This year’s New Year Resolution
This year’s New Year resolution is the same one that I have made for (maybe) the last ten years. Nope, it’s not the one about eating healthily or giving up smoking or building a new back gate or even painting the study. It’s so much simpler than that. It’s this: Get on with it. Just that. Get on with it. Crack on, saddle up, let’s roll, strap yourself in, move right along the bus, let’s light this candle, keep your arms inside the vehicle at all times, let’s rock, just Do It, kick yourself and get going. I’m talking about writing, of course. Because like all genuinely lazy people (and when it comes to lazy, I like to think that I’m as genuine as you can get) I need to prod myself into action. I need to type that next sentence, prune it, delete half of it, write the next one, then the next, then throw away the first sentence, and keep adding until I have a nice round paragraph, then a second, a third, chuck out the middle one, reward myself with a cup of tea or a quick game of Chess Titans (lose) then back at it until I achieve the mystical moments of flow and then I can feel good about the words on the page, the ideas, the process and, ultimately, myself. Because, in the end, writing is writing, not dallying and dilly-ing and it’s just the hardest thing and application is more significant than inspiration and if you have to write it badly before you can later write it well, hell, then you had best get on with writing it badly, because one thing is for sure: nobody else is going to do it for you. And from stuttering process of idleness and effort, interrupted by dog-walks and day-dreaming of the glory in the future (“Firstly, I’d like to thank the Nobel Committee”) I have so far managed two novels and 65% (and counting) of a third. So I’d like to thank everyone in the wonderful Word Watchers of Newbury for all their help in 2016, which has played no small part of the 65% and counting, and hope for more of the same in 2017.