I love making New Year's resolutions. I am not so great at the keeping them part, but boy do I love envisioning all the amazing things I'll do in the new year. Usually by now my resolve to keep my resolutions has faltered. If you're like me, I hope this serves as a resolve-booster for you!
My resolutions are often nebulous ideas, such as "work out more" or "be more serious about writing," which I think is why I fail to keep them. Let's be real, if I go for a run once in 2016, I will achieve the "work out more" goal. But it won't help me change my life in a meaningful way, which is what I'd like my resolutions to do.
Possibly the one resolution that every writer makes is this one: Write more.
This is a good resolution, but it's vague (and as writers know, vague is bad). We need to be more specific. Do you want to be more consistent and write every day, even if it is a scant amount of words? Or do you want to increase your output, and say, finish two first drafts this year instead of one? Either way, make it measurable, and then find a way to measure it! Scrivener has great internal tracking tools. Accountability buddies are also great.
Writing more, editing more, querying more, self-publishing more--all of these are excellent goals to strive toward. The world needs more stories. So, writers, let's make our resolutions quantifiable, measurable, and the kinds of things that will transform us in 2016 into the writers we want to be.
I love scrivener for its organization but I have not tried out the tracking tools. Thanks for the reminder, I need to start tracking myself better and that would be a convenient place to do it. Here's hoping it's all included in the Linux version!
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