New Year's Goals

Happy New Year everyone!

Early January always seems to be when we set goals for ourselves and swear that this will be the year that we keep to those goals! While you can start setting goals for yourself anytime, some days seem to feel more natural for setting goals than others. Since we generally all agree that January 1 is the start of a new calendar year, it is a natural time to set new goals and make new plans.

But instead of new goals, you could try something else. The goal can stay the same: finishing that manuscript, perhaps? But if you’ve been working on it with mixed success, maybe now is a time to try a new approach. Whether that means a new approach to writing in general, to your particular story, or something else altogether, is of course, up to you. 

I’ve wanted to do more blogs on writing and editing. Several things have stopped me, but mainly it has been: what can I say that you haven’t already heard before? And that someone hasn’t already said better? And that you haven’t read other places a million times already? Then on Instagram one day, someone I follow asked for advice because she was having trouble with one project she was working on, and facing serious writer’s block. I made a couple of suggestions and she said they really helped, and actually shared them on a different post. It got me thinking, maybe I shouldn’t be worried about my ideas not being “original”. Maybe it is just that those ideas all reach different people at different times in different ways when they need to hear it. My voice and my experience is different from yours, so how I frame suggestions will be different from how someone else phrases it. What inspires me will be different from what inspires you. But if I tell you about it, maybe you’ll be reminded of something that does inspire you. 

So that will be a goal of mine this year. More blogs, more sharing, and less fear. Easier said than done, like all goals, but we all have to start one step at a time and see where they get us. 

What are your goals going into 2024? Let’s step into the year vowing to be kind to ourselves and each other, and try to enjoy the journey.