Here's to a New Year of Writing!

There are two kinds of writers in the world. And no, I don't mean fiction writers and nonfiction writers, plotters and pantsers, or literary writers and commercial writers. I mean the writers who make New Year’s Resolutions and those who don't.

I fall in the first camp. With a vengeance. An inveterate list maker and planner, I view the new year as the Super Bowl of Goal Setting.

2017 is no exception. My calendar is already full of sales objectives (for my clients), events and conferences (for agency business), writing deadlines (for my publishers), and more. So many of the hard targets I aim for this year are related to these enterprises; hitting them is not an aspiration, it's an imperative.

But I know that freaking out about having too much to do in too little time will only sabotage any progress I hope to make—and kill the creativity I count on to keep me on track.

My New Year’s Resolutions are the ones critical to my creative process. They're the ones that I've proclaimed loudly and in technicolor in the one place I'm bound to visit more often than I should every day: my refrigerator.

That’s right. Last summer I painted the bottom half of my refrigerator with chalk paint, thinking it would prove an amusement for my grandchildren. But over time the space morphed into my own personal and professional planner.

This morning, in honor of the dawn of 2017, it reads: Breathe. Read. Write.

Breathe, because yoga is the fastest way for me to plug into my subconscious.

Read, because as Stephen King says, “If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write.”

Write, because real writers write. End of story.

Okay, so my kids will all tease me unmercifully when they see it, my non-writing friends will think it's weird, and my neighbors may view it as downright subversive, but I don’t care. It works, as least for me.

            So … what's on your refrigerator this year?

Note: If you're having trouble getting started, check out my new book, The Writer's Guide to Beginnings.