Taxonomy of a Resolution

The first resolution I listed last Thursday – Write for at least one hour every day – is one I actually started in December. You’d think I’d make that kind of resolution DURING National Novel Writing Month in November. But no. I didn’t think of it until afterward.

At first I was too vague. I thought as long as I spent an hour each day in front of my computer with a file open, that should count. Good old BiCHoK in action. (Butt in chair, hand on keyboard). I actually did get a lot done through the course of the month. I’m not sure how much of it will actually bear fruit, though. I ended up working on the rough drafts for four different novels.

In my experience, it’s rarely a good idea to write the rough draft of more than one book at a time. I tend to lose focus, and stuff drifts in from one book to another when I don’t mean for it. Even when I’m working on radically different projects, it can combine.

I’m not going to change the wording of my resolution. In the course of a year, a lot can happen. I might theoretically actually bring a book all the way to publication. Yeah, not likely, but possible. If that should happen, then I still want to keep going on other projects. So I’ll leave the resolution untouched at the top level.

That said, for now I need to make it more focused. So I’ll add a sub-resolution. Until Beautiful Spanish Hussy is ready to send off to a line editor, I’ll spend my hour a day working on the revisions.

I’ll make exceptions on Wednesdays when I’m writing Suzie’s House. Then I go back to the over all resolution of simply writing an hour a day. I might also retrench of a really good idea for one of the open rough drafts distracts me. But not if it simply gets hard to revise. If I don’t stick with it through the hard parts, it won’t get done at all.

There will probably be times when it is impossible to write at all for several days in a row. For instance, if I should happen to go in for hip replacement surgery I might be out of commission for a while. If I don’t forgive myself for those days, then the resolution will break down immediately. Instead, I think I’ll just tack on more days of following the resolution at the end of the year to make up for what I missed.

Hopefully by the end of the year plus a bit I will have developed a good habit.