Happy New Year!

[alex_beecroft]

I should make some resolutions, shouldn’t I? How about these -

Get back to my target weight.

(While I was ill, my digestive system went freaky, so I could gain or lose half a stone in a week without any changes of diet. I had absolutely no control over it, and after a couple of months of angsting about it I abandoned attempts to establish control as futile. Now that I am no longer anemic, due to the wonders of intravenously administered iron, it’s time to get back into the driving seat there.)

Walk or dance every week day

(I haven’t been able to get off the sofa for 6 months. I badly need to get reasonably fit again.)

Practice my whistle playing every week day

It’s amazing how fast you can lose all the tunes you know if you don’t practice them, and I have a massive book of morris tunes to learn and memorise. That’s not going to happen without some dedication.

Write at least 250,000 words of new fiction this year. Preferably 300,000.

(I wrote 260,000 words last year. Now that I’m no longer ill, I can surely add another 40,000.)

This one has sub-goals and a certain amount of vagueness attached, because you never know exactly how the muse will strike:

Finish editing Blue Eyed Stranger and Trowchester Blues before April.

Write third book in Trowchester series.

Find a publisher for The Glass Floor or publish it myself.

Write a new Fantasy.

Write that murder-mystery I’ve always wanted to try.

Edit and polish all these new things!

Try some short stories?

That’s it for new year’s resolutions. They’re more a case of setting goals which I know I can achieve. I will also not be too upset if I only walk or whistle 3 times a week – as long as I don’t end up not doing it at all.

People say that you don’t achieve your resolutions, but my feeling is that in that case you just set them too high. It’s useful to give yourself something to do that you know you can do. But even if you don’t fully achieve them, if you’ve tried to, you’ve probably achieved a lot more than you would have done had you not decided to aim for anything at all.

“Do or do not, there is no try,” is – excuse me George Lucas – bollocks. Everything that you achieve is achieved by trying and almost doing it, and then trying again and getting a little closer, and then trying again and doing it – fairly badly, and then trying again and doing it slightly less badly. Etc.

Edge up to your successes gently so that neither you nor they get startled and scared away.

Mirrored from Alex Beecroft - Author of Gay Historical and Fantasy Fiction.