Happy New Year, everyone! I fell into a time warp and lost two weeks while my mom was staying with me. Had a nice Christmas, a slightly rocky start to the New Year, made some resolutions, set some goals, am still trying to mentally commit to some things, like the RWA National Conference, which is a little over 7 months away.
Resolutions were pretty loosely framed. I didn’t set much in the way of formal stuff. Dieting of course, but I’ve been “dieting” for a little over a year now so that was just a recommitment resolution instead of a massive change.
I set myself a goal of an hour of uninterrupted writing time every day. It’s not going so well at the moment because I’m in R&R stages, and anybody whose eyes didn’t glaze over after the umpteenth whinedragonbookwhine post this time last year will recall how much of a pussy I am when it comes to doing something writing-wise that I don’t want to do.
Why do you think it is? I think it’s because once I’m “finished” with a story, I mentally detach from it and have trouble getting back into the heart. I can only see it as a whole picture, and burrowing in to fiddle with the parts all over again is like going into a finished building and getting down into the foundation to shift the bricks around. It carries the weight of the whole thing on top. Moving a mountain. Even if it IS a mere 20k-word short novella.
In any event, I’m at the point of trying to trick myself into working on it, so I’m about to open a new blank document and write a new first chapter. I’ll see how far I get by starting with a “new” house and borrowing from the old to stack the rooms, instead of crawling around under all three storeys. I set myself a goal of finishing the r&r this week. I may have to modify that to mid-January.
It’s OK – despite Conan O’Brien’s slight snarkiness last night about New Year’s resolution modifications only 5 days into the gig, it’s totally better to MODIFY your goals and resolutions than to throw them out altogether. Modify away, says I!
