This year I’m replacing New Year’s resolutions with a New Year’s plot. Briefer than the outline for a manuscript’s plot, my outline has only three chapters.
Chapter 1: Assist Kevin with his biography Kevin wishes to write a revised and updated version of The Road Trip: Life with Autism, published in 2004. He’s named his new biography Living in the Eye (of a tornado). Editing and assisting Kevin with this book will be my major preoccupation in 2015.
Chapter 2: Launch my latest book Black Springs Abbey will be printed in early 2015 in a tête-bêche volume commemorating the 150th Anniversary of the village of Oil Springs. The author of the companion book, Early Days in Oil Springs, and I will be launching the work at an “Ignite Oil” Museum Day on May 3. For the occasion, I need to narrow down twenty of my research photos for a PowerPoint presentation. An e-book version of the historical fantasy will be released around the same time.
Chapter 3: Accept Social Media as a Writer’s Friend Because I truly enjoy blogging on my website, it should be fairly easy to write a blog every three weeks. I will nonetheless heed another author’s caution, namely, ‘every word in a blog is one less word for a book’.
As for Facebook and Twitter, the former can be fun, but the latter is a challenge. Last summer I closed my Facebook business page and converted my personal page into an all-purpose forum. At the same time, hoping for more interaction on Twitter, I brashly closed a large Twitter account and started a new one from scratch.
The results of this downsizing? I’m enjoying my single Facebook page, not missing the “Likes” button in the least. Twitter, however, remains impersonal and baffling. Some tweeps do try to share ideas and seek discussion, but mostly Twitter seems to be a rolling billboard of ads. I’d love to hear from those of you who disagree. Perhaps I’ll find enlightenment in 2015.
Closing thoughts: New Year’s Resolutions tend to fade away because of their restrictive nature whereas a New Year’s Plot provides a supportive framework to encourage the twists and turns of creativity.
A Happy Productive New Year!
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