I know I’ve heard this before countless times, but it’s a simple fact of life that the holiday season always blows past far too quickly.
I spent my end-of-the-year holidays at my hometown, with my family and friends, mostly hanging out, drinking tea, hugging a heater, sleeping, eating much more than appropriate, bringing gifts, reading, fighting against the Ultimate Suitcase of Hugeness and sleeping some more. And it was awesome. But next thing I knew, I was on a plane and back at work. With a whole new year before me, ready to be tackled.
One of the things I’ve learnt from Holly Lisle – awesome professional writer and inspiring teacher, whose site I dearly recommend – that I’ve found the most helpful, is the importance of setting up goals for yourself if you want to succeed at something: as in actual, useful goals, that you can control and actively work on achieving. This is the spirit that led me to think of my New Year’s Resolutions for 2012: not vague objectives, but real targets that matter to me to shoot for, things I want and can get done in a year from now. Reading today this post by Brian Klems on Writersdigest.com inspired me further on this topic, so here are my New Year’s Resolutions related to my greatest passions, writing and art.
#1: Finish and publish “the Path of Blood” (aka PoB), the novel I’m revising at the moment, at least in Italian.
I’ve been working on the revision for PoB from November 2010, around one month after I’d gotten the first draft done. The odd thing is that some time ago, back when I suffered from the dreaded “endless tinkering is so much better than actually finishing something and taking responsibility for it” writing syndrome, revision was my favourite part of writing. Now that I’m dying to get this done, bring it out into the world and move to other things, my Muse plays the nastiest tricks on me. This can probably explain why this topic in particular is known to my twitter pals as “the Evil Novel Revision”. The first step to this goal is, of course, the birth of DasteRoad.com. The following steps imply actually finishing the beast and promoting it.
#2: Prepare and publish a promotional artbook for PoB, both in Italian and English.
I’m thinking of a short project combining illustrations and writing, including character sheets, info sheets about the story and setting, and the first few scenes of the novel as an appetizer.
#3: Open my own shop on Cafepress or Zazzle.
I’ve wanted to try my hand at designing shirts and accessories from a while. If people liked my designs enough to buy them, it might become a way not only to promote myself as an artist but also to support my little creative adventure.
In the end, happy new year everybody! Here’s to an awesome, creativity-filled 2012.
- DasteRoad
[This post is also available in: Italian]
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