Making Creative Resolutions
Every year, I promise myself I am going to achieve massive things, creatively. I have all this enthusiasm in January, am full of the excitement of new opportunities I could take… and then promptly fall flat. (see also: my total lack of blog posts between now and, well, August). But one thing that is really tricky for me is making resolutions that actually enable me to make meaningful progress towards the goals I set myself. So here’s what I learned!
1. Make it reasonable.
I have a habit of setting myself preposterous goals - or, at the very least, goals I couldn’t achieve alongside a full-time job. So me saying I’ll write an entire redraft of a 90k novel in a year should be achievable… but statistically, work gets in the way, sometimes for months at a time. Therefore, I’m better off aiming at a specific wordcount over shorter periods of time - writing 10k over the Christmas break, for instance (and even that is really starting to look like a stretch…).
2. Get yourself an accountability buddy.
I’m lucky in that everyone on book twitter is a wonderful support to whatever creative endeavours anyone is attempting. But having writing buddies for sprints, accountability, and to give you mini self-imposed deadlines is a lifesaver which I can’t believe I only discovered in the last year or so. So while I may not have made as much progress as I wanted to towards my creative goals in 2018, I know I’m a darn sight closer thanks to my amazing accountability buddies!
3. Keep it minimal.
Last year, as anyone who has seen my bullet journal posts will know, I overplanned my goals something ridiculous. I sub-categorised, I broke it down in to quarters and then monthly targets. Funnily enough, that did not work out well. My goals fell to pieces by February, and so this year I am determined not to fall for the same wave of keen organisation gone mad. I’m keeping it short and sweet and manageable.
And so with that, here are my creative resolutions for 2019! Hopefully when i look back at these in a year’s time, I can tick off far more of them than last year…
Finish the second draft of my WIP.
Improve my bullet journal videos by teaching myself how to use better quality editing software (and, let’s be real, having a computer that can run editing software without crashing constantly.)
Get feedback on my second draft to start my third draft.
Teach myself the basics of watercolour painting.
Blog regularly (okay, so this one is less specific, but when work gets mad, blogging is the first thing to go. So I already know there’s no point in saying posting every x days because I will just fall behind and beat myself up).
