Most people don’t give a lot of thought to their New Year’s resolutions. That’s why only 8% of resolutions last for the year, succeeding or not. Some give a decent amount of thought, but I doubt very many give it a trial run before committing. You can put reality checks into your plan to succeed at resolutions, as I do, and as I will share soon in a workbook, but there’s no reality check like reality of actually trying it out as humans are notoriously bad at our ability to predict the future, even when it’s our own. Doing trial runs with my resolutions is exactly what I’m doing this December with a handful of resolutions I am planning on committing to come January 1st, including this creative writing thing, and I want to share its value.

I am committing to a “two year journey” to do more creative writing, with goals to improve them and publish at least a few books. There’s no doubt there. What was uncertain was what regular amount of writing I could do to fulfill deliberate practice goals. More specifically, I wasn’t sure what I could commit to this blog on what should be an almost daily contribution, that would basically serve as my warm-up before turning to my more serious writing projects. This is the more impromptu writing part to not only spur creativity, but also better first words toward a better first draft, and a faster one at that.

Being the sometimes diarrheally verbose talker and writer that I am, thinking fast and being able to type about 75 wpm to keep up, I originally thought a nice round target of at least 1000 words per day would be good. However, after just a handful of posts in this routine I am trying out in December, I’m finding out that a 500 word per day threshold would be better. I only need to write about 500 words to feel like I can enter flow state for writing. That doesn’t mean words would just come flowing out, for me. It just means I can get my focus to the level I want, in the right mindset and voice not to be verbose, or at least too verbose, and most importantly, in the right mindset to get my writing to the level I want, even with lots of editing at times. Given content here would be to get me to that mindset, I only need to spend the minimum amount of time required here, not some target to impress anyone. Preferably, the content would do that, whether short or long pending the day and topic. To those ends, I have my answer of 500 words minimum per day as the optimum length for me, though pending the topic, you may see a few thousand word length post here or there, I’m sure.

Now, some of you might rightly point out that December isn’t a typical month for my trial run, with all the holidays that I wouldn’t get other months to either do, or catch up should I fall behind. I agree, and would point out that December isn’t a typical month for resolutions testing, either, in that I have a bunch of resolutions to see through from this year, which I wouldn’t have in January. I still have all of my 20 going resolutions from last year, though five are being seen through at a lower target than the original top target, to salvage something from the resolution that’s better than nothing for when the top target is out of reach, rather than dropping it all together. That was part of the plan, as in a Plan B and Plan C should Plan A not work out, more properly referred to as Gold, Silver, and Bronze standards. I’ll share that with the guide coming out.

For now, the trial runs at the resolutions for next year are going well, and providing the value I hoped to get out of them. With regards to the writing trial run that this, and other recent writing posts comprise, I would just like to add that I’m not choosing the best topics I have for content for them. Why would someone use their best content for trial runs? So forgive me if some of these were not all that interesting. Come back in January, if you were willing, to see the real interesting stuff!

729 words

For more posts on my resolutions for 2021, please click here.