12 Resolutions: February

This year I'm playing along with #12Resolutions on Twitter and Facebook. The idea is to set yourself short-term, achievable goals, one each month. 

For February, I'm setting myself a writing challenge. 

I could (and should) commit to doing Words for Wednesday every week instead of intermittently, and now Anna Spargo-Ryan has a writing prompt too, so there's no shortage of opportunity...

But I've been tinkering around with a few ideas, and I started writing two short stories some time ago, which I haven't touched for awhile but am very often thinking about.  So I thought I should finish them. Or if not them, write and finish something else.

After I formed my February resolution and shared it on the 12 Resolutions Facebook group (eeek), I started catching up on some blog reading. (After all, it's not February yet!).  And I came across this post which was perfect reading for me right now.  In it Anna Spargo-Ryan talks about how she has been "a writer on the inside" ever since she was a child and had always thought of herself as a writer, and was suddenly made to realise that she wasn't actually writing in reality. So she started writing in reality. (Read it - it's better than that).

I wrote poems and stories as a child and did writing classes when younger and have kept a notebook ever since I was a kid, and I read and am always toying with story ideas in my head (or my notebook), so it's time I started setting myself to actually WRITE SOME STUFF.  I've been meaning to for, oh, you know... thirty years... but am finding myself more urgently preoccupied by it in the last year or so.  These days it seems like everyone's a writer of some sort, and there is so much stuff out there to inspire and help - millions of excellent articles, stories and books of course, but also blogs and resources, how-to's, and information on every aspect of writing, reading and publishing that you could want (SO much to procrastinate with...) 

I've learned a lot from all this stuff. I've been practicing (and had one tiny thing published online), and I'm ready to go.  

So my resolution for February is to write two short stories.

By that I mean finish them to final draft status, so that I can try and submit them to writerly publishing outlets. My resolution is not to get published (though of course that's what I'd like). My resolution is just to write two stories. 

I can do that!

Meanwhile, thanks to January's resolution, I will also continue walking every day.

#12Resolutions:

January: walk 5 times a week 
February: write 2 short stories

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