Happy New Year a.k.a time to bloody change!

Let’s make the most of the New Year, and not just because it’s our last…apparently.

Whether you believe the world will end at some point this year (all because the Mayans didn’t carve a stone calendar that went on forever…WTF, I mean let’s face it we might as believe the world is going to end because they stopped making Dilbert calendars or couldn’t be bothered making any more Calvin and Hobbes desk calendars…no offence Scott and Bill – you both rock by the way) but because this is what we do every year. And who gives a fuck if its short lived/has a shorter life expectancy than a limping turtle crossing the motorway/isn’t even slightly achievable?? What harm does it do having a New Year’s resolution that you know you won’t keep? Will you be worse off if you only stop smoking for a few weeks? No worse off than if you didn’t make the resolution in the first place! So if I resolve to write 1,000 words a day and only keep up that pace for a month or so…who gives a monkeys? It might be a hell of lot better than I can do without making a ‘stupid’ and ‘pointless’ resolution…

If you have already promised yourself you’ll stop/start something all because you’ve had to bin the ‘hang in there’ kitty wall calendar and settle for a ‘Steam Trains of Britain’ calendar then WELL DONE to you!!

You’ve already achieved something…you’ve acknowledged there is something about yourself which you have the desire to change. It might not necessarily be a bad thing, just something you think you can live with/without…and that’s a good thing, even if you don’t stick to it all year round. Let’s face it, if we all stuck to our resolutions then we wouldn’t have to keep making them every year – we’d pick a few good ones when we were old enough, and mature enough to understand they were good for us, and we’d stick with them forever.

But that’s one of the best things about being human – we’re messy, unintelligent, don’t-know-what’s-good-for-us creatures…but we ALWAYS have a desire to improve ourselves…well most of us do, a tacky minority are happy to live out their lives starring in or watching reality television.

But I’m one of those messy, unintelligent human beings with a desire to change.

I want 2012 to be the year that the rest of the world sit up and take notice of my writing, but if I want that to happen then I’ll have to sit up and take notice of my writing.

I’ll have to put in the extra effort to get things finished, to polish and perfect my prose until it’s presentable to the public.

I’ll have to pull my bloody finger out and get something finished for a change. No more sitting back and waiting for the world to bow down to a half finished manuscript…seriously, in what twisted world would that happen? When I read a book I want it to be perfect, to grab me by the balls and scream READ ME in my ear until I can’t even imagine putting the book down until I reach the last page. So why, until now, have I been happy to sit back and assume some miracle is going to swoop in and finish my stories for me?

Some cheesy deus ex machina flapping in at the last second and somehow enabling my half baked attempts at novels to enthrall readers with half finished sentences, cliff hanger scenes and missing endings??

Time for change!

Time for action!

Time to write!

For the past two days I’ve been digging around in the real world and in the virtual world, through notebooks, files, scraps of paper, pen drives, old computers, laptops, desk drawers…and I’ve gathered all my notes, all my flashes of inspiration, back of fag packet sketches and ideas. Then I’ve sorted through that pile of filth and worked out what was worth keeping, and what was worth putting on the back burner.

By my estimations I have nine novels with enough umph to keep on the go. NINE! Obviously not all at the same time, but still I feel like these nine have to be kept in my peripheral vision. It’s the only way I can assure I don’t just forget about them and start something else.

Without these nine novels sat on my desktop, each with their own folder screaming at me to open and finish them, I think I’d be tempted to open a fresh Word document and start another bloody book.

You see, I’m a starter not a finisher. I can get within 80-85k of finishing a novel and then that sweet, sweet, terrible feeling will hit. That itch will start to tickle, and the only way to get rid of it is to start something new. Something shiny and new. The feeling of starting a new novel is wild and adventurous and oh so fun…it makes you forget all the bad times you had trying to tie together all the loose ends of the last one…

Time. To. Change.

I’m bored of getting so close then giving up and trading in for a younger model. I want to finish what I started, no matter how crap the end result may be. It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t make sense, if it rambles on or misses huge sections of critical action; the point is to get a finished first draft. Something I can print, feel, flip through and think “fuck me, I wrote a novel”, not “ah balls, I can’t be arsed with this”.

So…nine novels…365 days in a year.

That’s about 40k for each of my current WIPs…not that bad…maybe a little unreasonable but not altogether unmanageable. But I agree with what you’re thinking right now…it ain’t gonna happen.

Don’t worry, I’m happy with that. Believe me, I know more that most how life can get in the way. But what about 500 a day? Or 200 a day?

As long as I write every day I think I’ll begin to feel happier. And a happy writer is a productive writer…and a productive writer is a bloody happy writer…ad infinitum.

So that’s my goal for the New Year. Not to lose weight, or to join a gym, or to give up drinking, or to be kinder and more patient…pfft, I’d be lucky to last a week with any of those.

No, my goal is something I know I can do. I know I can write, and I know I enjoy writing, so technically this shouldn’t be hard. But we all know how hard things can be when they look easy on paper.

So wish me luck in my quest to write something each and every day of 2012, I’ll wish you luck with whatever you may have pledged to yourself, and we’ll both pray that the world doesn’t actually end as prophesized and we both get a chance to prove ourselves.

Good luck and Godspeed!