Resolutions are for suckers

"New Year's Day - Now is the accepted time to make your annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual."

Mark Twain

It's the second full week of 2010, and I'm feeling pity for the salad makers at the Pork Palace. This time of year, ticket after ticket cascades from the printer in the kitchen, running nonstop like a faucet which can't be turned off. Chilled bowls are lined up, waiting to be filled with vegetable goodness to fulfill the high-minded intentions of the customers in the dining room. Lettuce flies, tomatoes roll, and the company makes a killing on a very low-cost product. It's a busy, busy time for the salad makers.

Of course, this bit of stress and extra work is only temporary. By February, the salad maker's workload will ease, slowly at first, but eventually returning to a normal pace as only the people who eat salads the rest of the year continue to order them. All those extra salads being made at present go away, as all the "I'm going to lose weight this year" resolutions devolve into a heaping basket of crispy, battered onion rings.

Why does this happen? The problem lies in the whole idea of resolutions themselves.

Think about it: Once a year, we look at our lives and decide to change something about it. "I'm going to lose weight." "I'm going to stop smoking." "I'm going to quit whatever."

Bleah. That's no fun.

I think the best resolution I saw this year came from a comment on facebook: "I want to drink more and put on weight." At least make your resolution attainable, right?

I think the issue is that people generally make resolutions that are restrictive and chock-full of ways to deny oneself. Of course, the intent is always noble, but the practice... well, the practice just seems to say "don't" over and over again until the resolver is doomed to fail.

So I made no resolutions this year. Nor did Jean. Nor have we for the past several years.

It's not that we don't want to better ourselves; we most definitely do. In fact, we work on it just about every day. But rather than making a list of near-impossible achievements and denying ourselves, we're making plans. Turning negatives into positives. Setting goals and then determining the actions we need to achieve those goals.

I have a fairly extensive and far-reaching list of goals I want to achieve this year. They include living a more mindful life; becoming a non-smoker; becoming a published author; and enhancing my relationships with Jean, my daughters and step-daughters, my aging mother, and the rest of my extended family. There are others, many of which are lofty, but all of which are, to me, attainable.

In addition to my goals, I'm thinking through the actions I will need to undertake in order to achieve them. Thoughtful consideration of what needs to be done is the hard part, but I am doing my best to be thorough with my plans. I'm consciously phrasing the plan in a positive manner (you will find neither the word "don't" nor "stop" anywhere in the plan), I'm plotting out baby steps and attainable plateaus, and as I work I am finding that many of these actions (even more than I first thought) intertwine to reach multiple goals.

So, there it is. Resolutions are out (again), and planning is in. There is much work to be done, and I am eagerly anticipating not only the results but the work itself.

If I have one word of advice, it is this: Punt the resolutions in favor of a plan, and then follow through with it. Make 2010 your best year yet. And eat the onion rings. They're delicious.

NaNoWriMo Update: Day 24 -- Renewed efforts

Daily Stats

Day 24 Word Quota: 4,000
Day 24 Words Written: 3,300
Cumulative Word Count: 34,861

Renewed efforts

After Monday's realizations, I decided to take a long, hard look at at Snakebit and where it stood with regards to the remainder of NaNoWriMo. I knew I was behind, but I didn't know exactly what I would have to do to finish 50,000 words by midnight on the 30th.

I know now.

The first thing I did on Tuesday was to review what I needed to do to reach my word goal on time. It wasn't pretty. It looks like I'll need somewhere in the neighborhood of 4,000 words per day to reach my goal (not counting two days mostly-off for Thanksgiving). I'll also need more phase outlines, because I'm running out of things to write. So I made a plan, and I'm working it.

I also became un-bored with the story. That happened when I figured out that it was entirely up to me to make the story fun. Throwing in a redneck wedding to a Mississippi stripper upped the fun quotient to be sure.

So even though I'm behind, I feel good. I have a plan, and although it will be difficult to attain, it is far from impossible. I guess the most important thing is that I want this. I really, really want it. I not only want to hit that magic 50,000 word mark, but I also want a first draft finished by the end of the month. Can I get a draft finished by then? I don't know. But I will at the very least finish 50,000 words by the time the clock strikes 11:59 on the night of the 30th.

You can take that to the bank.

NaNoWriMo Update: Day 3 - My planned gamble

It is a calculated gamble, yet one with which I am -- almost -- comfortable.

Tuesday was the first of what will be five straight days with no additions to my NaNoWriMo word count on Snakebit. I have to admit that I'm nervous about this. Momentum means a lot to me as a writer, and with two good days in a row under my belt, it seems a shame to put the brakes on my progress. But it's all part of the plan, a plan into which I put much thought and effort. I just have to keep reassuring myself that it will all work out.

Why the sudden stop? There are a couple of reasons. First, yesterday was Tuesday, and Tuesdays are planned non-writing days for me -- it's part of the plan. Today, however, is when we head to Orange Beach for a family trip. We will on the gulf through Saturday morning, and I expect not to have access to the internet during that time -- much less a computer. Besides, what kind of family vacation includes hammering out a novel while everybody else has fun? I wouldn't do that to myself nor the rest of the family, so I included trip days as non-writing days in the plan as well.

Phase Outlines

However, just because I'm not adding to my word count doesn't mean I'll not be working on the story. I will be.

One of the tools I've found quite helpful is a free PDF download of a book by Lazette Gifford: NaNo for the New and the Insane. The book contains lots of helpful tips and tricks, but one that has really helped me is her "Phase Outlines". As she puts it:

Phases are written out as key phrases
that will bring the action into focus.
A phase can be clues to dialogue,
if that's what the section's
focus is centered around,
or it might be a little bit of description,
or a set of actions... anything
that will make the story move
another few hundred words.

I used these for the first two days of writing. I wrote down a list of ten or so phrases before I sat down at the computer, then used those as buliding blocks, expanding on each phrase until I had said all I wanted to say for that particular bit before I moved on to the next phase. Looking at a blank computer screen knowing you need 2,500 words is daunting; knowing you only need 250-300 words to complete a phase is much less intimidating.

So while I am enjoying the salt air at Orange Beach, I'll be working on phase outlines for much of the story; with some hard work and good luck, I'll have phases written out for the rest of the story by the time we get home on Saturday. On Sunday, I will begin hammering out words again.

So, there won't be any updates for a few days, and I'm going to hate seeing my word count stay the same for the better part of the week. I'm also concerned about losing my momentum. We'll see how it turns out.

Sure, it's a calculated gamble. But I'm feeling like a winner right now.