Happy 2020, friends. I hope the new year (I’m one of those no-year-zero people, so I won’t say new decade yet) is treating you well, and you’re making lovely progress on all your goals and resolutions.
I got a bit of a late start, but I’m off and running now. I’ve written two short stories and am in the final edits on a nonfiction book in the last week, so hooray!
Themes seem to be the trend this year, and I picked mine back in December: education.
What does that mean?
It means focusing on learning new things and practicing things I’m less confident of, mostly in terms of writing and drawing. To that end I’m taking an illustration class a month over at SkillShare and reading through my stash of writing books which have been collecting dust.
And it means focusing on writing/drawing for the sake of writing/drawing, not always being so focused on marketing and publishing and submitting and all that jazz.
Even just making that decision has been freeing. I’m feeling really good about everything.
So, for this month, I’m reading The Kick-Ass Writer by Chuck Wendig (man, some of the analogies he comes up with…) and taking a class on sketch journaling. I did a practice page last night, using my drawing pens and watercolor, and I’m really pleased with how it came out.
On the writing just for writing front, I decided I’m going to use up some of the pins I’ve been pinning for years over on Pinterest. So I’m taking a pin from my character board, one from my setting board, and one from my prompt board and smooshing them together. Just whatever’s the oldest pins in each. No planning on which ones work together or whatnot.
I finished my first one of those yesterday. The setting/character pins lined up pretty well, though the prompt threw me for a bit of a loop, but I got it done in the end.
The hard part is not doing anything with it now. I keep telling myself that I don’t need to edit it or get it ready to submit, but it’s difficult. A sign that I’ve been pushing myself too much lately, I think.
How are your goals going? Accomplished anything good so far?
Education is a great theme! Mine is listen, as in “listen to the people around me” but also my world and my body. I have a tendency to rush in before I know everything and also to interrupt people, so I’m hoping an emphasis on listening will enable me to slow down and give people a chance to say what they are thinking.
That sounds like a good theme too! Good luck. 🙂