A Few Resolutions

Most years I'm not much into New Year's resolutions, what with the six-month vows I take at Samhain and Beltane, and little New Moon vows when the need arises, but it looks like I'm heading into a strange, difficult week, so the thing to do is imagine past it. Imagine, that is, without the binding force of a vow. Like I said, strange and difficult week--no time for swearing things rashly.

So.

I definitely want to do the 52 book challenge. Last year, I spent so much time rushing to writing deadlines, real and imagined, that I read shockingly little. This year, there's all that research I want to do for the short book. There are all the delicious books my friends and relatives have given me for Xmases and birthdays since I finally finished grad school and stopped saying that the cruelest thing to give me was a book I wouldn't be free to read--that's a big book stack, and I may be chipping away at it for years. And, now that I try to keep up with Locus, I also try to keep up a little with the books most favorably reviewed there. Finding 52 books I'll want to read is no problem. My reading speed is pretty slow, though. It's a hazard, I think, of having an unnaturally long attention span.

I intend to get two book manuscripts into what I consider an acceptable state of polish. It damn near killed me to have to send the big book out with Parts 3 and 4 still so rough. And every time I think too hard about that misplaced paragraph in Vol 1 Part 2 Ch 10, I get this visceral pain, right here. I would prefer never to be in the position again of having to send a book out while it's still raw just because it's the only full ms I have. Inventory, as matociquala says, is your friend.

Within the next six months, I will grow the tutoring practice to double the number of regular client families, and every month I will dedicate a day to drumming up new business. (At the moment, the client base is small enough, doubling it will not be that hard. It just needs doing, is all.)

I will cull my files. If ever there are offspring, I'll have to move my study into the attic, which means holding a sort of barn raising and enlisting the aid of friends to help me get the books and furniture and files up those deathtrap stairs. I don't mind asking for help to carry the crate of letters Dan and I have been exchanging since, oh, 1987, but nobody should have to schlep a crate of blank Rutgers University exam blue books for me. Why do I still have a crate of blank Rutgers exam blue books? Who knows? They were just the right size for thinking through the syllabus design for a 14-week course, but that's not something I anticipate doing again anytime soon.

I will get back on the ball about getting my shorter projects out in the mail to magazines.

There's more I could resolve to do, and maybe should resolve to do, but that's enough for imagining past the coming week. It's certainly plenty to keep me busy. Busy is good.