On a home-alone New Year’s Eve, I find myself sternly noting resolutions to myself for the creative year ahead (the personal resolutions can wait).
Of course, they may not work for everyone…
- Enjoy yourself at work. Even when it is deadly serious, writing should have a bit of skittishness and fun to it.
- Forget the market. It’s mad, and getting madder. Worrying about it will send you the same way.
- Do something different. Startle yourself out of your comfort zone.
- Write every day. If it’s prose, anything under 200 words doesn’t count. If it’s poetry or a song, two lines should count as a good day.
- Don’t write too much. After you pass the 1000 word mark in one day, a law of diminishing returns sets in.
- For any form of genuine creativity, the internet is the snake in the garden. In 2015, there will be writing time and there will be online time. They will never be allowed to merge with one another.
- Say ‘no’. For years, writers have been told that they are lucky to be interviewed, or asked to do a talk, or take part in a discussion. It is not always true.
- Don’t allow blogs (like this one, for example) to infect the way you write, making it amiable, gabby and over-relaxed, as if, you know, you can’t quite be bothered to get the right words or whatever.
- Keep your work a secret. Just keep quiet until it is finished.
- Be grateful that you are a writer.
Happy New Year!
