Stephanie Gunn

It’s almost the end of the year.  Which, by the way, has flown by.

I find myself contemplating the shiny new 2009 that’s fast approaching, and the resolutions that I want to make.  I’m not a huge fan of resolutions per se, but I do like to look back at the year and see what things I would have liked to have done better.

The first thing for me is focus.  I’ve wasted a lot of time hopping around from goal to goal, spreading myself too thin.  The health crash I suffered at the end of this year has given me a lot of food for thought.  Like it or not, I’m likely to always have limited spoons.  I can’t do a million things, and hope to do them all well.

Which follows – what do I actually want to do well?  What do I want to focus my energy on?  Is it meandering around on the net?  Making jewellery?  Housewifery?

The obvious answer, the one that you all know, is none of these.  I want to write well.

I did well on the writing last year, but it feels now, looking back, very scattered.  I want to focus on writing quality words next year, on getting ino a routine where I have the time and the energy to make something real and good.

So.  I’m looking at routine, looking at how much time I actually waste during the day.  The housekeeping stuff has to stay, for I am incapable of living in anything but a clean and tidy house.  However, I need to be able to accept some small level of clutter, something that I wasn’t able to do this year.  I was spending too much time on house cleaning, and I think I can streamline that and make my time spent more efficient next year.

The next obvious timesink is, of course, the net.  I spend the bulk of my time online reading blogs, either in the form of rss feeds or livejournal.  I’m beginning the process of cutting that down right now.  Which is kind of painful.  I’m not going to be removing anyone from my LJ friend’s list right now, but I’ll be honest and say that I’m not going to be reading every journal on it every day.  People I interact with a lot, I’ll always read, but I need to start being more sensible about it.  I don’t like it, but it’s becoming more of a timesink every day, and I don’t like that.

I also want to work on my routine a little, but that’s going to happen in slow increments, I think.  I’d love to be the kind of person who gets up at 6am and gets a few hours of writing in then and there, but that’s probably never going to happen.  Maybe   We’ll see how things go there.

The new year has been and gone. For us, it was celebrated quietly with friends. Just what we needed.

In many respects, I am glad to see the back of 2007. I lost two family members and watched my father battle ill health. My own health waxed and waned, but was, in retrospect, better than it had been in previous years.

The one thing I regret is that I spent too much time being distracted by too many things. I have a habit of wanting to do everything. And frankly, I just can’t.

I want to use 2008 to focus more on what I really want to do. Writing. I have a handful of novels in various levels of completion. Thought and Memory is halfway through a third draft, and will likely require another. Its sequel/companion is in embryonic form in my mind. Shaede is currently with an agent, and its sequel is in first draft form. Over the last few weeks, another novel has begun to form in my mind. I have at least another couple that are at the “vague idea” level.

Somehow in this, I find myself wanting to work on some short fiction again. I did have a couple of anthologies I’d been eyeing for submission, but I suspect the cut-off dates have passed. Short work isn’t my forte – I don’t, as a rule, generall enjoy reading a lot of it, and I think this reflects in my own writing.

I’m not a fan of resolutions for the new year, but I’ll make one for 2008. To put the writing first as much as I can, and push myself to do as much of it as I can.