It's a new year! How 'bout that. I hope you all have a most wonderful 2012...
2011 was a good year - though not a super-productive year on the writerly front (15-year-old me in 2009 pretty much had the best year ever, really), I finished high school and moved from Melbourne to the Gold Coast, both fairly major. Book Two is still in the works. I became a whole lot less shy and a much better public speaker last year, but I still really do not like parties. I have big! fabulous! plans for 2012. And I hope you do, too.
Various Writerly New Year's Resolutions:
(because if I put them on the internet I must be held accountable! Unless the world ends this year. In which case I hope you all have a wonderful end of the world!)
1. Finish revising That Book That I Still Need To Revise.
I'm in fifth draft territory, and I'm hoping to have this done in the next month or so. This is a big goal, even though it'll only hopefully take a small part of the year, because this book has been killing me slowly for about two years now. But if I can finish it and make it great then I can pretty much do anything. Or I can at least do the same thing again.
2. Finish the first and second drafts of three other manuscripts.
I have multiple unfinished manuscripts on the go, and now I've finished school, I have no excuse not to finish them. I would very much like to finish first drafts of all three, and because my first drafts can be a mess (a hilarious, self-indulgent mess, mind you) wrap up a second draft that can hopefully be read by other people, too.
3. Answer my email and blog twice a week.
I tend to find myself either a) spending ridiculous amounts of time on the internet very ineffectively, obsessively refreshing my inbox and watching videos of various cute fluffy animals; or b) pretending the internet doesn't exist for weeks at a time, allowing email to pile up to terrifying unanswerable proportions and not blogging. This year, I'm hoping to spend less time on the internet but do more, and blog on a more regular basis.
I was considering a fourth resolutions to do with reading (people with goals like 'read 366 books in 2012' astound and kind of frighten me) but I tend to find myself reading, if anything, too much (I probably read about thirty books in the last fortnight of the year to make up for not reading a whole lot through the year). I'd like to read more widely this year, though. Quit reading just contemporary YA (I also read way too many books about precocious sociopathic teenage boys. Are there a lot of these books around? Or am I just weirdly drawn to them?).
I've got a bunch more goals for the year: I'd like to learn guitar, get better at photography, plan some travel, and learn to drive. This time next year I'll probably have the same goals and will be bemoaning the fact that the year went by so fast, but for the moment I am hopeful! 2012 stretches out in front of me like a great, unknown land! A land of awesomeness! (I will be turning eighteen in less than a month! I'm holidaying to Sydney this January! UNTOLD ADVENTURES AWAIT. You can tell I'm excited. I'm using all caps.)
Okay. If you, too, have ridiculous ambitions for the promising year ahead, I have absolute faith that you can achieve them: Share with me your New Year's resolutions! (I'll start sending positive, goal-achieving thoughts your way.)
