Last year, I set the bar pretty low in terms of New Year’s resolutions: I resolved to grow my hair out.
Yes, you read that correctly—”grow my hair out.” You know what that involves? Not visiting my stylist and getting my hair cut. Simple. Easy to achieve, and I did so…until right before my Paris trip in October, when I was desperate for a change and had my stylist chop off five inches or so.
Hmm. I don’t know if that means I fulfilled my 2013 resolution or not.
This year, my New Year’s resolutions in part reflect the common promises of many new authors: I will not seek out reviews/look on Goodreads and I will not procrastinate on deadlines and I will not say “yes” to everything because I know my time is limited. These are all important elements to surviving professional authorship and keeping your sanity intact.
However, instead of simply stating what I won’t do, I thought I’d also share what I will do—embracing the positive and fun parts of being a novelist instead of only the negative. It’s so easy to fall prey to the insecurity pitfalls inherent to the author-reader relationship (e.g., “Will people like my book?” “Will my book get reviewed on a prominent site/platform?” “Less than 100 copies of my book sold; why am I still trying to do this?”), but just because it’s easy doesn’t mean it has to be the refrain in my head.
- I will be excited about all of my projects, even once they go on sale, because writing is fun.
- Because writing is fun, I will treat meeting my deadlines with anticipation instead of dread.
- One book at a time.
Number 3 is my writing mantra—various plotbunnies can get the best of me if I’m not careful, so I often need to remind myself that I must work on only one book at a time. Which is really hard. Seriously—at the moment, I’m itching to pick up the romantic suspense I started working on a couple of years ago, but I know I have to resist. My writing schedule for 2014 is already chock-full of romance goodies, and unfortunately, I don’t have a clue where I’d slide in another book. Sigh.
Oh. And I bought a treadmill. So.
Happy 2014, y’all.
