Happy-New-Year-2016-Images-4It’s New Year’s Eve! Time for taking stock of what’s behind you and looking ahead to what you want to accomplish in the coming year. There’s something special that happens when that clock rolls over to midnight and we break the seal on all the potential energy of the year to come. It’s that special magic that makes people resolve to make changes or to shoot for their dreams!

I love New Year’s resolutions. Not because they’re so often kept, or even very effective in the long run, but because of the hope and imagination that they represent when they’re made. Sure we all regularly screw up, fall off the wagon, or backslide on our best intentions. It’s part of being human. But the act of imagining our lives could be different than we are now? That’s powerful magic.

So out with the old and in with the new! In this new year, what are you resolved to do? How are you going to make 2016 your best writing year yet?

As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m starting a “Write Every Damn Day” challenge for 2016. I’ll be spending 15 minutes a day with a writing prompt, and working on consistency and “intentionality” in my writing practice. I’d love it if you joined me. You don’t have to work on the same prompts as I do, just sit down and write. Butt-in-chair. It’s proven to improve your writing craft!

Maybe writing prompts aren’t what you need this year, though. In that case, I challenge you to figure out what it is that your writing practice needs and then scrape together the motivation and go do it! You’re the only one who stands in the way of your dreams of writing a novel. You have the magic in you to make it happen.

Don’t let the hugeness of your dreams overwhelm you and keep you from taking the first steps to achieving them. Figure out what those first steps, and then the next steps, and then the next steps are, and pretty soon, you’ll be standing at the peak of Dream Mountain. You can be the writer you want to be. It just takes determination and a little humility.

Make 2016 your year. Finish writing that book. Or get started! Write big! Dream big!