“Hope smiles from the threshold of the year to come, whispering, ‘It will be happier.'”
Alfred Lord Tennyson

“It is never too late to start doing your New Year’s Resolutions. Just because you didn’t start them on January 1, doesn’t mean these objectives weren’t good objectives, or that you shouldn’t work on them… Chances are you will find lots of solid goals to start working on. Better late than never is a great thing to keep in mind at times like this.”
Edward W. Smith, One Minute Motivator

Edward Smith is a motivational speaker and the author of Sixty Seconds to Success. His idea to get New Year Resolutions back on track struck a chord because some time ago, fellow writer Joe Owens (Joe’s Musings, https://joeowensblog.wordpress.com/), sent me a comment saying that “part of my writing strategy this year is to find and enter contests.”

Joe’s phrase, “writing strategy” caught my eye. Thinking strategically about our writing and what we want to accomplish sounds like a smart and fruitful idea, doesn’t it? And yet so often, to be honest, I’m not all strategic when it comes to my writing life. One reason may be that “strategy” is one of those business buzzwords that’s a holdover from my corporate marketing days and so I’m a bit resistant about importing it into my creative universe. Think I need to get over this!

Here’s a good working definition of the word “strategy” from my handy Compact Oxford Dictionary: “a plan designed to achieve a particular long-term aim.” Now this sounds totally applicable to my writing. Certainly in order to get my children’s novel revision finished and shift into submission mode, I’m going to need a plan

So, as one of our “it’s-never-too-late” New Year’s Resolutions, just as Joe suggested, let’s all start thinking in a more focused, strategic way about what we want to achieve over the next 12 months. What do we need to do to write dangerously, put ourselves out there, get to the next level in our craft, get into print? Whatever it is, let’s set an intention and make steady progress toward it every day. Write on!