© irene waters 2013
The New Year Countdown Begins. Goodbye 2013 Hallo 2014

Maureen  poses  the question in her post, Thoughts about the New Year  which is found at http://gleanerhall.wordpress.com/2013/12/30/thoughts-about-the-new-year/   , how can you stay focused on your goals. This set me thinking. Normally, I am very focused by necessity and as 2014 will be a very intense year for me I really have to get my act together. Lately though I seem to have lost the plot. I am writing, but not what I am supposed to be writing. My second manuscript is sitting in the cloud somewhere not seeing the light of day. I am happily writing a small piece to add to my petmoire and really enjoying experimenting with a new-found past time haiku, but even these have dropped off over Christmas period to perhaps once per week and I am struggling to get  back on track. I have so many stories going around in my head but I just don’t seem able to do any of them.

Reneedeangelo posted Henry Miller’s rules of writing which is found at http://reneedeangelo.wordpress.com/2013/12/29/rules-for-writing/ .  I have great admiration for Henry Miller after reading his book Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymous Bosch, so I read the list with great interest and consider it worth taking up all his tips. For me perhaps Number 1 was perhaps the most important – ” work on one thing at a time until finished.”  Perhaps a good New Years Resolution.

Continuing my thoughts – I believe it is essential to know what drives you then, artificially if necessary, create those conditions. I am goal focused deadline driven.  For me to be successful in finishing my second manuscript by March (a self set time so not a sufficient driver) I have to work out ways in which to make a deadline which will hold. Am I therefore a procrastinator? Perhaps. Yes probably. I have just spent a considerable time looking for items relating to procrastination. The following  from

http://9gag.com/gag/ay5x74r?ref=9g.m

I think could be helpful. At least they  will be to me. So now armed with all this information  I will now spend a happy few hours at the end of this year planning my New Years resolutions for 2014, when I really know that the only resolution that will be kept will be the one I won’t make. That is to do my best, be happy with who I am and what I am doing and who I am with and make 2014 the very best year it can be.

I hope you all have a very Happy New Year and that it brings you those things that are important to you.

HAPPY NEW YEAR