I don’t care what they say: January is a wonderful time of year, here in southeast of Pennsylvania.

As I type, I’m  looking out on falling snow which is muffling the world, and giving me the perfect excuse to cancel the appointment I had today and instead stay inside and read. 

The hustle-and-bustle of the end-of-year holiday season is over. The year has that ‘new car smell’. And even if you fell into the trap of making resolutions (and breaking them), we have this still, quiet month with nothing much on the calendar, not much to do in the garden, and a couple of months until our bosses start bothering us about quarterly goals.

There’s still time to make some considered choices about the year ahead. And for us, that includes what we’re going to do to improve our writing, our writing practice, and our satisfaction with both.

The End Is Nigh (Not Terribly Nigh, but still…)

Whether you made resolutions and goals or not, there’s no escaping that end of year ‘review’ that kicks in, in November or December.

What if you started planning for that now?

What if you took a moment, here at the beginning of the year to clarify what improvements you’d like to make this year: to your writing practice, your mindset, your systems, your output?

Slow & Steady

When experts talk about improving systems and outcomes, they tend to talk about 1-2%, maybe 5% improvements as achievable goals.

• Go to a nutritionist when you’re overweight and they’ll tell you losing 5% of your current body weight will result in marked health improvements – even though that number is usually an unexciting number.
• Business analysts recommend aiming for 3-5% growth, unless you’re ready up upend your whole way of doing business to shoot for a 10-20% increase.

When you set goals to improve your writing practice or output, remember these figures. They’re not sexy, but they are achievable and sustainable.

• If you wrote and polished 6 short stories last year (and if you did, good for you! Me too!) why did you set your goal at 12 this year? Can you really make the wholesale changes to your routine that would result in doubling your output? Would that be fun? Or worth it? Or did you get caught up in end-of-year optimism about Future You’s ability to bend space and time?
• If you wrote ⅔ of  a draft of a new novel last year, why are you planning to finish it, revise it and draft a new one this year? Did you forget that you also changed jobs and joined a monthly board game group, and would like to stay married to your current spouse, who’s probably going to want to see you occasionally this year?
• If you want to go from being a writer who writes when you feel inspired, to the kind of writer who’s winning prizes, how are you going to track and measure those improvements? (Trust me, it’s hard to know when your actual writing is improving without lots of feedback. Oh, and do consider joining our February Critique Week, if quality feedback is something you’re interested in!)

Me? I’m easing into the year by reading a lot, to rekindle my love of story…and it’s working. Again. 

Next week I’ll tell you about some of my favorite short story reads from the past month.

Meanwhile, let me know how you’re planning to build on your past writing experiences, to make it more sustainable, consistent and/or fun, this year.