Last year I made the first resolution that I
have ever managed to keep and let me tell you it feels really good.
On January 1st, 2012 I resolved that I would
complete my book. It wasn't the first time I had resolved this but this time I
got serious. I set myself a target of writing, at least, one word a day because
I found that a hard target to argue with. Everyone has time to write one word
don't they? It meant that most days I wrote between 500 and 1,000 words and my
99,125 word manuscript was completed in March. Then came the endless edits and
rewrites but still, by August, I was ready to send my first attempt at a novel
out to agents. I didn't sit by the door waiting for their reply, however,
instead I accepted the advice of a good friend and got started on the next
book, a collaboration with a friend, which we self-published on Amazon at the
end of October. I currently have two other works in progress and a further
joint project I am about to start as well as a collection of short stories I am
currently enjoying writing. All in all making that resolution in January 2012
helped me to achieve on of my life's ambitions, it kept me focused and help me
to recognise what I needed to do to achieve a stated goal.
I'm going to try again this year I think.
Obviously the writing one word a day
resolution has to continue.
Then there's the perennial doing more
exercise. I'm plumping for 30 minutes a day and I'm including things like
walking the dog and playing Just Dance or Wii Fit. Today we went for a two hour
walk down the sea front so I've ticked my first day already, though of course
today it didn't rain!
Also, in trying to get my diabetes under
control, I have decided that this year I am not going to buy any cakes, sweets,
crisps or chocolate and I am also not going to consume them at Church events. I
go to a Vineyard Church and we have cakes with everything so this should make a
difference though it will require huge amounts of will power.
Finally I turn to my blog. I really enjoy
reading blogs and follow several regularly which make me laugh, think and
sometimes even cry. Last January I started this blog to try and make sense of
my departure from regular work to follow my dream of writing for a living and,
to be frank, I kind of failed. I stopped blogging here back in April, though I
have blogged for my Church quite regularly. So my final New Year's resolution
will be to blog once a week. I set up a reminder in my phone for every Tuesday
and I'm determined that every week I will commit some opinion or other to
'paper', so to speak. Why not follow my progress here, that way you won’t
have to wait until next January’s blog to know if I succeeded or not. :-)
