Resolution Resistance

Ah, resolutions. Useless bits of crystallized resolve set onto a page so the universe at large has something to shoot at and down.

Not that I'm bitter.

Would you believe me if I said that has no bearing on my resistance to making resolutions? Fact is, I the daughter of an engineer. Do you know how many times I've had it explained to me that the concept of 'New Year' is 100% arbitrary and meaningless? I mean it doesn't even mark a celestial event like perihelion or aphelion or a solstice or equinox - things that can be measured and marked down to the second. The science rants. They began early in my childhood. You may correctly assume that the engineer wasn't big on resolutions. They just weren't a thing in my family. Still aren't.

Which isn't to say that some of us don't want to enact change. I'm still working on producing more material in a shorter time frame. But it's not something that started on January 1. Nor will it ever end. It's an ongoing effort of testing what works versus what doesn't and tweaking my methodology. However, if we want to talk about what I'm working on? That I can do.

1. Experiment with shortening the story production cycle by sussing out where my time sinks occur. Once I find 'em, plug them. How I go this may be it's own blog post at some point. Because there are steps and some rinse, repeating. I'm pretty sure I know where in my process I can look to shave weeks off a story schedule.

2. Step outside my comfort zone. Something about what I write should scare me at least a little. The current UF story set scares me because of some of the emotional lines my heroine is crossing. It's too easy to slip into comfort and for comfort to become a rut. So I want to do something (like learning to rappel) or write something that shoves at least one foot firmly outside of 'I'm okay with this', but still remains within the confines of 'reasonably safe and sane-ish'. You aren't likely to find me wanting to jump out of airplanes, if only because I'm not going to go up in one on a lark in the first place.

3. Play. It came to my attention that in recent years, I've limited my creative expression to one format. Writing. Something that's become a job - lucky me! But seriously, there're pressures on that mode of expression that weren't present before I was published. It's still creative. It's still fun, I still love it. But it's not PLAY. Play is where you go to laugh and make mistakes and laugh some more. This feeds the creative critters that we are. So I'll carry my camera and take stupid, blurry photos of things I think are a good time. I'll get out my sketch book and pencils out and see if I still remember how to draw. Badly. Not because I think I'll suddenly turn into Picasso, but because it might be fun. It's possible some reading will happen in there, too.

Were you hoping I'd give up pseudo-science and conspiracy theories? Sorry. That's Lent you're thinking of. And the wrong religion. :D