My New Year Resolutions
Not as thin as a promise this year.
Not as thin as a promise this year.
Well, it’s the second week of 2022. Holidays, family visits, and snow have left the first week in shambles. My perennial first resolution of each year has become to forgive myself. OK, moving on. And I’ll explain about my horse picture a little bit later in the story.
You guys who know me understand what a huge proponent I am of taking things one step at a time. Baby steps. A bite at a time. Incrementalism.
The way I am coming to deal with both my new resolutions and my incrementalism is to take only a couple of good thoughts or resolutions at a time and begin practicing them on a method where each week builds on the total of the previous weeks.
Bingo! Much less pressure!
So, I am wishing you an incremental happy new year, whether you are a reader or a writer.
And I am nothing if not a giver, so let me toss out a couple of ideas. I will bring more to the table on a regular basis. Add any of your own when they seem appropriate to you.
Are You a Reader?
You have it easy for now,
Go to the closest Dollar-store and purchase a month-at-a-glance calendar. Mine measures about the size of copy paper and it’s not very thick at all.
My suggestion is that you read more. Become a voracious reader. It will benefit you in ways you can’t begin to imagine now.
Get an Amazon account, so you can go and grab short story collections when you need to. Some are even free occasionally, and you can read them on your computer. Don’t just search for Amazon short stories because that usually returns a lot of romance novels. Look for “collections.”
Not that there’s anything wrong with that… I had envisioned it differently.
Try to read one short story each week and make a big red X on (Monday of) that week. As you can, go for different authors and genres from week to week. Pick up paperbacks or even hard-cover collection books where you get a chance. Check new and used book stores and even antique malls when you can.
Are You a Writer?
This is the tough one. You may be a writer. You may want to be a writer. You may want to be a better writer.
This year get that same Dollar-store calendar, Do the same reading assignment as the one for readers. But while you are at that store, buy a composition book such as the ones used in high school and college.
In addition to that, you need to set aside fifteen or twenty minutes every day and write 100 words about anything. We will increase the number of words in the next months, so don’t get behind if you can help it.
Make your X for reading each week and another X for writing each day. So at the end of each week, you have written 500 words and read some short stories. In the future, we’ll work on the focus of our writing. Soon thereafter, we may get some of our writing published.
This brings me back to our primary picture. Those “funny things” by their eyes are called “blinkers.” They help a horse concentrate on what he’s doing not what’s going on to the side.
Blinkers are what we all need. When I am at my computer, sometimes I start working on the nuts and bolts of my website rather than my article. Sometimes when I am just writing with a pen, I still can get “Monkey Mind” and start thinking about lots of other stuff.
I would be willing to bet we all could do better with our own focus. So this week we’ll kick things off by gathering up our tools, dipping our toes, and then getting to work. But easy does it!
FREE GUIDE “Find the WRITER in you, let it out, get it published, get it paid.”
Don Martin is a real estate broker, who operates theReasonableRealtor.com and mlsDon.com for homeowners selling their own houses.He is also a writer and editor, at DonMartinBooks.com Please visit him at medium.com/@donmartin711 when you can.
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Originally published at http://donmartinbooks.com on January 13, 2022.