I’m not one for resolutions. If the turning of a calendar page is the only thing that can inspire change in your life, then your ruts are so deep you’ll probably never climb out of them.
Looking back to today’s entry from 2003, though, I see that I made a list of three ‘things I want (and intend) to do before 2004′.
That’s seven years ago now, so how well did I do?
Not well at all. To quote:
1. Travel to Russia, preferably on the train that runs from Paris to Moscow. Currently thinking end of March / beginning of April would be good for this one.
Still not done that. Still would like to, but know that it won’t happen by March or April of this year, either. Life, somehow, gets so busy that things like this get moved onto a ‘wannado’ list, rather than an ‘amdoing’. That’s wrong, I know, but isn’t it the same for everyone?
2. Sell some of my photos and/or have them shown somewhere.
Nope. Not done that, either. My photo collection now spans a couple of drives and is several gigabytes in size, but most of my photography at the moment is snaps with a point and shoot. Rather than aiming to sell or show my photos, then, perhaps I should just aim to get out there and take more of them. That’s the fun bit, after all, and would surely be more manageable, wouldn’t it?
3. Write my book (this one has been on the list for the last five years, so perhaps it should be downgraded to ‘make substantial progress on the book’).
Well, I did make fairly substantial progress on a book. I got to 115,000 words before it petered out, about half way through the story, and looking back on that first attempt I can see why: it was awful. Really terrible, largely because I didn’t have a plan, so I didn’t really know where my characters were going.
Also, I hadn’t ‘killed my darlings’: there were too many little turns of phrase that I thought were great and couldn’t possibly be excised.
Of course they weren’t great at all, as I can now clearly see, and they made the whole thing awkward and uncomfortable.
I still have the first draft, but don’t plan on doing anything with it.
It took me until last year to start work on a second fiction book, and rather than jump in with both feet and a keyboard, I planned it out properly with a written outline and character profiles. Looking back at that outline I see it was created on 9 April, and the first draft of the book was completed on 23 September, so it only took five and a half months to plan and write. The editing has so far taken three months and is about half way through, so it looks like being a year-long project, which I reckon is probably right for a novel.
I’m happy with that.
So will I be making any resolutions this year? No. I might, though, make myself a little list of things I want to do, 2003 style. If they don’t get done by the time 2010 is out, though, I’ll let them roll over. Sometimes things are worth waiting for – until you’ve learnt how to do them properly.
