A Writer’s New Year’s Resolutions

These are mine, but if you are a writer, you might also want to consider them; in some cases I have learned their importance the hard way!

Make time to write. For me this is the hardest one, since my first priority is my teaching and will remain so until I retire. Many of you have professional obligations, and some of you have a much larger family than I do, so for you it could be even tougher. You don’t necessarily have to write a huge amount each day, but setting some kind of goal and sticking to it is important. Most successful self-published writers succeed not by producing one bestseller but by producing a lot of moderately successful works, preferably related ones, so that a reader who likes one will be likely to try some of the others.
Make time to promote. If you’re like me, you enjoy writing much more than promoting, but the books don’t really start selling themselves until you have a large fan base, so a little promotion is essential. (You’ll notice that, prior to the last couple of posts, I hadn’t posted since early October, so I definitely need to keep this resolution in mind!)
Yes, despite the first two resolutions, don’t spend all day sitting in front of the computer. During the summer I sometimes find myself doing that, and I shouldn’t. Having enough exercise is important, and it’s to get enough when I am joined to the technology like a cyborg. As the ancient Greeks, said, “Moderation in all things,” so I’m going to make an effort to get out more…starting tomorrow.
Promote smartly. Some promotion is worth paying for; other types aren’t even worth doing for free. It did take more quite a bit of experimenting to know which was which, and that process is still a work in progress.
Make time to read. Between teaching and writing, I have lost most of my reading time–at least if you don’t count student essays! Sometimes it takes me months to get through a single novel. In the old days I used to read a book every week or so. Since we improve our writing partly by reading, it is very, very bad for a writer to not also be a reader.

Well, those are mine. Feel free to share yours if you like.

(Image was copyrighted by Iakov Kalinin and licensed from http://www.shutterstock.com.)