Resolute for the New Year
That title above is not a typo. I intended to write “resolute” instead of “resolutions.” At this time of year, a lot of people announce various ambitions or goals that they promulgate as resolutions, but many of these resolutions turn out to be holiday whims or wishful thinking; they might be initiated with great zeal, only to be abandoned, in the light of reality, a few weeks down the road.
To be resolute, on the other hand, means to be bold and determined in pursuing a course of action, to be confident, decisive, adamant, implacable, unrelenting, steadfast, and single-minded. Resolutions fall by the wayside because they are only individual pieces of a larger goal; when they prove to be impractical and are abandoned, this can lead to discouragement and a diminution of self-worth. If you are resolute, however, you relentlessly proceed toward your objective even if you have to experiment with diverse means of getting there. Attempting and discarding specific methods denotes progress, not failure.
Do your best at what you are already doing. If you need to reset your goals, fine: do that. So much of life involves trial and error. But it’s not a game we are playing. We are doing it for real.
In my case, I have met many of my life’s goals. I wanted to travel, and I lived overseas for thirty-five years and visited numerous countries in North America, Central America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. I married. We had children. We raised them to be strong, intelligent, thoughtful, considerate adults. Now they are grown and gone, as they should be, and they are prospering.
The one area in which I have not succeeded as much as I had hoped concerns my writing. This has been a primary life focus for me since I was a teenager. I have written and published almost forty books, and over forty of my stories and essays have appeared in magazines and anthologies. However, I sometimes become discouraged because to most readers I am still unknown. That discouragement, if allowed to fester, could result in my giving up and throwing in the bloodied towel. But here is where remaining resolute comes in. I can’t force editors to buy my stories or readers to read them; those things are beyond my control. What I can do, though, is keep writing and attempt to make each piece the best it can be. Not long ago I wrote and published an essay called “Write Better Stories.” Someone on Facebook had put forth the question, “What is the best writing advice you have ever received?” My response was to quote my former teacher, Harlan Ellison, who said, possibly tongue-in-cheek, “If they are not buying your stories, write better stories.” Of course whenever I am working on a story, I try to make it the best thing I have ever written. But the underlying message of this advice is to remain resolute. Whatever you are doing, don’t give up. If you know you are on the right path, continue to move forward and make progress regardless of the obstacles that might be in your way. In the course of your journey, you may need to discard some methods (resolutions) and embrace others. No matter. The important thing is to persist. As for me, I have said it before and I’ll say it again concerning the writing: they’ll have to pry the keyboard out of my cold dead hands.
