I’m crap at sticking to resolutions. January is traditionally my month of optimism followed by crashing defeat so this year, I’m trying something a little different: goals in bite-sized chunks. Like ‘write every day for one month’ — I’m hoping it’ll become a habit.
I know it’s only the third of the month but so far I’ve written three pieces of flash. One of which I fully edited and submitted earlier this morning (go insomnia!) — and that’s another of my January goals met, to submit a piece of writing. Write every day…
The pieces are not necessarily the best written and may never see the light of day, but that’s not the point. The more I write, the better I’ll write. The more the words flow, the better the ideas I’ll have. My reticence over dialogue will fade. A confidence will gradually appear: word choices, themes, plot, narrative.
I’m not ready to hold myself accountable to the wider world, but when I do there’s hashtags on Twitter, such as 100DaysofWriting.
In the meantime, I intend to keep track of where I’m at. As long as I’m writing every day with intent, i.e. writing fiction or creative non-fiction and not my grocery shopping list. What I’ll write, I’m unsure. So far, it’s been a fantasy piece, a sci-fi one and I guess the other, which I submitted, is more literary. (I have a page up in the menu ‘my books‘, primed and ready, to list where and when I get published. Fingers crossed it won’t be empty for long.)
I also have storytelling dice, one of my Christmas presents, as inspiration. One of the two pieces yesterday was an experiment in creativity — throw a die and see what happens. I got a story from it. It needs tidying up but it’s the kernel of an idea and something I can work on later if I wish.