I hope all of you had a wonderful Christmas. Or wonderful holidays if you don’t celebrate Christmas. So now that the holiday stress is finally starting to wear off, we get can start thinking about the next one. New Years. Recently, I’d been thinking a lot about New Years Resolutions and what mine were for this year and what I would do to achieve them.
New years resolutions:
Do more art.
Write more (finish first draft and start editing)
Find title for my current story
excercise more
Work more.
Or something along those lines anyways. I don’t think I have ever actually kept any New Years resolutions. This time I will just have to try harder. especially for the writing and art, because those are the two things I want to work on the most this year. It’s driving me completely insane that I can’t find a title for the story. For that, I will write down a list of possibilities and cross off ones I decide against and then if I find other possibilities, I’ll just add them to the list. Easy enough.
But story titles, in my opinion, are one of those things that must be perfect. When I go to Chapters and look at books, first thing I notice is the title and the book cover. I can’t even count how many times I have found a book that sounded good, but I put back on he shelf simply because the title didn’t fit. If you see, for example, a book titles ‘Last Summer’ and you read the description on the back or a few pages and then you realize that the book had nothing to do with Summer.
While I am sure everyone has different opinions on this, I can’t stand it. Titles are an important part of your book. The reader doesn’t know the story until after they’ve read the book. The first thing they get to know about the book is its title. That is why to me, titles are important.
Titles and cover art. Cover art brings me to the art part of my New Years resolution. I’m going to create a cover art for my story. I have ideas now all that needs to be done is to get those ideas down on paper. That will be much easier for me than deciding on a title!
For writing, I will have my first draft done by the end of NaNoWriMo 2011. Then I can start the torturous editing process! Why exactly do we do this to ourselves? Oh right, because we enjoy it.
Work and excercise aren’t as important to me. They are important of course, just not as much. I work and work at the same place so I think I will manage. It isn’t exactly a new job, but I’m still getting the hang of things. Which is the part that I hate of any job. Who wants to be that kid going to their boss asking for help? So I have to be less afraid to ask for help because if I don’t, then it will just cause more trouble if I mess up because I wasn’t sure what to do.
Resolutions are hard to keep. They really are. But if you put in the effort, it will make all the difference in the world. And that feeling of success is so satisfying and worth the trouble you went through. So for anyone that reads this, don’t give up on your goals. It takes work, but you CAN get there. Just keep pushing.
Happy Holidays everyone.
Anna
annaivy 