Happy New Year to all the Writing Clubs! (Or if your NY resolution is to start a writing club, Hooray and Welcome!)

I kinda love New Year because I love making resolutions, decisions, new timetables, schedules and stupidly ambitious plans. It doesn’t even bother me that I know by now that most of these will last about five minutes. Because I also know that even if I completely fail to achieve them, I’ll still end up achieving more than I would have done if I’d made no resolutions at all, and I consider that a brilliant result.

Astronomically incorrect but whatevs

Most of my resolutions revolve around writing, even if it’s just ‘eat and sleep more healthily so I have more mental energy for writing’ which is top of my list for this year.

Resolutions aren’t for everyone but I find them helpful and inspiring so, after years of practice, my top tips for making New Year’s Resolutions are:
  1. It’s never too late (you can totally start new ones in Feburary. Or June.)
  2. Make resolutions to do things you actually want to do, rather than things you think you should do (revolutionary, I know. You’re much more likely to keep these ones, for obvious reasons, and what’s wrong with doing stuff you actually want to anyway?)
  3. Accept that you won’t keep them all. Certainly not every day. And that’s OK. A lapse doesn’t mean you have to give up entirely, you can just pick it up again later.

So if your writers would find it helpful, why not get them to make some resolutions for their writing year? They can make up their own but if they would like some inspiration, here are some resolutions made by famous writers that I found online:

 

New Year’s Resolutions Made By Famous Authors

  1. “I’m going to begin writing my third novel so my new year’s resolutions centre around self discipline. I need to carve out the time and the space to write and to stick to a strict writing schedule.”

— Louise O’Neill

  1. “Stress less, and daydream more. This year, I realized I’d switched all my daydreaming time to stressing-about-things-I-can’t-control time. I plan on reversing that, pronto! Write books! I need to write the second half of one book, and I want to write another one, too. One and a half books is totally doable. Read books! This year I read 79 books. There’s no reason why I shouldn’t be able to read more next year.”

— Jodi Meadows

  1. “My resolution is simple, and I’ve already started it. More time reading, less time online. I’ve been trying to read for four hours a day and it makes my brain feel good.”

— Meg Rosoff

  1. “As always I hope to make more time to read. I try to start every day by reading for half an hour and end it the same way, ‘bookending’ each day. What I need to really take on board is how this is ‘professional development’. And I want to spend less time on screen in the world of social media. More time painting. Yes. More books in translation. More poetry.”

— Jackie Morris

  1. “My writing resolution is to take my laptop to new and exciting places. I always get the best ideas and most inspiration when I force myself out of the house and into a new park or coffee shop!”

— Madeleine Roux

  1. “For last year’s words belong to last year’s language. And next year’s words await another voice. And to make an end is to make a beginning.”

— T.S. Eliot

  1. “One resolution I have made, and try always to keep, is this: To rise above the little things.”

— John Burroughs

  1. “The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective.”

— G.K. Chesterton

  1. I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re Doing Something. So that’s my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody’s ever made before. Don’t freeze, don’t stop, don’t worry that it isn’t good enough, or it isn’t perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life. Whatever it is you’re scared of doing, Do it. Make your mistakes, next year and forever.”

― Neil Gaiman

  1. If you want something you’ve never had, you must be willing to do something you’ve never done.

― Thomas Jefferson*

*Not technically a NY resolution or even a writer (although he did write the Declaration of Independence and that’s gotta count for something) but I like this one.

 

 

 

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