New Year's comes at a strange time of year

New Year’s comes at a strange time of year. 

Some people use the time to celebrate good fortune and some use the time to say good riddance. The New Year always holds promise, and hope. People are determined their dreams will no longer be deferred, their wishes fulfilled and somehow, this year will be the best one ever.

You can adopt this thinking any day of any month. It doesn’t have to be right after coming down from a holiday high when your souped up with sugar or laden with the weight of extra big meals.

Chances are everyone around you is talking about what they want to do, have or be in the New Year, so you might as well use that collective energy as a springboard.

There’s no shortage of tips and programs to help you achieve your goals. Google my name and you’ll come across a few that I hope you’ll pursue, but it’s the last day of the year, so here’s something quick:

Step One: Know what you want.

Step Two: Take action, right now.

Step Three: Notice if it’s working. 

Step Four: If it’s not working, try something else.

Follow the steps above and you’ll accomplish more in 2012 then you did in 2011. 

Enjoy your celebration, in whatever way is meaningful to you. Work hard, 2012 will have challenges and setbacks, but if you stay focused I’m confident you will have a very Happy New Year.

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If you wrote every month like you did in November, how productive would you be?

Many people participated in NaNoWriMo this year, the writing project that challenges you to put 50,000 words down within 30 days. I was pleased to have reached over 60,000 this year.

Many accomplished more. Many accomplished much less. And most writers in the world didn’t participate at all.

I find the deadline and daily word count goal to be exceptionally motivating. Others find the whole thing too maddening.

Naturally there are many who had the best of intention but a sickness, or family trouble, or something else stood in their way. It happens. All the time.

Look at what you wrote in the month of November. I’m not talking about the quality of what you wrote, I’m talking about the volume. What if you repeated your performance all year long? How much more productive would you be?

Maybe you wrote a page a day and it took you thirty minutes. Maybe you wrote only on weekends and punched out 10-15,000 words. Every writer is different. There’s not a right way or a wrong way. The only thing that writers have in come is that they write. They carve out x amount of time and produce x number of pages. What were your x’s and what’s keeping you from extending them through the next year?

If you invest a half hour and write 250 words a day you can have over 87,000 words for just over 14 days worth of work. What can you do with 87,000 words?

If you already write with any regularity you can probably write more per day and at a faster speed. So pick your own numbers. It’s your art. The thing is, if you keep it inside, no one is going to see it.

Maybe secretly, that’s what some people want. To be thought of as a writer. How many more years do you want to wait for your first novel, or script, or book? How many years do you want to be thought of as a “new” writer?

Writers write because they enjoy writing. It’s a priority for them, guilt be damned.

Whatever you did in November, do again. Add more words, or pull back a few if you’re tired. You’ve already proven what you’re capable of achieving. Keep your momentum.