New Years Celebrations

Today is New Year’s Eve in Western countries. I know other cultures have other days for new year’s celebrations, but this is mine.

Do I have New Year’s resolutions? Not really, but over the next two days, I try to include all things that I would like to continue over the year. Some will be the habits I want to start; others the habits I’d like to keep. So I will write at least a little, walk a bit, drink coffee, and the like. It’s a superstition of sorts, a reminder of what is important.

We will eat good luck foods. The ones we have slated are pork (German), noodles (Chinese), and pickled herring (Scandinavian). Not simultaneously. We have Chinese peanut butter noodles on the menu, and that’s one of my favorite comfort foods, so I’m all in.

Every year, we have a Lord of the Rings marathon starting on New Year’s Eve. I’m not tired of it yet. We don’t stay up till midnight, because I need my sleep and my body is picky about when I get it. We don’t party because we’ve always thought New Year’s parties are depressing.

So if you wanted to know how two old nerds spend their New Year, here you go.

By the way, Reclaiming the Balance goes live tomorrow!

Happy New Year!

Happy 2022!

I have determined not to dread the coming of the new year or assume it will be better than 2020 or 2021 (but how could it be worse?) So I will look at it with cautious optimism and look at what I can control — what I do to make the best of the year.

My annual tradition

I have an annual tradition to make commitments for my year. I don’t do resolutions because they’re black-and-white: You keep them or you don’t. I prefer my method, which is to include the things I want to carry out in my life on the first day of the year. I have published my next novel, Gaia’s Hands. I have edited one of my works, eaten responsibly, organized some work for the beginning of the semester, organized my clothes a little, done a bit of cleaning … What do I have left? A few minutes on the exercise bike and a newsletter. Maybe I’ll do the newsletter first, which is how I generally feel about the exercise.

Here’s my hopes

I hope that beginning my year this way will keep me writing this newsletter. I have been struggling with it for a while. I would like it to be a part of my life, and I would like to reach you with it.

Goals for the New Year

I don’t make resolutions for the New Year because resolutions are flimsy. They are usually worded vaguely. They’re often worded in results (which may not be realistic), and they’re not worded in a way that suggests the actions that need to be taken.

So once again (I think I’ve written about this before), I reach out for SMART goals. SMART stands for:

Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Relevant
Time-bound.

So let’s take one common resolution (and one of mine, actually): To lose weight in 2016. What’s wrong with it?

There are so many things wrong with it. How many pounds a week? What is the process by which one will do it? What’s the time parameters? Why is this focused on the result (weight loss) and not the action (Changed habits)? Is it realistic? With no real parameters it can set someone up for failure.

We can change the goal to action-oriented: I will eat healthy and exercise.

Now, it’s not specific enough; let’s change it — I will eat two fruits and two vegetables a day and walk every day, working my time up to half an hour daily by increasing my walk five minutes a week.

But there’s no time parameters. so let’s add them.: Starting January 1, I will eat two fruits and two vegetables a day and walk every day, working my time up to half an hour daily by increasing my walk five minutes a week for the rest of the year, to be evaluated monthly.

This is a SMART goal. It’s easily followable, easy to see if it’s not working and needs adjusted.

So my goals for the year (not resolutions):

Starting January 1, I will eat two fruits and two vegetables a day
Starting January 1, I will walk every day, working my time up to half an hour daily by increasing my walk five minutes a week, for the rest of the year, to be evaluated monthly.

These are typical resolution goals, but then there’s my writing goals broken down:

By March 31, I will send 50 queries out for Apocalypse to science fiction/fantasy agents from Query Tracker.
By October 31, I will send 50 queries out for Prodigies to science fiction/fantasy agents from Query Tracker.
By March 1, I will finish the rough draft for Gaia’s Hands.
By June 1, I will revise the rough draft of Kringle in the Night
By August 1, I will put the final touches on Kringle in the Night
By September 30, I will prepare Kringle in the Night for publication — formatting, copyright, and cover production; To be published by November 1.
By December 1, I will have three short stories written.

It’s good to have all this written out, because it will be easier to accomplish. Now to get the vision board built, because I will need it by January 1.

Discovering perseverance

Today is post number 976. In a little under a month, I will write my 1000th post.

This is probably the most consistent thing I’ve ever done in my life. Almost every day, I’ve written this blog as a way to reach out and as a way to help manage writers’ block. I guess I’m in it for the long run.

I’m serious about this being the most consistent thing I’ve done in my life (other than things like breathing and eating). I’ve had a habit of being really excited by a new hobby or skill and doing it for a while, but not completing it. Gardening is a good example: I will start seeds of all sorts of edible plants in January through March, plant them, and then give up right around the time weeds sprout. My yields go to zero because I can’t find my plants through all the weeds. I’m not planting this year — I’m letting my raised beds go fallow with tarps on them to kill the weeds.

I wonder if my blogging will help me make more habits in my life stick. One of these is eating more healthy so I can lose weight again (Yeah, I didn’t stick to that too well) and maybe walking. I may have to set New Years’ resolutions (although I hate those). Or maybe I just keep doing the right thing.

Goals vs. New Years Resolutions

I’ve taught enough about goal-setting over the years that I can write very solid goals. Goals should be:

Specific
Measurable
Action-oriented
Relevant
Time-oriented

So, for example, the goal “Send queries*” fails several of these parameters:

Specific? I don’t know which of my manuscripts I’m sending queries for, nor to whom.
Measurable? Am I done with just one query? Seventy? Querying everyone in Query Tracker**?
Action-oriented? I guess we’re okay here.
Relevant? Is this the action that is relevant to acquiring an agent? Yes.
Time-oriented: When do I need to have this done by?

The SMART (see what I did there?) version of this goal would be:

“Send 3 queries a day, targeting the agents on Query Tracker who handle science fiction, until I run out of agents.” There’s the goal, and I am on day 15 of that. I have thirteen days more of query writing this round.

*****

I really like SMART goals, but I haven’t warmed up to New Year’s Resolutions.

First, resolutions aren’t goals. They’re not SMART. They’re sound bites that you have to provide to people when they ask:

“What’s your New Year’s Resolution?”
“I plan to marry Viggo Mortensen.”***

Second, there’s a concept in positive psychology called “ironic effects”, where doing something that requires self-control fails because we “know” we’re going to fail. For a good example, stare at a cheesecake you’re promised yourself you won’t eat. I find setting resolutions a guarantee that I will give up on January 31. And why not? Resolutions set goals without setting up plans.

What else can I do if not resolutions?
Write down my SMART goals!
And tell everyone, “I don’t make resolutions.”

*****

* Queries are the submissions you send to agents and publishers to ask them to consider your work and potentially ask to read the whole novel. All queries start with a query letter, a special kind of cover letter. https://www.agentquery.com/writer_hq.aspx has good instructions for a query letter. Most ask for a synopsis of the book and some segment of the book (first three chapters, etc.)

**I use www.querytracker.com. Writers, you’ll thank me for this.

*** For my foreign (and domestic USA) folks who don’t know, Viggo Mortensen is an American actor. In the Lord of the Rings movies, he played Aragorn. When I first saw the movie in 2001, almost 17 years ago, I joked about marrying Viggo Mortensen, as did about a million geek girls worldwide.