Can you believe we’re mere hours away from 2019? I can still remember being a teenager when the ball dropped on the new millennium – just saying the year 2000 felt space-age and futuristic, and here we are just a year away from 2020!
I’m not generally much for resolutions, as I have a very short attention span, and easily get distracted by newer, shiner resolutions (“I’m going to exercise every day! And cook healthy meals every day! And clean the house more often! Ooooh, and take up knitting again! And-And-And”), but I thought I’d dust off the ol’ keyboard and share a few writerly/bookish resolutions that I can hopefully chip away at over the year. In no particular order, here are my resolutions for 2019!
- Stop dog-earing books.
Ugh, I am literally the worst librarian in the universe. I have bookmarks. I have beautiful bookmarks. I am just lazy, and disorganised, and can’t be bothered to find said bookmarks when it’s time to stop reading. Bad librarian! Bad, bad, bad!
2. Read outside my comfort zone. At least a little bit.
As a reader I know what I like and I read what I know. For me, that typically includes murder mysteries, historical fiction, and narrative nonfiction. That leaves a lot of genres untouched. I can’t remember the last time I picked up a contemporary adult fiction title, or a romance novel, or a work of horror. This year I’d like to challenge myself to read a bit more broadly, at least a little bit.
3. Finish What You Start
Oh I am the queen of the DNF. Probably the majority of the books I start I don’t end up finishing. As mentioned above, I have a short attention span, and quickly get bored by books and distracted by other, shinier books. While I don’t believe in forcing yourself to finish books that really don’t do anything for you, I would like to try and work on my focus a bit more, and try giving books a bit more of a chance before I give up on them completely.
4. Stop editing my work as I write it.
I’m a terrible editor. Instead of letting the words flow and getting all my ideas out on paper before editing them, I constantly self-edit as I go, which slows me down, kills my momentum and severely dents my self-confidence, meaning I often give up projects part-way through, before I’ve even given them a fair shot. This year, I want to focus on writing more, and editing less. You can always edit a bad manuscript, but you can’t edit a blank page.
5. Connect with other writers, online and IN REAL LIFE.
This one is a real challenge for me, because I am terribly, terribly shy. Just the thought of mingling and mixing with a group of strangers sets my social anxiety meter through the roof. What will I say? What will I do? How quickly will I make a fool of myself this time? The truth is, I am absolutely terrible at socialising. But, in a funny turn of events, I do quite like people, and I would like to connect with more people who engage in this strange business we call writing. And unfortunately, you can’t connect with people without putting yourself out there. So, wish me luck, as I try and convince myself to actually leave my writing cave, every once in a while at least.
6. Submit, submit, submit
This is an ongoing resolution for me, but one that bears repeating. You can’t get published if you don’t submit your work, so, keep submitting your work!
And those are my bookish/writerly resolutions for 2019! Have you set any resolutions for the new year? I’d love to hear them (and potentially steal some of them for my own list!).
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!