Happy 2011!
1/1/11 10:41![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
owlectomyI just noticed the clock on my computer saying 1/1/2011! Yay! I didn't even stay up to midnight last night, but I worked on a mitten and wrote some on Thrall and read some Middlemarch and counted it as a check in the column of "start as you mean to go on."
I had an excellent day withlittlebutfierce and Phredd! Dim sum, DDR, vegan ice cream, and lots of walking through the treacherous ice puddles of New York. I had meant to grab some sparkling sake but, no surprise, not a great day to go liquor shopping, and I couldn't have thought of a better end to the year regardless.
I have resolutions!
1) Read at least one Japanese Novel Of Literary Significance. This is probably going to be Kawabata's "Yama no Oto."
2) Read my way through some part of the canon of modern American fiction. I'm not setting a strict number on this, because between Japanese reading and YA reading I have other commitments, but I feel like as a writer I should have some better breadth of literary knowledge than I do. I acknowledge that "modern American fiction" is pretty narrow, but for someone who's never read Hemingway or Faulkner or Henry James, only the tiniest bit of Steinbeck, etc, it's a decent place to start.
3) Knit a sweater.
4) Figure out this whole housecleaning thing. I believe that if you keep trying and keep failing at something, the solution is not "try harder." You don't try to cross the stream where it's deep and the current is strong; you walk upstream and see if there's somewhere else you can cross. I don't know if I need radical minimalism or more storage furniture or a strict schedule, but the point here is to figure out something that works for me. (Honestly, I think I would keep a place I liked better cleaner, but that's not an option right now.) If I can clear off the floor, at least, I can --
5) Resume doing yoga, which did seem to make a difference for my back and knees.
6) Blog on my author web site at least once a week.
7) Finish a rough draft of Thrall by the end of April.
8) Make bad decisions.
My inclination is to live life like the point is to make as few mistakes as possible. And the truth is that there is no guarantee of escaping crisis or sadness no matter how much you play by the rules. So every year I try to resolve to make bad decisions.
Last year I didn't, and I don't think I made nearly enough of them,
Except that I stopped doing regular backups of my writing. So, uh, I guess I succeeded with that!
I had an excellent day with
littlebutfierce and Phredd! Dim sum, DDR, vegan ice cream, and lots of walking through the treacherous ice puddles of New York. I had meant to grab some sparkling sake but, no surprise, not a great day to go liquor shopping, and I couldn't have thought of a better end to the year regardless.I have resolutions!
1) Read at least one Japanese Novel Of Literary Significance. This is probably going to be Kawabata's "Yama no Oto."
2) Read my way through some part of the canon of modern American fiction. I'm not setting a strict number on this, because between Japanese reading and YA reading I have other commitments, but I feel like as a writer I should have some better breadth of literary knowledge than I do. I acknowledge that "modern American fiction" is pretty narrow, but for someone who's never read Hemingway or Faulkner or Henry James, only the tiniest bit of Steinbeck, etc, it's a decent place to start.
3) Knit a sweater.
4) Figure out this whole housecleaning thing. I believe that if you keep trying and keep failing at something, the solution is not "try harder." You don't try to cross the stream where it's deep and the current is strong; you walk upstream and see if there's somewhere else you can cross. I don't know if I need radical minimalism or more storage furniture or a strict schedule, but the point here is to figure out something that works for me. (Honestly, I think I would keep a place I liked better cleaner, but that's not an option right now.) If I can clear off the floor, at least, I can --
5) Resume doing yoga, which did seem to make a difference for my back and knees.
6) Blog on my author web site at least once a week.
7) Finish a rough draft of Thrall by the end of April.
8) Make bad decisions.
My inclination is to live life like the point is to make as few mistakes as possible. And the truth is that there is no guarantee of escaping crisis or sadness no matter how much you play by the rules. So every year I try to resolve to make bad decisions.
Last year I didn't, and I don't think I made nearly enough of them,
Except that I stopped doing regular backups of my writing. So, uh, I guess I succeeded with that!
(no subject)
1/1/11 20:36 (UTC)