Making Resolutions That Stick

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We're a week into the New Year, and if you’re a writer, you've no doubt composed a raft of New Year’s resolutions related to your craft - resolutions that you might find that you're struggling to stick to now that you're back into a routine at work and away from your 'holiday bubble'. While others resolved to visit the gym three times a week, or to buy fewer pairs of shoes, you’ve resolved to write 1000 words a day, finish writing eight novels, or to hit the best-seller list by the end of the year. We do it every year, and we usually fail every year, making us feel worse, not better, about our writing. So how can we make resolutions that we’ll be able to stick to?

1) Be realistic

One of the problems with resolutions is that we try to over-reach ourselves. Think of this not as a resolution but as a goal – so it’s what you’re aiming to do, not what you will do. By giving yourself this flexibility, you’re more likely to stick to whatever framework you set yourself, and therefore complete your goal by year’s end. So your phrasing might be “I intend to finish writing one novel of 70,000 words or more” as opposed to “I will write a trilogy of 100,000 word novels”.

2) Don’t try to change your habits overnight

Following on from number one, it’s no use telling yourself that you will write a 100,000 word novel by the end of April if you normally find you only have time to write around 3,000 words a week. If you push yourself to work beyond your time constraints or work patterns, you may find you drop behind within a few days, and soon you’ll lose the motivation to write at all. Keep your resolutions (or goals) within your usual habits and you’ll find it easier to keep going.

3) Your resolutions don’t have to be time dependent

We always think our resolutions have to run from January to December but that’s highly unrealistic – we have no way of knowing where we’ll be twelve months from now. So why not set quarter resolutions? Maybe you’ll set yourself a particular word count to hit between now and the end of March. If you hit it with ease, you can raise it for the end of June, and so on. If you can’t hit it, then you can always reduce your count for the next one until it’s manageable.

4) Think beyond the resolution

Try setting yourself an additional goal beyond the resolution itself – in psychological terms, link situations with actions. So you might reword your resolution from “I will finish my book and send it to an agent” to “If I complete my novel and receive positive beta feedback, then I will start sending it to agents”. It breaks the resolution down into manageable stages and gives you something to do when you've actually fulfilled the resolution. The end action also gives you an extra incentive.

5) Form a habit

Remember that you’re essentially trying to form a new habit by forming a resolution, and the only way for something to really become a habit is if you do it! Sit down, start typing, or researching – whatever it is you need to do to make your resolution a reality. The more regularly you do it, the better a chance you stand at actually making your resolution stick. Your resolution might be to write more, and you might have a spare ten minutes at lunch time, so maybe you might want to write 500 words every lunchtime. So get on and do it.

What are your resolutions - and have you broken them already?

So, 2013, we meet at last...

Tweet I asked the question on Twitter a few days ago about whether or not I should restrict myself to talking about writing, design and so on, or whether people would like to see more posts that express me as a person. I'm not very good at talking about myself on my blog, but I can't help thinking that solely featuring posts about writing, or arty things, may be a little 'dry'. A few people asked me to do both, so I figured now was as good a time as any to do a more 'personal' post, as I discuss how the holidays have gone!

It's been wonderful to have time off work, time that I've been able to spend relaxing (something with which I often have some difficulty), and doing work for my PhD (on which I've fallen behind a bit of late). I don't often feel that I have the time to sit and unwind, since I always have a lot of things I should be doing instead of relaxing. I also had a very good Christmas, receiving books that are both useful and interesting (Kim Newman's Nightmare Movies, a Boris Karloff biography, and a book on the English Civil War), DVDs, and Nintendo DS games that should keep me out of mischief. I even found time to do a spot of baking, producing one of my now infamous chocolate orange loaf cakes and a collection of ninjabread men for Christmas Day.

What are ninjabread men, I hear you ask. Well, they're gingerbread men made using my ninja cookie cutters! I had a lot of fun decorating them with icing pens as well, and I've included some photos below. Cool, aren't they?

The ninjabread men before...

After...

Close up!

They were also incredibly delicious and I'll no doubt make them again in future. I have some dinosaur cutters that I want to try so you never know, I might feature a gingersaurus or something within the next few months.

For New Year, I originally went to my best friend's house party but a killer headache (and a problem with my shoulder that makes it painful to breathe) forced me home early, so I saw in the New Year with my parents. I was also my family's First Foot for the year, which is a somewhat archaic tradition that we follow in order to welcome the new year. In Scottish and Northern English folklore, the First Foot is whoever is first to enter the house in the new year, bringing with them good fortune (allegedly). First-footers must leave the house before midnight, and return after midnight, bringing with them a collection of 'gifts'. In our house, it's a silver coin (to symbolise prosperity), a piece of food (to ensure continuing food), a box of matches (to bring warmth) and a drink (usually whisky though I've been known to toast the new year with cranberry juice. First footers are supposed to be tall, dark-haired men, but I've done it before, and I'm doing it again. Other countries, or even parts of the UK, have different traditions, but that's how we do things at Castle Sedgwick.

I posted last week about looking back over 2012, and looking forward over 2013, and I did say my main goals were related to fiction projects, my PhD and things at work. Having said all of that, I also decided to make some creative resolutions, and I've decided that my goals for the year are to;

• Read and review at least one fiction book every month,
• Go to the cinema and review at least one film every month,
• Write 100 words every day,
• Produce an image of some form every day.

It may sound like a lot to work through, but I've been reading more than a book a month for 2012 anyway so it is simply continuing that work, and writing a hundred words, be it on an existing project or just as a vignette, shouldn't be too difficult as again, I've been doing it anyway. Producing an image, be it a drawing or a photo, should be easy as I pretty much did that anyway for the latter half of 2012! As far as the cinema goes, it largely depends on what is released, but I let my cinema blog fall by the wayside last year, and I'd like to feature more content on it. Being a film academic should be incentive enough but I'm hoping to have more free time after April to make producing content a little easier.

So now I've said all that...how about you?

2011 - New Year, Same Icy

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So it’s finally 2011. I could sit here and dissect how well I maintained the resolutions I made in 2010 but I’d rather look forward than back. (For those who are interested, I managed two out of ten, but considering one of them was to master teleportation, that’s hardly surprising).

I don’t actually like the idea of resolutions, particularly since my inner rebel seeks to break them as soon as they’re made. Why should I wait until January 1st to decide to do something new, or to attend something about which I am unhappy? It’s nonsense. As a result, I’ve decided to compile a short list of things I would like to have done, or mastered, by the end of 2011.

1) Complete The New Author One Million Word Challenge.
I accepted this challenge on Twitter (the brainchild of @TheNewAuthor), and as the name suggests, I have to write one million words between January 1st and December 31st. For the mathematically minded, that equals 2740 words per day. Blog posts, fiction, journaling – they all count toward the total (although tweets don’t). The word count meter on the right will show how I’m getting on.

2) Fiction.
I want to finish the new novella I began on New Year’s Eve for Pulp Press, edit my YA novel and begin getting it out in front of agents, and I want to release the Parrots and Piracy e-book. These are the main goals, at least. There are other things I’d like to do, but these three are top of the list.

3) Academia.
I've wanted to do a PhD ever since I graduated in 2005 with my MA in Cinema Studies, and in the summer of 2010, I finally made enquiries about beginning a PhD in Film Studies. Things have been going well thus far, so with any luck, I’ll be starting in October. Getting work underway on it is one of my major goals for the year.

4) Crafts.
I’ve now been knitting for two years, with a reasonable degree of success. I had a go at knitting on dpns (double-pointed needles) over Christmas, and I’d like to master that particular skill, especially so I can knit my first pair of seamless socks. I also want to learn to crochet at some point.

5) Art.
I remembered how much I enjoyed art in 2010, and I’d like to continue this momentum into 2011, whether I’m taking photographs, whipping up e-book covers, or drawing cartoons.

Now, you’ll notice that I haven’t listed the banishment of any bad habit, or the imposition of a new diet/exercise regime. This ties in with my desire to master or complete something, as opposed to resolving to do something. All of these choices are achievable, and steps have already been taken to point me in the right direction. They give me something to both aim for and work on whilst remaining realistic about my chances of completion.

It’ll be interesting to revisit this list 365 days from today!

2010: Those pesky 'resolutions'

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2009 has slunk off quietly to crawl under the rock from whence it came, and now we're in a shiny new year.

Well, in time honoured tradition, I'm not making resolutions for the New Year. Why? Because it's intrinsic to my nature to break them. I'll resolve to lose weight while eating "just one more" mince pie, and I'll resolve to rein in my spending while compulsively surfing eBay. So in a potentially foolhardy endeavour to fool myself, I shall set myself targets. I like having goals to meet - it's a good motivator for me. So here are ten things I intend to do in 2010.

1) Spend more time with my other half. He supports my writing so he's already special.
2) Master teleportation. I realise this is unlikely but anything is possible in this day and age.
3) Finish redrafting my first novel and start getting it out to agents.
4) Learn Russian. I studied it for two years at school and as I've wanted to learn a new language for a while, it makes sense to do one I've already got some knowledge of. This also relates to Intention #1.
5) Annex at least a small portion of this planet as my very own territory. Sadly the name 'Iceland' is taken.
6) Read at least one novel every month.
7) Find and keep a new job.
8) Learn how to play chess. I refuse to be bested by a game.
9) Return to my second novel and finish a first draft.
10) Learn to play the harmonica. I've had one sitting in my drawer for five years - time to start giving it a go, methinks.

Wish me luck!