New Year's Resolutions

The New Year offers a fresh start to improve your writing habits. Ginny Weihardt, offers these 10 Resolutions for Writers:


1) Write every day.
Commit an hour, a half hour -- even just 15 minutes to writing every day. Try to make it the same time, soon after you get up or before you go to bed, for instance, so that it becomes a habit. Just get yourself into the chair once a day and you'll be surprised at the results.

2) Defy your writer's block.
Renew your commitment to finding a way to overcome your block, if you have one. Find out what's causing your writing woes, and address it head on.

3) Finish an unfinished work.
Have a story or novel sitting around, keeping you from going on to new, more exciting projects? Don't let those unfinished projects steal your energy any longer. Make a plan to get through them this year, and stick to it. You'll find that you have a renewed energy and interest in your writing, once these old projects are off your plate.

4) Read more.
Are there classic novels you've always meant to read, but haven't? Or some genre you think might inform your work in interesting or productive ways? Make a plan. It doesn't have to be too ambitious, but set some modest goals for your reading life this year.

5) Keep a journal.
Though journaling is an art in itself, with its own disciplines and satisfactions, many fiction writers rely on their journals for ideas and details. If nothing else, keeping a journal is a good way to ensure that you're writing consistently.

6) Find a place to write.
If a lack of space is keeping you from writing, put this at the top of your list. Your resolution might also be to just make your writing space more conducive to your work. Clean up the clutter; surround yourself with things that inspire you. Have a space you look forward to entering.

7) Finish the first draft of a novel.
If you've always wanted to write a novel, but have been afraid to attempt it, make this the year you finally do it. Don't worry if it's good or not, or if it's publishable or not. Just find a story you need to write, that only you can write, and write it. There's something valuable about sticking to something this big, about discovering that you can do it. If nothing else, you'll finally be able to cross this off your list of things to do in life.

8) Send out.
If you know you're ready to publish, make a realistic goal about the number of magazines you want to submit to, presses you want to query, or contests you want to try, and stick to it. Stay focused on accomplishing your goal, though, and not on the result. Whether you get published or not, you can take satisfaction in meeting your goal.

9) Try a genre or an artform you've never tried before.
Screenwriters, playwrights, and poets have a lot to teach fiction writers. You'll find that you take the lessons of that genre back to your fiction. The same applies to other artforms. From photography, you'll learn to pay attention to the visual world, and from acting, to put yourself in the mind of someone else and to pay attention to how people move in space.

10) Be easier on yourself.

Focus on what you do accomplish this year, not on your failures. Writing is hard, and getting published even harder. Beating yourself up doesn't help anything. Reward yourself for having found something that you love this much, and for sticking to it.