New Year’s Writing Resolutions

In our last article, we looked at why you should do a year-end writing retrospective, how reflecting on your writing work throughout the year can help you appreciate your accomplishments and learn from your setbacks.

In this article, we want to look forward and discuss the writing resolutions you can make for the new year, based on that retrospective. Here are some tips on how to start off this writing year.

Set goals…

It’s a good idea to set writing goals for the year. Perhaps you want to commit to writing every day for a certain amount of time or to achieve a specific word count. Maybe you want to finish a project that you started last year or the previous year. Or you might want to embark on a brand new writing project. Decide what you want to accomplish for the year, with the awareness that this goal may change as you progress.

… but not too hard to achieve

At the same time, it’s a good idea to set achievable goals. If you plan to write a 100,000-word novel from beginning to end in the year, this might be difficult to achieve, at least if you have a full-time job. If, however, you set a goal to write a certain number of chapters, or, say, 50,000 words over the year, this is something you can completewithout disappointment. You can always set a new goal later in the year after you’ve accomplished your first goal.

Work on editing and revising an existing project

For some writers, completing a first draft is relatively easy. They get carried along with momentum, dumping words on the page, not worrying about perfection. The more difficult stage is editing and revising that draft into a compelling story. If you have a completed first draft, or, perhaps, 50,000 words or so that you wrote during NaNoWriMo, you can focus on honing that text.

We’re doing a special Editing and Polishing Your Work month this January, so look for more articles to help you refine your writing.

Enhance your writing skills

In our previous article, we looked at how you can do a year-end writing retrospective to identifyareas where you can improve your writing. We linked to several articles discussing books that can help you learn more about writing. Perhaps this year‘s writing resolution can include picking a few writing books to read during the year. Books like this are often best absorbed if you read, say, a chapter a week, and reflect on your writing at the end of each chapter. Or, perhaps you could take a class to learn more about areas where you feel you can improve your skills.

Explore the writing community

Writing is a solitary act, but everyone can benefit from communicating with other writers. There is a vast writing community available both physically and through the internet, and perhaps this is a good time to make connections, to meet people you can work with sharing feedback and motivation. If you’re lucky to find the right person, you may discover a critique partner, someone you can share your writing with, discuss your ideas, and share feedback with.

Think about your writing environment and tools

In my nearly 30 years as a freelancer, I have discovered how changing my writing environment and tools can change the way I write. I work from home, and for many years, I was that guy who “knew where everything was on his desk.“ A few years ago, I cleared almost everything off my desk, and I feel that I’m more productive in this less cluttered setting. 

Think about your own writing environment. You may not have a lot of options, but you may be able to make some changes to make it a more inviting space. Whether it’s a dedicated room, a desk or table in one part of your home, or a coffee shop, think about changing your space in order to alter your perspective on the writing process.

It’s also a good idea to think about the tools you use to write. If you’re working on a desktop computer, are your keyboard and mouse comfortable enough for you to write fluently? A good keyboard is a valuable investment, as anything that can help the words flow more easily removes impediments that can prevent you from writing.

Think about where you want to be this time next year

Rather than setting hard and fast goals, think of where you want to be as a writer in one year. Do you want to be more confident in certain aspects of writing, such as plot, dialogue, or world-building? Do you want to have completed a novel, or part of a novel; finished and polished a draft; or written several short stories? Or do you want to be published?

Think about how to get there from here. Make a roadmap or an outline of the steps you need to take to reach that stage. Break these steps down into smaller steps; and even smaller steps, if possible. It’s much easier to attain a lot of small goals than one large goal, with the awareness that each small goal takes you one step further toward that bigger goal. 

Writing is a long, slow process, and we approach it day by day, page by page, paragraph by paragraph. At the same time, it’s helpful to imagine where you’re going, and what sort of results you want to achieve. Thinking about all this at the beginning of the year, and keeping this in mind through the seasons, can help you accomplish your writing goals.