Making New Year’s resolutions has always been a bit of an oddity to me.

You come out of the festive season in a blur. Too many late nights, too many lunchtime drinks, too many handfuls of peanuts on the way to the fridge to get more cheese. You eat, drink and be merry, you forget about your troubles, your work, your diet, and yes, even your writing.

Then the clock strikes midnight on December the 31st and suddenly, like a bunch of pork-pie laden Cinderella’s we are supposed to scuttle off to bed and wake up in the morning full of motivation, determination, and inspiration to make this year the greatest one yet.

It’s a pretty big ask.

That’s not to say that New Year’s resolutions don’t have their place. Particularly for writers who need goals and structure and something to keep them on the right track. However, expecting to suddenly be a whole new person just because the date changed is unrealistic, and that’s why so many people fail at their New Year’s resolutions before they’ve even got started.

You wanted to go vegetarian, not drink alcohol and write at least 500 words every day but on the first of January when you find yourself clutching a bacon sandwich, drinking a Bloody Mary and snoozing in front of Disney films all day while scoffing the last of the mince pies it feels as though you’ve started the new year on something of a back foot.

Setting New Year’s resolutions should be fun. They should be positive and motivational and make you want to do them. Too restrictive, too painful, too sudden and you are just setting yourself up for failure.

With that in mind here are some 2019 New Year’s writing resolutions that might tick those boxes:

To learn about writing in better ways

Writers are often told that writing is a skill. It can be studied; it is something you can get better at. However, there is nothing worse than forcing yourself to learn about something that doesn’t interest you.

We’re all grownups, we’ve left our school days behind, so studying only works if you do it right. Writers already find it challenging enough to fit in getting words on the page let alone giving themselves lessons in the art of writing on top of this.

However, learning can be fun, and there are ways to trick yourself into studying the craft without making it feel like studying at all. Reading, for a start, is an excellent way to learn about writing and is one of the most pleasurable, relaxing, exciting and inspiring hobbies imaginable.

Talking of hobbies, why don’t you get out there and learn some cool new stuff? Experiences make writer’s writing better. Life is a brilliant and utterly insane source of inspiration – so if you don’t want to spend your days scowling over a textbook trying to perfect your grammar then don’t. Make your writing brilliant because you’ve lived an adventurous life. Get Grammarly to correct your work, or hire an editor, or just don’t bother because life is too short.

To be more specific and goal-orientated when you write

Writers often get nowhere with their goals because they make them too damn hard, or too damn large not to feel massively overwhelmed by them.

Goals aren’t supposed to make you feel depressed or swamped or panicky. They are meant to be exciting and energising and realistic and achievable. So don’t make your writing goal to ‘finish your book.’ That doesn’t mean anything. Instead, try something else. ‘To get a short story published in the New Yorker by 2020.’ Then work out the steps that are necessary to make it happen, and go for it hell-for-leather.

To write while wearing a cape!

Have you heard of the power pose? Well, it’s been proven (mostly) that if you stand or sit in a power pose for as little as two minutes, you could feel more powerful, more motivated and generally do better in life (I might be paraphrasing here). The study conducted by Amy Cuddy suggested that those who took on high-power poses showed an increase in testosterone (the sexy power hormone) and a decrease in cortisol (the horrible stressy hormone).

OK so you don’t actually have to write while wearing a cape, but adopting your own version of the power pose (or just doing it) means you are looking inward to find your own superhero.

Writers should be proud of themselves for the example they are setting – to their kids, their friends, the world. The stuff it takes to be a writer, whether a massively celebrated and successful one or a struggling but determined slightly crappy one is remarkable and it’s well worth remembering that.

To be a kinder writer

Kindness is rarely talked about in writing, but being a kinder writer can bring with it lots of benefits. For a start, make a promise to be kinder to yourself. Be strong and healthy, be courageous and determined, go easy on yourself when things don’t go your way. Allow yourself time to grieve and heal and rest. Allow yourself time to do other things. Reevaluate regularly and make sure that whatever you are doing – writing or otherwise – is making you happy. Because there is nothing more important than that.

But kindness can also be extended beyond the realm of your writing room. Why not make a promise to be kinder to your fellow writers too? Make some writing friends (be that virtual or fleshy), be encouraging, share your work, get feedback, buy their books, leave positive reviews, start discussions, have fun.

You know how great it is when someone bothers to get in touch with you, when they buy your book or when they leave you a helpful review. If you want that to happen for you why not start the ball rolling? Pay it forward.

Buy one book a month from an unknown author – that’s a writing resolution we all could do with sticking to.

To talk about your writing more

Don’t be afraid to talk about your writing. It’s all too easy to feel like we are hassling people (even our nearest and dearest) when we ask them to read what we have written, to buy our book, even just to tell them about our day. But this year, let’s make an effort to talk about our and others writing as often and as eagerly and as passionately as we can.

If you truly love writing then share that enthusiasm with everyone – writing, creativity, reading, imagination – they are all gifts, and so let’s celebrate them accordingly.

These writing resolutions are ones that every writer can stick to.

Do you have any you’d like to add? I’d love to hear from you!

Oh, Christmas! The big day is right around the corner, and if you are anything like me you have failed to get a Christmas tree, do any present shopping, or buy your turkey – yet have managed to attend at least three slightly boozy Christmas lunches, watch Elf twice and eat about 17 million mince pies.

However, it’s best not to panic. It is the season to be merry after all, not the season to run around like a headless chicken (or turkey) panic purchasing terrible, generic or just insanely expensive Christmas gifts to make up for your lack of organisation.

If you are feeling a bit guilty about not getting the most thoughtful of gifts for your loved ones this Christmas,  one way you can still redeem yourself is by writing excellent Christmas cards.

I know this may be an unpopular idea.

It seems that sending and receiving Christmas cards isn’t as prevalent as it once was. Many people nowadays prefer to smugly announce on Facebook that they won’t be sending Christmas cards this year because they want to save the planet or donate the funds they would have spent buying and posting cards to charity instead (aka – they can’t be bothered).

Now I’m not belittling giving money to a good cause, but out of all the consumerist wizardry that manages to turn us into glazed-eyed, pot-bellied, Christmas jumper wearing zombies who happily hand over wads of cash for giant shining piles of rubbish that we don’t need, the humble and recyclable Christmas card is one of the least offensive customs.

But I get it, I do. Sending Christmas cards does seem like rather an expensive waste of time. But perhaps that’s because we don’t put any effort into writing them.

The sending of Christmas cards is a tradition that dates all the way back to 1843 when old Sir Henry Cole (I’m just assuming he was old, he’s definitely old now) came up with the idea to promote the use of the Post-Office to more ordinary folk. So together with his artist friend John Horsley, he designed the very first Christmas card and sold it for the highly reasonable sum of 1 shilling.

Before this time only rich people were able to use the Post Office (known then as the Public Record Office). However, with the development of the new railways meaning post could be sent in bulk, and further, the Post Office was able to offer a 1 penny stamp, and suddenly sending cards and letters to one’s far-flung family and friends became imminently more affordable.

Anyway, I digress. The point is that sending Christmas cards to your nearest and dearest is worth it if you view it as an opportunity, at the end of the year, to tell them how much they mean to you.

I know, I know -it’s easy to say, but when you’ve got 50 cards to send out to everyone from the boss you don’t really like to your great aunt Sally, or is it Susan?*[texts mum who responds with an admonishing ‘you ask me this question every year'] to do anything more than just hastily scribble ‘Merry Christmas!’ is asking too much. Then when you hit card number 23, and your wrists are beginning to burn it becomes just ‘Love, [name]’ then by number 38 – a scribbled hasty signature as if you are at an embarrassing book signing where only ghosts showed up.

However, taking the time, at least for the people you love, to actually write something meaningful, something personal, something that will make them laugh, maybe cry poignantly, and feel all warm and fuzzy inside, is undoubtedly worth more than unwrapping yet another set of ‘posh’ scented candles or some ‘hilarious’ novelty socks, and isn’t that is what Christmas is all about?

Christmas Cards – A Writers Time to Shine!

Writers particularly have no excuse for a poorly written Christmas card. In fact, they should use Christmas card writing to show off their talents. If you consider writing Christmas cards as a writing exercise, you suddenly have greater motivation to go deep, use your imagination and really think about what you are saying in them.

You don’t have to get all gooey if you don’t want to, but you do have to get creative. Write the shortest of short stories, include a fabulously wintery poem, jot down a haiku, tell a joke -is it a Christmas cracker? Is it a Christmas card? – Who knows?!

Oh, the fun you could have.

The thing that makes Christmas cards pointless and wasteful is by not bothering to write anything meaningful in them. I don’t know about you, but I could do without pieces of card adorned with the signatures of my family and friends littered about my home, even if some of them do have pictures of puppies wearing Santa hats on them. However, receiving cards from those I love, or those I work with, or even my distant relatives (hi great aunt Sally/Susan!) full of words of love or laughter or something silly or witty or fun to read – well then I’d happily receive Christmas cards every day of the year.

Top Tips For Writing Christmas Cards

Ready to write your Christmas cards? Here are some things to think about:

Write more than a swift one-liner – make it worth the effort of loosening their grip on the tv remote/mince pie to open the envelope.

Make it personal – no generic sweeping statements, say what you really mean!

Tell a story – everybody loves a good yarn at Christmas time.

Make them laugh – laughter is the best medicine (except when in a turkey-induced food coma, then you just need to lie really, really still and let the meat sweats wash over you – they will pass, eventually).

Share a memory – take a gander down memory lane.

Tell them why you think they are great – give them the gift of a fabulous compliment!

Make a promise to them for the new year – I’ll definitely call you every week next year mum.
Definitely.

Never Write A Boring Christmas Card Again!

The end of the year is nearly upon us, and whatever has unfolded in 2018 there is still a few days left where you could make an effort to bring a smile to someone’s face. So, writers, why not put those creative talents to good use, pick up a pen and crack the art of writing the perfect Christmas cards this year?  I can’t think of a better way to spread a little festive cheer.

Whenever I read writing advice, one thing that comes up time and time again is writing confidence – and the fact that writers don’t seem to have any. That our lack of conviction is our biggest obstacle and that only if we were able to believe we weren’t entirely dreadful at what we do we’d be on our way to fame and fortune in the blinkety blink of an eye.

Now I’m sure you’ve heard of a self-fulfilling prophecy, and that’s what I think is happening here.

The more we writers read about how scary it is to be one, how bitterly cruel rejection is, how we will have to keep picking our broken, battered, soppy-eyed egos off the floor without any real hope of it being better the next time around, the less confident we get, the more hopeless it all seems and the more helpless we feel to take back control.

I do not deny that writing is hard, but so is any job that’s worth doing. Writer’s need to shake off this assumption that we need our hands held and our fragile egos massaged or that we’ll retreat to a state of miserable, tortured isolation if things don’t go our way. In short, people need to stop treating writers like children and instead like the smart, creative businesspeople that they are.

Imagine a writer telling you that they are good at writing. Imagine it! How very daring that someone who has been practicing their profession for years and who dedicates themselves to learning and improving has any sort of impression that they might be competent at what they do. How arrogant! How obscene! Why do writers have to be seen as these shy, rather pathetic little creatures, “oh please sir would you kindly mind just taking the very briefest of glimpses at my manuscript? No? How very silly of me for asking sir. No problem sir, thank you very much for your time.” [backs into the shadows weeping softly].

Writing confidence – why the shortage?

So who is to blame for this continued infantilization of writers? In short, it’s everyone.

There’s all this talk of how we should be more self- confident that we should believe in our dreams, and not let that blinding b’tard of an inner critic take over and ruin our potential to be the next big thing. But the reality is, it’s not necessarily writer’s themselves that are to blame. Instead let’s point the finger at the people in the industry, our teachers, our colleagues, and yes, even our nearest and dearest family and friends.

People who mock or patronise you when you tell them what you are trying to achieve are particularly guilty. You know the ones whose eyes glaze over, and voices go up a notch when you tell them you’re a writer — the ones who sigh ‘ohhhhhh good for you” while peering over your shoulder desperate for a conversational escape.

Then there are the teachers who smirked when you said you wanted to be a writer and carried on pushing you to make decisions and study subjects that you hated because they would get you a ‘real’ job. Or perhaps that delightful individual at a dinner party who thinks it is ever so helpful to start telling you the depressing statistics of how unlikely it is that you’ll ever be published.

Oh, then there is the person who once said to me ‘the best thing you can do for your career is to die.’

Thanks for that, I’ll think about it.

People don’t ask us questions; they are afraid to. What if we’ve been writing for 20 years and never been published? What if we ask them to read our book and they hate it? We’re like a kid who’s done a crappy finger painting that you have to put on your fridge for weeks on end or that feigned interest you must conjure when your child presents you with a bottle of homemade ‘perfume’ they’ve created from rotten flower petals and puddle water. It’s just easier to pat us on the head and say ‘well done you’ and then move on as swiftly as possible.

Then, of course, there is your nearest and dearest. The friends and relatives who refuse to take you seriously or never quite get round to reading anything you’ve written. Of course, they find it perfectly acceptable to force you to listen to them droning on for hours on end about a spreadsheet-related disaster and what an idiot Sandra from HR is. But dare you ask them for a few hours of their valuable time to share something that’s truly important to you and suddenly they literally don’t have a spare minute. How convenient.

People act like we can’t handle rejection, and yeah, it hurts, but believe it or not we’ve all got our big boy pants on, and we don’t mind it if someone doesn’t like what we’ve written. We aren’t stupid. We know it’s tough. We know that we’ve got more to learn. That there is loads of competition out there and even if our writing is quite good it doesn’t mean that publishers and agents are going to want to try and sell it to the masses.

Writer’s should be seen and not heard, or should they just disappear altogether?

Being ignored by agents, publishers and the rest world is another way writers are treated as though they aren’t yet old enough to join in with adult conversation. It’s a kind of rudeness that if applied in almost any other situation would be considered entirely unacceptable.

Oh, you are inundated with proposals. That’s fine. It’s great that agents and publishers are managing our expectations and all, but the bare minimum they could do is to take a moment to craft an actual, personal reply. Telling us to wait on the edge of our seats for months on end but to be aware if a certain time frame passes we’ve definately been rejected. Come on. Writer’s spend months, even years writing and editing their work, then spend way too much time fretting over drafting a perfectly crafted, expertly researched proposal just for you, and you can’t even take the time to say thanks but no thanks?

But it’s not just fiction writers that deal with this rudeness and patronisation. Freelance writers bear the brunt of it too. Some of the jobs I’ve seen suggest a wage that equates to a paperboy’s round in the 1950s. Then there are the delightfully condescending job posts – ‘make sure you don’t plagiarise otherwise we won’t pay you.’ It’s the equivalent of telling someone off you suspect might cheat on a test or copy someone else’s homework before you’ve even given them a chance to do it.

Most writers have more going on in their lives than just writing. We have partners, kids, dogs, other interests; you know just other stuff we need to get on with. We are grown men and women with lives and responsibilities, and we can’t afford to lock ourselves in the bathroom and have a meltdown if things don’t go our way.

Writing confidence grows as writers learn more about the craft, but despite this most of them write fully aware that they’ll never get published, but they do it anyway because they love it. Isn’t that amazing? So perhaps it’s time to recognise that, to focus on the courage and strength and general grrrrrrrrr it takes to be a writer and to stop treating them like children and applaud them for being the powerful, determined people they are.