Write Early, Write Often…Write Something!

Teresa Fannin, reader, writer, gardener, chocolate fan & tea drinker

Tag: resolutions

ONE WORD

01/01/2023 /

I don’t commit to resolutions. I’m lousy at it. When I try for something easy…well it’s just too easy. When it’s something hard, I can talk my way out of it by the end of January. Like Lent, resolutions are a promise; a promise to either to ‘give up’ or, do something good…[in my day, it was give up–usually candy], and by God, if you couldn’t sacrifice or be kind for forty days your soul was in deep sneakers. Forty days versus three HUNDRED and sixty five! Yeah, Lent was doable.

I’ve tried to think of New Year’s resolutions as a promise to me. But that didn’t really work. The one person to whom I can rationalize just about any personal behavior is myself. Try it on my mom, or my sister, sheeze, no way. But me? I’m a sucker for believing my own arguments.

When I got my first apartment in Santa Monica I thought that the perfect Art above the fireplace would be a beautifully framed white board where I could write a quote that meant something to me that day, week, or month. Something that would add to my self knowledge.  And there were several. And I have my favorites.

Hammarskjöld’s ‘Never, for the sake of peace and quiet, deny your own experience or convictions.’

Or Euripides, ‘Enough is abundance to the wise.’

Or, Solon, ‘Call no man happy until he is dead.’

About fifteen or or so years ago, the eldest suggested that a focus on a word, just one word. That word would be front and center of your whole being for the entire year. And the idea has stayed with me since then.

There is one word is so huge to me, so full of everything that is good and great that I would have it on my white board all year. Hope.

Hope for a peaceful nation. Hope for an end to violence both here and overseas. Hope for Christmas blessings on everyone I know and love throughout the year.  Hope to those who are distraught or dealing with the distraught. Hope to remain purposeful. Hope for grace in the day to day.  Hope to not lose hope.

As life has become more complicated, more frightful and more uncertain I Hope for a peaceful soul.

 

 

New Year

12/01/2017 /

On Sunday we enter a new liturgical year. For me this is a better time than the calendar new year to sit and contemplate my goals and objectives, my faith and fortune, my needs and wants. Not really resolution time, more like assessment time.  Assessments are evaluations. Assessments work to estimate the quality, quantity, nature, ability of the something.  So this is more than just my writing. It is my everything.

For purposes of this blog, we will still with the ‘what I do’ not ‘how I live my life’ assessment. It is a common statement ‘do what you love and you will never work a day in your life’. And I was privileged and loved and cherished so that in essence that is how I have spent most of my life. That’s not to say that there was not turmoil~ there was. Or that it was all smooth sailing~ it wasn’t. Or that every second of every day it was butterflies and roses~no!

What is means is that I was always given the option to find my own path, and while I am grateful, I’m not exactly sure if that was a reflection of my early boomer status~ there were few in front of us, or my own personality~ I was really a ‘what me worry?’, or that I was actually that accomplished and aware.  LOL, accomplished maybe, unawareness was a sort of hallmark trait.

So. assessment.

I’m doing more to advance my own writing than ever before. Spending time on it. Attending webinars, programs, conferences. I’m using beta readers to get a sense of how my story is perceived outside of my critique group. And lastly, I am not rushing off to submit. I get that I have submitted too early [although in my defense, it ‘yea, it felt’ right].

It’s hard for me, not to rush in.  I do it well. I solve problems. I am a command person But #amthinking is where I am right now. And as I think forward to 2018, that is a great assessment.

#oneword Choose

12/31/2016 /

Like most, I’m not very good at resolutions, not for any particular reason. If a goal is that important to me, then I am probably already doing it. Many years ago, my eldest told me about picking just one word that would drive your year. This year the IC of SCBWI Carolinas came up with the same idea. It’s a great premise. For 2017 my word ischoose

For me, 2016 was an interesting year that had major downs and minor ups. Would I have chosen different outcomes? Yes. But that changes nothing.

So this year, no  worrying about the outcomes.  For 2017, I want to make choices in the here and now, consciously, with understanding, with humor, and with love.

  • I choose fearlessness.
  • I choose faithfulness.
  • I choose cheerfulness.
  • I choose acceptance.
  • I choose thankfulness.
  • I choose mindfulness.

This is not a resolution. It is how I choose to live 2017!

happy-new-year

Resolutions

12/31/2013 /

As a kid I did the whole New Year’s thing. What are my faults [depending on who you talk with they could be many]? How would I correct them? [The puzzle here was what if I liked those faults? I’m thinking, can you ever have too much chocolate, laugh too much, read too much?] What would I like to accomplish in the next year? This last one was always a ‘times a’wastin’ type of resolution. It stressed my mortality, which although I intellectually agree is there, viscerally, well, not a good thing to dwell on. It was a sort of, get it done now! And the ‘or else’ was implied.

Resolutions. Yes, before we go further, a definition. a firm decision to do or not to do something. On the face of it, that sounds pretty good, making a promise. We make promises all the time, some are good ones, some are little white lies. And yet, why would you start out a perfectly good beginning with a promise to do or not to do something. It’s new, it’s unknown, like outer space, you don’t even know what’s out there!  You need more than a promise.

A few years ago my daughter suggested that you use a word to focus the new year. I like that. Brave. Healthy. Industrious. Calm. Sincere. Okay, now I’m going off the path. But the idea of the word is a cool one.

While in business you plan for the future, the unknown, you chart a course. But you know it’s all blue sky stuff, you’re making a guess and you can be so very wrong. For in the interior of a person, your soul, your conscience, I think that’s harder. I’m reading Walter Isaacson’s BENJAMIN FRANKLIN: A LIFE. Franklin, we’re told, defined fourteen virtues and set about a lifetime of correcting his own behavior to keep those virtues. He was mildly successful, getting some down pat and others, well, lets just say, life is a work in progress.

Here I am, at the end of 2013, which in and of itself is sort of remarkable, sort of scifi-ish, depending on your own age. My word for this year was write. By that I really meant finish. Finishing is hard, it means taking something from a beginning, through a middle to and end. Ends are hard.  But I’m good. I’ve been told my writing is strong. I did finish a story, a middle grade mystery and it has a beginning, a middle and an end. It doesn’t shake the world, but it is the exact type of story I loved to read. Now,  I’m working on a non-fiction that wakes me up at night and makes me think. In the new month I will start the search for an agent, and successful or not, it will continue to make me feel to the core, that which Sister Alice Mary said I could never be, a writer.

 

 

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