January 01, 2013

Peering Ahead Into the Year 2013


It’s the evening of the day known as New Years Day. For me it has been a wonderfully quiet day with very low expectations. A rare jewel in my life.

I’m not a person that makes New Year’s resolutions. The whole concept is far too cliched for me.

I do think it would be worthwhile, however, to stop and write about what I hope the year ahead will hold for me. I don’t recall ever doing that before. I would like to make my claim as to what my life could be. I would like to put it out there so it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy of the right kind.

I want the year 2013 to be the year in which I experiment with different types of writing. Last year I spent a lot of time editing. This year I want to do more creative writing. I will write short stories and flash fiction and poetry. And along the way, I will come up with a great idea for my next Nano novel, which will also happen in 2013.

I learned the basics of social media in the last couple of months of 2012. In the year ahead, I will learn to use social media to benefit my writing. I will learn to showcase myself as a writer. I don’t expect great progress in this regard. I need also to do the writing to be able to showcase it. But I will learn.

I will begin blogging this year. I will not be a frequent blogger, as I don’t have time for that. But I do believe that I have a voice for blogging, and I want to give that voice a place to be heard. My hope is for a blog with monthly posts.

I learned something really important during NaNoWriMo 2012. The previous year, I was able to believe what I always wanted to be true, that I am a writer. In 2012 I came to believe that I am a writer that will be published some day. What I want for 2013, then, is to give more place in my life to my goal of being a published writer. That means allotting more of my spare moments and stolen moments to the craft of writing. Some of those stolen moments will surely come from time I would otherwise spend reading, but for this year, that will have to be a sacrifice I make. I cannot sacrifice my job or my family for writing.

Time is an extremely valuable commodity for me. Writing takes time. It can’t be developed without practise and without trial and error. It can’t excel unless there is freedom and time to just write for fun, for the sake of creativity instead of production. I don’t expect to have an increase in available time in the year ahead. All I can hope for is to use it more wisely. Sometimes the only way to write is to just do it. Sometimes, it’s better to spend only ten minutes writing than to say at the end of the day that I had no time again. It’s sort of like saving pennies, just a few at a time, but it’s better than that, because writing is not arithmetic.

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