No resolutions this year. Which is good, considering that
although I am writing this in early January (and shivering under SW Florida
freeze warnings), by the time you read this I’d have broken most of the
resolutions. Turns out there is a reason for that, and a solution, and it’s
similar to my writing style.
As 2017 faded into 2018, newspapers and blogs filled with
stories suggesting goal
setting as the avenue to make lasting changes. Resolutions,
they say, are all or nothing and once broken, stay that way. Goals provide a
different avenue. They can be broken down into small, attainable, chunks.
Something that can be measured and achieved. These small successes build on
each other until, voila – on December 31, 2018, the goal is accomplished and
the change made and lasting. Resolution success by a different name.
Building a year by goal setting makes perfect sense to a
writer. It’s the same way we build novels, stories, and blogs. My natural
writing style is pantser. I have an overall storyline (the resolution) but no
detail to get from inciting incident to satisfying conclusion (attainable
goals). In fact, even though I have a general idea of the story, the
perpetrator is often a mystery to me until I complete the first draft, and
sometimes the second or the third!
A few years ago, I discovered a book that helped me go from
pantser to a combination outliner pantser I call a plotster. The book, Rachel
Aaron’s 2,000 to 10,000 talked about planning scenes—not the book—using bullet point
outlines. The process was a revelation. Scenes are the building blocks of a
story like goals are the building blocks of lasting change. Scene by scene the
stories in my books unfolded in an orderly fashion and followed an arc to the
ultimate resolution.
Goal by goal, the changes I want to make in my life can
build on each other to accomplish the changes I want to make in my life. Last
year’s traditional resolutions were failures. Forgotten before the month was
out. The jury is still out on whether the program will be successful—it’s only
January 6 today, but the principles are familiar.
How about you? Did you make resolutions this year? Or like me,
did you decide to set goals?
