As the clock ticks on to midnight, I write. That’s is my one New Year tradition. When the confetti falls and people cheer, I make sure my fingers tap across the keyboard as if this will make a difference. As if the writing gods will hear the tapping over all the other nonsense–noise makers, champagne corks, kisses, cheers, horns, prayers, cries–and they will wave their magic wands through the winds over my house and dreams will come true. Makes perfect sense.
What I really want to do is cut my hours at work. Imagine being able to write during normal waking hours! Imagine getting enough sleep. Imagine not trying to squeeze in writing, editing, querying, blogging, making art, reading, and keeping track of everything between the hours of 10pm and 1am. Imagine a paycheck cut in half and no one buying any art and not being able to pay the bills. The imagination will take you far!
What are your hopes for the New Year if you bother with that sort of thing? How much writing can you do in a year? What’s in your imagination?
Marta Pelrine-Bacon 
I don’t make New Year’s Resolutions; I make birthday resolutions. That being said, I have to kiss my husband at midnight on New Year’s or I fear a bad year in our marriage. We had enough bad years. Don’t need any more.
As for what’s in my imagination… I’m coming to the realization that my imagination is quite philosophical and a little bit sarcastic. The rest of me is VERY sarcastic, so I’m surprised my imagination isn’t so caustic. I’ve some ideas in mind that I’m going to explore this year. I want to see what’s lying under the tarp of my mind.
I hope you share what is under the tarp–whether sarcastic or not. And I like birthday resolutions more than new year ones.
I find it interesting you ask the question about how much writing I can do in a year. I answered this on my blog not long ago. I’ve had a full year and then some to be unemployed, and you know how much writing I’ve got done?
None. Zero.
Turns out, stress is an incredible killer of creativity and motivation. So I did no writing this past year — not to speak of at least — and now I’ve regretted that. But such is life, and it does go on, like it or not. 🙂
Hope you had a joyous Christmas.
I remember you writing about it. This sort of thinking must be in the air this time of year. Now I’m sure you’ve written some fiction this year. Right? You’ve done some recently in fact! Don’t underestimate! And you can write more.
I did have a good Christmas–thank you for asking. Hope you did too (though I’ve read some about it on your blog and you seem happy. For you.)
ROFL – sorry – was reading your comment to Darc – “you seem happy. For you.” LMAO!
My hopes for the new year involve money. With enough money I can take care of any other problems I might have.
I think your writing at midnight is interesting. Here’s hoping your wishes come true too – with enough money you could quit that job and write during the day and sleep at night. 🙂
Ah, money. Money, money, money…
“Mirabelle” — is that the rabbit’s name?
Yeah, the delight of an unfettered day can take you a pretty long way. (I did it for 2-3 years.) But eventually, yeah again, you reach the bottom of the hill, and the flat-broke/flat-desperate feeling is not fun, not fun at all…
I’ve been intermittently reading a blogger who styles herself The Communicatrix. In a recent post, she included a link to a year-old YouTube video of herself singing a song which addresses those “eventually” moments when the world starts getting in the way of happiness — addresses them very entertainingly. Her description of it on the YouTube page says, in part, “This is my tribute to the new year, to doing things imperfectly but actually DOING them.” But ***WARNING***WARNING*** it’s decidedly NOT safe for work (or little ears)!
…and here‘s the video.
(Especially useful, I’d think, if you’re feeling generally ticked off at “things.”)
Well, it may be crazy, but that’s the name that came to me.
I don’t need every day to be unfettered, but a bit more time to work on this writing/art career would be nice. Not going to happen though, so we’ll just keep plugging along with how things are.
Thanks for the link. I’ll watch it when it is safe–which is not right now.
The video was great fun. I needed that.
You’re a model for us all Marta, on how to keep creating in the midst of an already full life. I’ve had no time, and I’ve had plenty of time, to write. Pluses and minuses both ways, but I’m not gonna lie- nothing frees up my creativity like having less parenting responsibilities. Something about parenting keeps me vigilant, other-focused, even when they are not in the room, or even in the house, and only their increasing independence, along with my willingness to let them be independent, frees me up enough to bring my attention fully back to my own creative process.
As for what i can do in a year? I now know that I can write a novel in a year, so that’s what I plan to do. My birthday and the new year are only two weeks part, so the “fresh start” feeling is enhanced for me and I love it! On with the new!
Hurray for a new novel. And happy new year and birthday too.
Not sure I should be model for anyone. Too keep creating is so hard! People like you keep me going.
Every year, I want to develop a regular writing practice, and every year, life conspired to make my writing practice choppy, schizophrenic or completely absent. I don’t know. Maybe I’m not supposed to write every day, start an art career, blog regularly, raise kids, stay sane, cook food, keep house albeit indifferently, and, you know, be a human.
But I’m tired of putting it all off for perfect circumstances. There never are perfect circumstances. Even when I was single and had all the time in the world to write, I still never got as far as I wanted.
This year, aside from getting our feet back under us financially, I want to take my writing career seriously… the publishing part of it, not the writing part. I do a lot of twiddling with writing to keep myself out of the truly scary publishing arena.
But this year, I’m just gonna say “fuck it.” What’s the worst that could happen? I don’t get published. The same things been happening for the past 20 years, so I’ll be no worse off. Remind me I said this later when I start getting rejections. 😮
You’re not supposed to anything. And you’re supposed to do everything. You know how it is. But I take your writing seriously. Keep at it. And you are doing all those things on that list by hook or by crook, with a gold star or scuffs of dirt.
We probably can never be as far as we want because we want to be impossibly far. Maybe our judge of distance is askew. But we can keep going.
I’ll remind you later.