Stella Leventoyannis Harvey

Resolutions

Kites rise highest against the wind, not with it.” Winston Churchill

I’m constantly revising my resolutions. Tinkering is good. That’s how I’ll get to the essence of what I want to change or improve. This is the lie I tell myself to ignore the fact that I have failed miserably. And only three weeks into the New Year. Yikes!

It all starts off so well. A new year brings with it the opportunity of renewal. In fact, when I’m busy and running around with all sorts of things I feel compelled to do, I reassure myself that all will be well once January comes. This craziness will pass and I will start anew. It’s a break. That’s all.

But now, it’s nearly the end of January and I’m still trying to find my groove to do the thing I most want to do. It’s important, dammit. And yet it’s the first thing that slides when life elbows its way into my carefully laid out plans. I’m needed elsewhere. There are things to do, timelines to meet, people expecting stuff.

I tell myself if I can just get all this other stuff done, my brain will be free to concentrate. I’ll be more productive then. More creative. Just plain, more.

But I’m deceiving myself, yet again.  

As I write this, the truth slowly wiggles its way to the surface, needles me until I can’t ignore it. The thing I should be doing, rather than all the busy work I typically immerse myself into, is hard to do, bloody hard. Maybe it’s easier to ignore it. Except it lurks, nudges, makes me unhappy.

I have done practically no writing since the end of November. There I said it. A writer who hasn’t done much writing? How can I call myself a writer? I typically don’t, but that’s the subject for another blog.

I did make a stab at going back to my new writing project in early January and things were going pretty well. I started off slow, rereading my new manuscript from the beginning, adding text, and making notes for other chapters.

It’s always difficult to get back into it. I never know if my characters will speak to me after an absence. But this time they seemed to want to. The more I worked, the more I thought about their stories. I added to their individual storylines.

Then it stopped and I’ve been wading neck deep ever since. I have finally come to realize there’s no use in doing that.

So I have a new plan (said like a true floundering obsessive compulsive). I’ve marked blocks of time in my calendar to do nothing else but write, or at least stand in front of the screen and look at the few words I have. Three hours, I’ll give myself three hours every day and see what comes. If nothing else, I’ll probably bore myself into putting some words down. And when you have something, editing is a piece of cake. No really, it is. I’m not fibbing now. Not to you. And certainly not to me.

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