If you
are not a writer, feel free to substitute whatever goal you have been
contemplating in the past five years. And Enjoy a Great 2013.
Guest Author: Moira Allen
If
you're like a lot of writers, chances are that you've greeted the New Year with
a pronouncement along the lines of: "THIS will be the year that I
FINALLY________ (fill in the blank)."
Get that novel started. Get that novel finished. Enter that contest. Send out those queries. Write that story. Get published, somehow, somewhere. Take the plunge. Start writing. Start writing MORE.
Or
perhaps the resolution is personal: Join the gym, lose weight, tackle the
clutter, get control of the finances, mend a relationship. Chances are, there's something in your life
that you want to start, finish, or change.
(If one of your resolutions is to join the gym, here's a hint: Wait
until March. That's when all the OTHER
folks who resolved the same thing in January have given up, and you can get to
the machines without waiting in line.)
Now,
I've made no secret in past editorials that I'm not a big fan of New Year's
resolutions. In fact, I firmly resolved,
back in December, NOT to write an editorial about New Year's resolutions!
See how
easy these things are to break?
What
made me decide to weigh in yet again on this perennial topic was that key word
in the first paragraph: "Finally."
I've used that word myself quite often, year after year. This, I tell myself firmly, is the year when
I finally get the website designed for my new book, update my Victorian site,
finish the second draft of my novel...
The
problem with the word "finally" is not that it's so, um, final.
In fact, quite the opposite: The problem with
the word "finally" is that it suggests a process that hasn't been final
at all. We say "finally" in
the hopes of bringing to an end a succession of "finallies" that have
never come to pass. I wouldn't be
telling myself in 2013 that this year I will "finally" finish my
second draft if, in fact, I hadn't NOT been finishing that draft for quite some
time. You don't say "finally"
if you've been putting something off for a week or two. You say it about something that you feel you
ought to have been doing for, quite possibly, years.
In
short, we say "finally" not because a resolution is new, but because
it is old, and getting steadily older.
Whatever you're saying "finally" about this year, chances are,
it's not the first year you've said it.
And yet, for some reason, it still hasn't gotten done.
If we
take a good, hard, honest (and painful) look at our history of
"finallies," it quickly becomes apparent that saying
"finally" does not actually make it so. If it did, we wouldn't actually have to say
it at all, because we would have already done it (whatever "it" is)
by now. "Finally" just serves
to reinforce the guilty realization that we HAVEN'T managed to do whatever it
is yet, probably for at least a year, and quite often for longer.
So what
are we to do? Give up on New Year's
resolutions altogether? Throw in the towel
and declare that "it" just isn't meant to be? That's just a bit TOO final!
As I
look forward to 2013, I've come to realize that before I can turn my
"finally I will" goals into "finally I have" achievements,
I need to do a bit of looking backward as well.
It won't help to resolve, yet again, to do something that I haven't
managed to do before, unless I can figure out WHY I haven't done it
before. WHY has this project dragged on
for three years? WHY haven't I completed
this task, followed that dream, overcome that obstacle?
If
you're bracing yourself for a prescription of soul-baring therapy, relax. Sometimes, granted, the "why" may
be related to deep-rooted issues. But
quite often it's much easier to track down.
Sometimes it's rooted in being just too darn busy. (I have yet to meet someone who sighed and
declared, "Wow, last year was just my most relaxed, laid-back, do-nothing
year ever!")
For me, one of the biggest problems with being able to
do three tasks in the amount of time that used to be required to do one is
that, now, we are EXPECTED to be able to do three tasks in the time it once
took to do one. Today's time-saving technologies may have made some tasks
easier, but the end result has simply been a multiplication of tasks.
Unfortunately,
our mental processes are a bit slower to catch up; we remember when we were
easily able to accomplish certain things in a day, or a week, or a month, and
can't quite figure out why that isn't happening anymore.
Another
common issue is failing to realize how long a task may take. Often, I'll sit down to "quickly"
catch up on my e-mail, and surface, blinking, a couple of hours later,
wondering where the time went and feeling as if I've accomplished nothing at
all. Of course, in reality, I've
probably reviewed someone's submission, sent out a couple of ad contracts,
answered two or three questions, filled an order or two from Amazon, posted a
new directory listing on my pet loss page (and, thank you, Dawn, gotten sucked
into a round of "Horrible Histories" on YouTube). But since all that didn't relate to my
"goal" for the day, I feel as if the day has passed without
"accomplishing" anything.
Sometimes
the problem lies in the time we spend solving OTHER people's problems. My sister retired last spring, and decided to
embark on a new career venture. I didn't
realize just how much time I spent in assisting, advising and general
hand-holding until I backed up my e-mail archives; now, at least, I know where
my summer went!
Looking
back at my some of my "finallies" for 2012, I realized that there
were, in fact, some pretty easy explanations for why these tasks still hadn't been accomplished. Burnout, boredom, over-scheduling, and the
inner editor have all helped contribute to seemingly endless
postponements. Looking forward again, I
don't know if "knowing" this will ensure that, in 2013, those tasks
will actually get done. But I do know
that if I attempt to proceed WITHOUT knowing what has caused me to bog down in
the past, "finally" will just be another way of saying "not a
chance!"
-- Moira
Allen, Editor
Moira Allen
is the editor of Writing-World.com (http://www.writing-world.com)
and the author of more than 350 published articles. Her books on writing
include Starting your Career as a
Freelance Writer, The Writer’s Guide to Queries, Pitches and Proposals, and
Writing to Win: The Colossal Guide to
Writing Contests.
