Monday, January 13, 2014

Welcome to 2014! What will you do differently?

Happy new year, Western Slope Prologue Chapter! With the rush of the holidays behind us, I hope you are all on track for a productive and blessed 2014.

It was wonderful to meet so many of you in person in December. I had intended to snap a few pictures to share here, but I got so caught up in chatting I completely forgot. As I told my husband later that night, when you take a bunch of people who spend most of their time engaged in a very solitary activity and put them at a table with coffee, conversation flows freely!

Hopefully we can schedule another get-together soon and more of us will be able to participate. The encouragement, inspiration, and validation found in these opportunities to sit down together and talk are invaluable! If anyone has any ideas for when and where to meet next time, please email me at westernslopeacfw@gmail.com, or just leave a comment here.

 "Remember not the former things,
nor consider the things of old. 
Behold, I am doing a new thing;
    now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
    and rivers in the desert."

Isaiah 43:18-19, English Standard Version (ESV)

The beginning of a new year is a perfect time to examine our schedules, our priorities, and yes, our goals. Many of us set the same goals year after year... lose weight, get in shape, quit this, start that. I would venture to guess that many writers start out each new year with resolutions to write more, to write consistently, to study our craft, to meet a daily word count, to find an agent, or to sign a book contract for a particular story.

Whatever your particular goals might be, here's the question I'm asking myself this year: "What am I going to do differently in 2014 so that my progress toward meeting those goals doesn't fizzle out somewhere between January and December?"

You've probably all heard Albert Einstein's definition of insanity as "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." If I continue to approach reaching my goals, even new goals, the same old way I've always approached them, I'm going to end up with the same results, and I'll be rewriting the same things on my list in 2015. It's like a terrible version of "Groundhog Day"!

Personally, I haven't figured out the exact answer to my question yet,  but I've got some ideas, and I'm convinced that just asking the question—taking time to consider habits and actions and behaviors and patterns—is a big step toward making forward progress. How about you? What are you going to do differently this year?

Blessings to you and yours in the New Year!



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