In terms of writing goals, 2017 was full of ups and downs. Not only did I have a hell of a lot going on, but when I did have time to work on my writing goals, I often found myself suffering a lot of self-doubt, which lead to even less progress. I know we all feel and that I should just try to get words down a page and leave perfecting them to later, but that’s easier said than done when you’re in the grips of those feelings. Still, it wasn’t a completely wasted year. I had to detangle a lot of my ideas for my WIPs, and now that I’ve done that, one can hope that will lead to more words on the page in 2018.
I know that there’s not much I can do about those feelings except try to push through them. I’m constantly experimenting with what sort of writing system works best for me and I plan to keep doing that in the coming year. My main WIP, Memories and Magic, is obviously still on the go, and I’ve decided to revisit another forever project, Lessons Learned. A few months ago, I also talked about revisiting the original Operation: Sugarplum and I intend to follow through on that.
At the moment, my plan is to work on one of these projects for a month, then move onto another one. I’m going to aim to write every day when I can; my aim is to try to write three sentences, which will hopefully be enough to get myself on a roll and then I’ll write a lot more. One thing I recognised last year is that there are times when I need to simply give myself permission not to write. I won’t write much while I’m in Nepal in April and I won’t try to write in October when all my uni work is coming to a head.
I’m hoping that while I’m not studying in the first half of the year, at least, I’ll be able to get back to blogging things like Short Story Saturday and the Monday Musings series (today’s post should really be a Sunday Summary, but I really wanted it to be posted in the new year). This may taper off once I resume study in July but we’ll see how it goes.
So what’s the point of this post? I’ve rambled on a bit but now that I’ve reached the end this is my takeaway: sometimes it feels like it is taking forever to figure out what works best for me. But maybe there is no one way, and I just have to keep trying. That’s what I’m going to do in 2018.
Emily Wrayburn 