New Years Day.
A day of thinking of the year ahead, of contemplating dreams, locking down plans and starting to build that Ultimate Weapon for taking over the world.
And also the day to beat yourself up for the failures of last year, wallowing in the fears which held you back and nursing the scars sustained from that terrible explosion when last years Ultimate Weapon short circuited, gave you third degree burns and covered the whole north of the city in a strange green syrup which the police could never pin on anyone...
Ahem.
Whilst in the past I've subscribed to both schools of thought, age and experience is teaching me to keep things simple. So this year this is my plan:
1) Write. Every day. Anything. It can be a blog post like this, a page of writing practice or add to the word count of the almost finished novel. And if I don't write something, it better be because I'm editing something - even if it's only a paragraph. Write or edit. But mostly WRITE.
2) Blog.
As a creative person with a full time job, the brain farts coming from my head may well be utter shite, but every now and then I might accidentally stumble upon a pertinent point or some deep emotion which I feel it's my duty to share with the world because it's cheaper than therapy.
But even if I'm only typing out loud and repeating the ramblings of gutter hermits from time immortal, at least I'm talking to the world. It would be egotistical to presume the world's listening anyway.
3) And I can't believe I'm putting this out there and ergo tying myself down to some kind of unspoken cyber contract, but here goes...
I work in a bookshop and I buy too many books.
It's been two days since my last book purchase.
(breathes out slowly)
That was easier than I thought.
Firstly, I know there's no such thing as "too many books" with an addendum dependent on the size of your house and secondly, that's when most people realise they need to move or get rid of all their furniture and construct it from carefully stacked hardbacks instead...
But, I have a tendency due to the divine intervention of Staff Discount, to buy books and hoard them, never quite getting round to reading them because I'm reading something else which has been published subsequently; or, and this is worse, buying books on a whim because of the divine Staff Discount and realising after two years that I'm never going to read them and donating them to charity instead.
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Some of the unread books. Don't feel sorry for them, they have a warm home and don't have to do any chores
I buy too many books and I need to read the ones I already have because I hear them weeping quietly in the middle of the night when I can't sleep because I'm thinking of the next books I want to buy or working on the next phase of the Ultimate Weapon.
(Deep breath, long rambling sentence which editors would cringe at now follows)
I buy too many books and need to save some money for a trip to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter where I can truly delude myself that magic exists and that the Harry Potter books are a gentle mass introduction to the concept in the same way that The X-Files started to get us used to the notion that aliens were real and the American government has been harnessing alien tech in secret for decades but knew we'd freak the hell out and so kept it on the down low...
But basically I buy too many books.
So, during 2015 I plan to only buy one book a month.
I can't believe it's there in black and white. I think my palms might be sweating a little.
One book a month. Exclusions can be made for gifts for others and titles for the bookclub which I run in our store, (January we're reading The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith, but I already have a copy as you could probably guess. Jeez, I sound like a real HP/Rowling nerd... Oh wait, I guess everyone knew that already) and any other rational, plausible reason which I can't think of right now due to the palpitations and nervous glances at my bookshelves...
So, write, blog and one book a month.
Sounds simple right?
Wish me luck.
