New year is a good time to make a change in your writing and your life, to start something new or give up something that wasn’t working. Here, some 26 writers share their own resolutions. What’s yours?
Have a treat
My New Year’s resolution is to give myself a treat every time I win a new client. Carole Seawert
Keep all the dosh
This year, I am going to become an ebook publisher so that I make all the dosh from my writing instead of giving a chunk of it to someone else. Gordon Kerr
Look tidy
I am resolving to branch out into different media. STV (ITV up here in Scotland) are making a showreel of me talking about history with a view to me doing some documentary work. I’m really excited about that but I’m also very aware of how women are viewed in the media, so my resolution is to look tidy, keep my hair in check and not be too flippant about historical detail. Sara Sheridan
Write more stories
To spend more time writing short stories and less time writing Facebook status updates and tweets. Andy Hayes
Give away my books
This year I am going to retire from running a graduate diploma course at Chelsea College of Art and Design. I have written 14 books – novels and lyrical texts – and I’m going to stop writing. I am having an exhibition of the 17 books I have been involved with at 77 books, my publishing company, and I am going to do a performance reading of one of my short stories. My ambition is to try to promote myself and to give away all my spare copies of the books that lie in boxes – having got precisely nowhere on the public front – and to try to do it without getting depressed by rejection – which I might not succeed in! Now is the time to request a free book if anyone would like one. Contact me at peter77@talktalk.net.
Give up tweeting
I’ve given up tweeting, other than as part of campaigns for clients. I closed my Twitter account just before Christmas. I felt it was cluttering my mind, and I also couldn’t quite work out how personal or professional to be, given that I had built a following over three years that included both friends and clients. They say Twitter is an important tool for writers (indeed, I said that myself in my workshop at Wordstock 2011), but this year I’m going to see if it’s possible to be a writer who doesn’t tweet. Maddie York
Go on holiday
One of my resolutions is to join a house swap website and take my husband and son somewhere exciting on holiday – hopefully somewhere that we wouldn’t normally have the chance to go. Jill Hopper