by Donna Andrews of the Femmes Fatales.
A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct. Frank Herbert, Dune.
I wasn’t ready for the new year. I’m still not ready.
Maybe that’s a good thing.
Some years I spend way too much time trying to bring the old year to a perfect close and starting off the new year perfectly. Perfection is hard to achieve. And except in very small things, trying to achieve perfection rarely works. It produces stress, missed deadlines and opportunities, feelings of failure and inadequacy . . . but perfection? Dream on.
Writers tend to know this. If we’re under the delusion that our manuscripts are perfect, our editors quickly straighten us out. The copy editor then administers another healthy dose of reality, and I’m not sure I’ve ever had a book published without at least one reader finding something amiss--a typo, a missing word, a small factual error. If we’re paying attention, we writers eventually learn the difference between quality and perfection.
In 2019 I had a lot going on toward the end of the year. I turned in the draft of The Falcon Always Wings Twice the day before Thanksgiving. I turned in my revisions to the manuscript two days before Christmas. And I had things to do for Mystery Writers of American and Sisters in Crime, things to do with and for family and friends.
Things to do. Not a lot of sitting-down-and-reflecting time. Which means no, I haven’t made any grandiose new year’s resolutions. Actually, I never do resolutions any more. I set goals.
Yeah, there’s a difference, at least in my mind. You break a resolution and it’s . . . well, broken. And hard to mend. There’s this weird feeling that you should start it over again not immediately but at some significant time. Like at the beginning of next week. Better yet, next month. Or next year.
But a goal feels like a target. You aim for it. If you fall short--well, achieving a goal isn’t supposed to be a piece of cake. Failure isn’t built in, but if it happens, you know what to do: keep trying.
So sometime soon I’m going to sit down, do some thinking, and set myself some goals. Achievable goals, but not easy ones.
I can tell you what two of those goals will probably be. Goal one will be to continue working to find ways to be more productive with less stress. Improving my equivalent of Meg’s notebook-that-tells-me-when-to-breathe. And goal two will be to work on not beating myself up when I don’t make as much progress as I’d like toward my goals.
Here’s to a more balanced year!
P.s. And yes, getting a lot of writing done is one of my goals. What are yours?
I had a total knee replacement on the 7th of January. My goals are to do well on my physical therapy and return to my regular activities. I love to garden and I scheduled my surgery in hopes to be ready for spring.
Posted by: Susan Neace | January 10, 2020 at 09:31 AM