Well, 2020 was certainly a thing that happened. It happened to all of us, around the world, all year long. How shitty, right?
I’m only nominally a believer/user of New Year’s Resolutions—I certainly make some, even sometimes post them online so I can be shamed later for when I inevitably fail Certain Ones.
(Certain Ones: the obligatory and stereotypical diet one, the one to workout more, the one to be less of a hermit and become a social butterfly at last, and to see the Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia. It’ll happen one day!)
But for the most part, I tend to make resolutions that I’m pretty much planning on doing anyway, or have a high chance of actually happening. I rarely strive to these things. (Although I also have a habit of putting in ‘Finish That One Story Already!!’, which has yet to happen.) I do like to put Finish That Story as a resolution, even if it doesn’t always happen that neatly; I always end up making significant progress on whatever I’m mainly working on. I do write a lot in a year. Maybe not a mega-novel each year, but certainly a lot of words, especially if I do NaNoWriMo.
But it’s still things I was going to do anyway. Is that cheating? It’s sort of like giving up something you already don’t like for Lent. (As a Catholic-raised lass, I often gave up meat for Lent. Spoiler alert: I’ve been a vegetarian since middle school.) Or is it making a safe bet? I’m also a huge fan of safe bets. Why risk it if you’re going to win?
Psychologically speaking, there are advantages and disadvantages to my lazy strategy. It is good to have a win. You need wins! You need positive bumps in your life to drag you through the low parts. You need things to look forward to, happy memories to reflect on, and large wordcounts to brag about online. It’s all in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Trust me, I went to school for this.
That said, life does need risk. A career needs risk. Writing and story-making need risks. If you aren’t actually trying, what’s the point?
You need some sad parts to make the good parts feel better. You know, the saying about how weekdays make the weekends feel sweeter and all that jazz. Not that I’m saying you’ll fail all your goals—go ahead and win them all! Disappointment will happen anyway. Sorry, life is like that. At least 2020 has taught us all that much.
(Yes, I am still horribly depressed and salty that 2020 took away my ability to celebrate a big milestone birthday for me. It was last week; I’m still accepting belated birthday wishes. Saltily.)
“This is a really weird blog post about New Year’s Resolutions,” you murmur to yourself, somehow still scrolling.
And yes, it is. It’s also a risk to upload this as my first blog post on this website. But something has to go up, and who doesn’t have a few things to say about ringing in a bright, shiny, and hopefully less-shitty 2021?
Take risks. Take safe bets. Yes, I know I’m going to write X amount of words for Y story. That’s a safe bet. But it is still progress in my chosen project, in my chosen field. That’s not a bad thing.
Yes, I know I’m going to write 0 amount of words for Z story. That’s a risk, and I’m going to likely disappoint myself again, but who knows? Surprises happen.
Even if I don’t finish that project, maybe I’ll churn out another 3 chapters. Maybe I’ll (re)reread the first two books to refresh my memory, and maybe that’ll inspire me to hammer it out—or maybe it’ll inspire me to do something else. I won’t look the inspirational gift horse in the mouth.
Future blog/advice posts will be more helpful, but for the moral of this particular one: Take the risk. And make the safe bet.
So long as you’re doing something you can be proud of, even if it isn’t finished, even if it’s late or a bad first draft or cliche or won’t sell or whatever you think it is, it’s progress. No word written is a word wasted—think of it as progress. Just keep writing. Take the victories and accept the losses.
Wishing us all a happy and healthy New Year.
