Whether or not you go in for resolutions, the flipping of the calendar to a new year is a good excuse for pushing the reset button. The wind is at our backs. We're only too aware that another year is here (already!) and that we'll be another year older, another year into our life's journey, which, not to be grim, is altogether too short when you think about it!

Plenty of other people write about how to set goals or make resolutions that stick, so I won't do that here. But I want to say that I believe you can reach your writing goals this year. Expect challenge and failure--if it were easy, you wouldn't need to resolve to do this thing--and expect to pick yourself up and keep at it. That's the way to bring your story into the world.

Listen.

If you want to be a fly on the wall listening to a really great discussion about how to structure a novel, your time will be well spent with Brad Listi and author Mark Cecil. [Apple / Spotify / YouTube]

Mark's first few books were retellings of famous, epic tales, which he relied on to create the structure for his novels. When he started on his latest project, he realized he didn't know how to structure a novel that wasn't based on another work. He had to ask himself why he wanted to tell the story. What was it about fiction that made it the best conveyance for what he wanted to say?

For Mark, it is the emotional component that matters to him in fiction, so he looked at the different theories of storytelling to find the one that delivered the most emotional impact for him and his project. Isn't that an intriguing way of approaching a novel?

It's true that there are so many ideas on how to best tell a story. It's worth asking the same of your own work in progress. (1) What about your chosen genre makes it the best way for you to tell the story you want to tell? And (2) What kind of story will best deliver that result?

This is all within the first 20 minutes of the podcast! Mark goes on to talk about how workshopping the structure of your story is as much a creative work as revising the prose in your sentences. He talks about why the Hero's Journey is least popular among literary writers ("It's the great literary cocktail party putdown.") and why he's started calling it "the human journey." And there's so much more!

I hope you give it a listen. Why not pair it with another New Year's resolution, whether that be yard work or exercise or painting?

Read.

1. ​Brooke Warner of She Writes Press responds to Jane Friedman's annual Key Book Publishing Paths with some good arguments about hybrid publishing. I greatly respect Friedman and her work and am eager to see whether she responds to Warner's thoughtful critique.
2. I have resolved to read through (all? much of?) my shelves of unread books before I buy or borrow more, but I can't help but track some upcoming releases that have caught my interest. Maybe you can read them for me and let me know what you think?

Write.

In our world of dashed-off email and text messages, writing letters is a lost art. Few emails or texts would ever be bundled into a collection for others to read. Or at least mine wouldn't!

Occasionally, I like to pick up a volume of letters to remind myself what made this art, well, art. Letters published as books often capture a particular moment in history, by someone who matters to history or to art. Our enjoyment in reading these letters comes in part from the fact that they are specific about times and places in which these fascinating people lived, but also because through these letters we get an intimate look at who this person was.

Try it: Find a collection of correspondence on your shelf, or read this sample of M.F.K. Fisher's letters or this digitized collection of a woman writing to her sister during the California Gold Rush.

Then, using these letters as inspiration, write a letter to someone. Lean into specificity: about your life, your triumphs, your angst, your worries, the thing that made you laugh most recently. Where are you in time and place? What does the world around you mean to you? The best letters are vulnerable without oversharing--a fine line indeed! Maybe you'll actually mail the letter, maybe you won't, but writing this way is excellent practice for bringing that prized specificity and vulnerability into your creative writing projects.

Here's to a productive writing week ahead! 🥂

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