Episode Details

Do you have any New Year’s Resolutions for your writing life? What’s the purpose of it and why should we do it?

There are ancient origins for new year’s resolutions including the Babylonians in 2000 b.c. making promises to the gods at the new year to return borrowed items and pay off debts. How many of those promises do you suppose were kept?

In medieval times, knights renewed their oaths of loyalty at the new year. They also promised to uphold virtues and values.

These days, new year’s resolutions are usually not religious, or related to your employer. They’re usually about secular stuff like health and fitness, wellness and mental clarity.

So what makes a good resolution? And is it different from a goal? Yes, new year’s resolutions are typically a change of behavior: drink less, eat less, workout more, read more. And the goal is a measurable plan for how to succeed in that behavior change.

So you might resolve to write more short stories in 2026. The goal would be to write at least 30 short stories. Then you might plan to write every day for at least 30 minutes to achieve the goal. Writing every day, as long as you’re focusing on the short stories, will certainly achieve the behavior change to meet your resolution. 

So what kinds of resolutions do writers usually make? It’s almost always about productivity. We did this topic last year with a plan we built for ourselves. We used categories for those goals, like I do with my students every semester: family, professional, personal, financial. How did we do? 

We also did it back in 2021, so let’s see how far we’ve come since then. That one used the AFI framework, a tool for business planning, to help writers think of their careers as businesses.

I also did this goal setting thing with Alexa Bigwarfe, my publisher, back in 2020. Boy did those goals go awry.

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