

This year, I’m going to try to take one solid week off of writing every four months. That includes Twitter. Gasp. And blogging. Crud. And writing short stories, novels, poems, non-fiction essays, journals, and to-do lists. Argh. But sometimes you have to schedule rest for your own, introverted self, or you’ll never do it. So, here goes.

There will be no blog post from me on January 6, 2020. I’m on a writing vacation. When I get back, I’ll talk about the project I finished before the break, FLIPPING. See you on the other side!