Silk & Shadows

Currently working on: Last week of revisions
Mood: Vaguely National Lampoon-esque

Love is blissful.  Love is beautiful.  Love is butterflies and bluebells.

And oh boy is that boring.

I write about blissful, beautiful, true-blue love… but not until the very last pages.  Because love — once it has reached the ever-after stage — is, well, not very compelling.  Sure, it’s great to be committed in real life.  But in the portrayal of love, the struggle, the learning of lessons, the discovery of strengths, the freshness, the denial, and the compromise is where the fun lies, I think.

Which is why my favorite commercials with romance tend to be less about the end-stage “He got me a big fat diamond — cue French horns and tears” and more about the silly or sweet or sarcastic sides of love.

I like this one for capturing that perfect moment of “love at first sight” along with a few of the really awkward moments that inevitably follow:

This commercial is using love to sell electronics.  I’ve seen commercials use love to sell cat food, toothpaste, gum, and cars.  What do you think; is there ANY product that can’t be sold with love?

Currently working on: Al.Most.Done with revisions
Mood: Last stretch of K2 with the promise of a long toboggan ride down — whee! (probably into a bottomless cravasse, but…)

Our topic this week is “If I wrote in another subgenre…” which didn’t take that much imagining for me because I’ve already done it.  And the timing of the topic couldn’t be better since I just cleaned out a cabinet and unearthed (and yes, by unearthed I mean removed enough dust to qualify as earth) these:

These are a bunch (not all, mind you) of my old stories.  In this stack or out of view on the floor are the following:

• A historical of no particular time period (who knew you had to choose ONE time period or at least provide a time machine) with exceedingly murky point of view changes
• Two rom-coms, one with a herd of dachshunds
• Two Regencies, one with requisite duke (I feel a sudden urge to write THE DUKE OF DACHSHUNDS for some reason)
• A medieval with paranormal elements
• A futuristic romantic suspense with old skool Indiana Jones overtones
• A high fantasy heroic quest road trip revised as a contemporary paranormal romance
• Various and assorted pieces and parts of other Regencies, contemps and Harlequin categories

DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!

Writing coaches will tell you to pick a subgenre and stick with it, at least until you’ve made a place for yourself as a certain kind of writer offering a certain kind of experience.  And, they say, for heaven’s sake, DON’T query an agent or editor with all of the above.  (Uh, oops…)

I’m sure the writing coaches are right.  They also tell you that you should probably write what you read.  And that was my problem — I read all sorts of romance.  So I wrote all sorts of romance before I found out that might be considered a waste of time.  Not to mention a waste of paper.

But I don’t regret those wide-ranging stories.  All that casting around (maybe I should say, casting up my writing accounts — you Regency readers will know what I mean) was me trying to unearth “my voice” and what kinds of stories I wanted to tell.

Even though the subgenres displayed a touch of multiple personality disorder, the stories inside contained many of the same elements:

• A heroine marching to her own piper
• A hero with troubles he’d rather not share
• A few (or more) shadows with contrasting light moments
• Enough adventure or intrigue to keep me interested

And even if I write a cookbook, I can pretty much guess how it will end.  Happily.

Those earlier projects mark my evolution as a writer.  I almost hate to recycle the primeval papertrail they left.  But they are footsteps I’ve left behind me, not a path I need to retrace.

I have some old jewelry I made, from when I first started stringing beads, that I need to take apart too.  I’ve improved my craft and my vision and they aren’t my best effort anymore.  The components — crystal, pearl, sterling, glass – are still good, though, and I have a scavenger’s eye for salvage :)  I look forward to snipping off the ends and tumbling all the smooth and sparkly bits across my desk to see what I can keep.

Do you have old projects you keep around?  How do you know when you’re through with them?  Does seeing them weigh you down, or do they inspire you when you see how far you’ve come?

Currently working on: Just finished page proofs on FORGED OF SHADOWS, the last step before June 2010 publication
Mood: Good luck, little book!  Now get out

Doesn’t everyone remember the first romance novel they discovered?  Back in the day, I stumbled upon my mother’s copy of A ROSE IN WINTER by Kathleen Woodiwiss.  A charming rouge, a burned-out manor house, an auction-block marriage, a winter ball, and a Beauty and the Beast twist.  Oh my!  After reading that, I was ruined forever.  Kinda like your typical swooning historical ingenue.

I think the right first romance novel is very much like the right first kiss.  You want it to be special, deep and meaningful, a memory to cherish.  So, like a fairy godmother picking out a prince, I take a book recommendations very seriously, especially when I am recommending a first romance novel.

Romance novels already suffer from red-headed stepchild syndrome with some (silly!) people, but I love when I can win over a new reader.  I’m always discovering new great books that I just KNOW will turn on the most hard-hearted cynic, and I also have a few gold standards that I can fall back on.

Romantic comedy
I always like to start off easy on a new romance reader.  I find a contemporary romantic comedy can be a good beginner romance because:

• The contemporary settings are readily absorbed.  There are no Austenian social mannerisms to maneuver around, no “och, wee lass, do ye ken mah claymore yearns fer ye?” historical diction to decipher.
• Rom-com movies often pave the way in reluctant psyches.
• The fun covers sometimes don’t even give away that it IS a romance.

Anything by Jennifer Crusie is a great “starter” because her dazzlingly delightful dialogue will win over non-believers.  And it’s so convenient that she’s writing with Bob Mayer now, because you can even spring these books on unsuspecting male-type readers because — hey! — there’s a guy’s name on the cover!

Historical romance
For the slightly uptight, a good, corseted historical can help loosen them up.  The trick with “reading” a reader who might like a historical is figuring out whether they’ll sway toward a more correct historical interpretation or if a rollicking adventure would more tickle their fancy.

But as far as tickling goes, a spicy, saucy story like Delilah Marvelle’s are sure to please.  And by pleasure, I think we all understand what I mean

Of course, there are also category romances, romantic suspense, inspirationals, straight contemporary, women’s fiction (with a strong romance)…  And, of course, paranormal romance :)  But as you know, paranormal romance isn’t for the faint of heart.

Finding a first romance novel for the people around me isn’t just a job.  It’s a passion!

And how lucky I am to be able to indulge my love as a tax write-off

What’s the first romance novel you recommend to newbies?  Have you ever made a romance reader for life (or — in the case of paranormal romance – afterlife)?

Currently working on: The last dash of Book 3
Mood: Breathless

I hate revising.  I understand the need for revising, in the same way I understand the need for flossing after brushing.  But I don’t have to like it.  Revising means I didn’t do it right the first time.  And I hate not doing things right the first time.

There was a School House Rock song from the 70s that shows a string of bloodless Kid Fail bloopers: spilled milk, falling off bicycles, shooting water from the water fountain up your nose.  The chorus goes like this:  “Oops, you made a mistake, that’s all.  Mistakes can happen to anyone.”

Despite the cheery tune, conciliatory message and studiously rainbow interracial casting, the sentiment irked me.  Then, like now, I found mistakes to be annoying, wasteful and embarrassing.  But — and I’m reluctant to admit this — mistakes aren’t all bad.

Mistakes are where a lot of serendipity happens. 
I made a mistake when I started writing Book 3 of the Marked Souls.  See, I sort of forgot to plot it. And I’m a die-hard plotter.  I love to plot.  I love charts and spreadsheets and workbook pages filled with plot.  But in one of my many spreadsheets, I forgot to schedule plotting into my calendar and so I never got around to it.

By the end of the first draft, Book 3 was out of control.  I had to make notes to myself on every page, notes like the following, cut and pasted from my manuscript:

• What is this clue they keep talking about?!
• Is this appropriate post coital convo??
• Did we see where the body was last time? Whose body is it?!

Going back through the pages as I revised and seeing note after note of fumbling confusion was maddening…  And really interesting.  I had no idea what would happen until it happened, and I discovered new things about my characters, my storyworld and myself as a writer.

And I won’t ever make that stupid mistake again!  But I think I will try to preserve some of the sense of mystery that kept me turning pages.

Beading and collaging have helped me accept  work with work around my hatred of mistakes.  For a long time, I had trouble beading because I just couldn’t get started.  I thought:

• I needed one of every bead in the world so I could be sure I had the right combination.
• I had to get it strung exactly right the first time. 
• I had to have an outfit that went with the beads.

Oh please.  #1, I’m never going to have one of every bead in the world.  And besides, I’d need at least two of every bead in the world so I could have matching earrings.  #2, I can just restring it if I don’t like it.  And #3, I can give the piece away as a present if it doesn’t work with my wardrobe.

Collaging (with the help of glue sniffing probably) taught me that flipping through all the world’s magazines (are we seeing a trend here?) to find exactly the right image is boooring and cutting on straight lines is for wusses.  I learned to flip, rip and stick and move along.  Sure, my collages are crooked and a little sticky (glue is every bit as messy as you remember from preschool) but they’re INSPIRING to me, and inspiration trumps correct every time.

Most importantly, mistakes are inevitable.
Knowing that I WILL make a mistake at some point, I try to cultivate a certain fatalism, even PLAN for the mistake.  I heard from a Navajo basket weaver once that the patterns in some Native American baskets are designed to include a visible flaw, because perfection belongs only to the gods.

I have no idea how true the story is, but it works for me.  Perfection belongs to the gods, and I’m just stumbling along behind, tripping over the flaws.  It takes a lot of the pressure off  

In the end, “Oops, you made a mistake, that’s all” was just the start.  Now, when the mistakes are coming fast and furious, I have my favorite mantras to get me through:

• Don’t get it right, get it written.
• We’ll fix it in post.

And lastly, a favorite quote:

• Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.
  Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert

Do you have favorite saying or quote to console yourself after a mistake?  Or is chocolate enough for you?

Currently working on: Unearthing the revised Book 3 from the rotting corpse of Book 3 — phoenix, arise!
Mood: Frankenstein-esque

It’s Valentine’s week.  If you haven’t signed up for the Silk And Shadows newsletter (look to the left side of the page) today’s the day.  Our next newsletter goes out soon and there are Valentine’s giveaways to be won.

And speaking of Valentine’s…  Will I be drummed out of the romance lovers’ league if I say aloud that I think Valentine’s Day is a crock?  In college, some women in my dorm donned black armbands on Valentine’s Day, and I wore one in solidarity.  One of my roommates (who, yes, had a boyfriend with whom she had a lovely relationship judging from the late-night noises coming from the bunk across the very tiny room) accused me of being bitter and jealous nerd.  I said, Duh.

But it seems to me that many of the traditions of Valentine’s don’t feel like any romance I’d want to have.  Roses wither in a disturbingly short period of time.  The milk chocolate bon-bons pushed on us are a poor, cheap substitute for the real deal.  At least there’re sparkly diamonds… Except now we’re told diamonds are just the blood-soaked refuse of terrible Third World conflict.

What’s a girl to do? 

Besides read a romance novel, I mean.

 What I learned from romance novels that Valentine’s Day got wrong:

1. Love is not a one-day affair.
Indeed not.  Love is at least a week-long affair with a Sicilian billionaire.  Or maybe an eternity with a vampire prince.  But definitely not a mere 24 hours in February.

2. Love means having to say… lots.
Words are the measure of the man.  Backed up with action, of course.  Lots and lots of hot action.  But I want more words than fit on 5×7 cardstock even if it has a glittered butterfly and embossed heart.  Somewhere between 200-400 pages of words should just about do it.

3. Love is sacrifice.
This one Valentine’s Day got right.  According to the story, Valentine was a saint who martyred himself for lovers.  Romance novels are all about the sacrifice the lovers make to be together.  They give up their loneliness, their distrust, their prejudices, even though sometimes giving up their lives would’ve felt easier.  And at the end, they don’t always get flowers and chocolate and sparkly jewelry, the love is a given.

Do you have a Valentine’s tradition that you adore?  Feel free to create one.  We write our own stories here.

Currently working on: Judging RITA books, the Romance Writers of America award of excellence in romance fiction
Mood: Awed by some great talent

There’s a lot going on in a writer’s head, I swear, even though a lot of time it looks like I’m staring off into space.  While I’m staring, I’m plotting, testing out lines of dialogue, thinking about whom to kill.

And more often than I’d wish, I’m just afraid to start.

See, while the stories in my head are endlessly entertaining to me (hence the long periods of blank-eyed staring) getting what’s in my head onto the page can be a maddening proposition.  In fact, I often feel like my writing sessions are a bit like the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, where too many conflicting (and crazy) voices have been invited to the table.

The White Rabbit of Overwhelm
He’s the one always chanting “I’m late, I’m late” in my head (because, really, aren’t we always late for something?) which doesn’t much get things off to a convivial start.  Trust me, if you go chasing rabbits, you know you’re going to fall.

The Mad Hatter Muse
Yes, even when not played by Johnny “I’m too sexy to <fill in the blank>” Depp, everybody swoons for the Muse, so he must be invited to the party even though he’s — you know — psychotic, encouraging everyone to run amok and constantly asking silly questions like “How is a raven like a writing desk?” when everybody knows we needn’t answer that question until Chapter 23.

The March Hare Moment
He’s best friends with the Mad Muse… and equally crackers.  He comes around holding out inspiration like a big cup of tea… Only to jerk it away at the last moment.  Emphasis on jerk.  At best, I’ll be left with a little spill of inspiration that I try to mop up and ring out over my pages.

The Queen of (Broken) Hearts Internal Editor
Everybody has to tip toe around her for fear of coming under her gimlet eye.  She’s always deflating the mood with her muttered “Off with her adverbs!”  Heads and hearts are constantly at risk around her, and yet she has a chair of her own because somebody has to be in charge of cutting words and killing our darlings.

The dormouse
He’s already asleep, curled up at the keyboard with his head on ZZZZZZZZ, even though we still have a thousand words to go.

And there, at the far end of the table — she’s lucky she even got a seat — is poor Alice, who just wants a story that makes sense.

Well, forget it, Alice.

It’s impossible to get all those voices to speak one at a time, much less use their napkins instead of their sleeves.  So I’ll take what they spew out and try to capture it for you in all its mad glory.

Maybe a raven is like a writing desk because, with the wind under their wings, they can both take flight.

Anybody else looking forward to Tim Burton’s vision of Alice In Wonderland?  He’s one of my heroes, because if he doesn’t get everything that’s on his head down on paper, I can’t even imagine what else is in there!

Currently working on: Brooding
Mood: Broody

Last year, the grapes tried to come in the house.

XY bought me a couple gorgeous Interlachen grapes for my birthday three years ago, and last year, they really took off.  They ran up into the birch tree and across the porch.  They tangled in the yuccas and wrapped around the sun shades.  When they started scratching eerily at the front door on windy nights, we knew they had to move.

So this weekend, while they’re dormant for the winter, XY whacked them back and transplanted them to brand new holes on their very own trellis, where they can run this way ‘n’ that way without opposition.  XY also moved the fruit trees to accommodate the new grapes trellis.  One of the roses, a lilac, and a bunch of perennials had to go to make room for the fruit trees.  It was cold, wet, muddy work, and the front yard looks like a cemetery with its piles of dark earth and skeletal plants. 

Tonight, when we took Monster Girl the dog for her walk, we paused in the 5 o’clock, low cloud darkness to stare at the wreckage, and it was hard to believe spring will ever come.

 At some point in my writing, I always feel like that.

There always comes a time in my writing when the story is out of control.  Tendrils are choking the life out of anything nearby.  Too scraggly and unwieldy and ugly, my writing begins to creep me out.  The darkness descends.  The winter of our discontent, indeed.

This is my fallow season.  Since the cycles of my writing echo the seasons in my garden, I’ve learned to apply a few rules to both.

1. Just cut back the dead wood already.
I have roses that bloom through November.  At Thanksgiving, they still have buds forming.  But invariably, sometime in December we finally get a hard frost which kills the last blossoms.  The buds blacken and slump on their stems.  The surviving leaves give me (false) hope that I’ll get another glimpse of pink.  But no.  Really, there’s nothing to do but get out the clippers and whack everything back to sturdy greenery.  That first cut is the sharpest, but the harsher I am, the more lush and vigorous the blooms are the following year. 

2. Lay the ground work and run the guide wires now.
I read a garden book once that said you should always put your 50-cent peat pot in a five-dollar hole.  I get impatient (and cheap) and am sometimes tempted to skip ahead.  But there’s no rushing the prep work.  So now I start by honing the spade and invest time in reading craft books and taking workshops that can make me a sharper writer.  I dig a deep and rock-free hole of prewriting.  I string my story arc wire on securely concreted plotting posts.  And I turn my well-aged compost into a hot and steaming muck.

3. Nurture the seedling.
Good God, but a seedling is so small and pathetic.  With only two baby leaves, I can’t even tell the peppers from the potato, the carrots from the kohlrabi.  And knowing how long it will take before harvest, sometimes it seems so pointless.  But I have faith that if I put a tiny toilet paper roll anti-slug collar around them, if I spread the compost thick, and thin the weeds, if I water them regularly with my blood, sweat and tears (minus the cliche), in the end — The End — I will hold the fruits of my labor.

Sure, it’s a dream.  But it’s always easier to dream in the dark.

Do you have rituals for the dark and fallow months?  Or do you vegetate?

Currently working on: Destroying Book 3
Mood: Godzilla-y

As W-2s begin appearing in mailboxes around the country in preparation for tax season, this seems like a good time to dream about making my first million.

…

Okay, back to work.

I wanted to be a writer because I wanted to be rich and famous.  I know, I know, in retrospect, that was crazy.  But I write fiction, after all.  Unfortunately, not fantasy, so I can’t sustain the fame and fortune dream.  Sigh.

And I have such plans for that non-existent million.  A back deck where I can write in the summer…  A breakfast nook with a sliding glass door to that back deck where I can write in the fall, winter and spring and those parts of summer where it is too rainy to write on the back deck…  (I live in the Pacific NW where we must be realistic about our outdoor opportunities.  And water-resistant.)

The rest of the million would be eaten up in colored Post-Its and buckets of cookie dough.  My needs are fairly simple.

It would take several million to make my real writer dream come true.  I’ve long had a fantasy of an artist commune, a place where writers, musicians, painters, and dancers could come and live for free while they pursued their art, even for just a week.  I found this diary entry from January 2000 where the fantasy began:

I wish I had a true office where all I did was write.  An office with bookshelves and a big comfy desk with a big comfy chair that could recline so I could pull the keyboard over my lap and type in perfect style.  There would be a TV with awesome reception that would automatically record my shows and not turn on until my chapter was done.  Yes, my choices must be taken away from me.  Maybe I will start a writers’ colony where all choices are taken away from the writer.  They must churn out the requisite number of pages before they are fed, for example.  That would get the muse juices flowing, no doubt. 

Okay, so maybe it’s less a commune and more a prison.  At least I have an office now.  Still no chair, although now I have a pretty purple exercise ball to sit on, which is fun.  And the TV is almost dead, no great loss since they cancelled the only show I was watching.  (I’ll miss you, Dollhouse!  Joss, stop working with Fox!)  I still have hopes for the artist colony.  Someday…

Okay, so I can’t control the million dollars, but I am closing in on my other first million.  My first million words.

A million words is one of those numbers that gets bandied about among writerly types.  They say “Every writer has a million bad words in her, and she needs to get them out before she gets to the worthwhile words.”  I don’t know about that; I’m pretty sure I got way more than a million bad words in me.  I think it’s just because they’re writerly types and so they like the big, easy number.  I know I like it.  I recently added up my final draft words on the ten novels I’ve completed: 844,000.  If I throw in the three false starts, I’m at 924,000.  I’m not counting the really false starts where I only have a few chapters or just the working outline.  And I’m not counting how many times I had to rewrite those words to arrive at the final drafts.

By the end of this year, my word odometer will roll over.  It’ll be interesting to see what’s in me then.  Lots of cookie dough, no doubt.  Unless that crazy warden from the writers’ colony makes me do my words first.

So what does a million mean to you?

Currently working on: The End is coming! (Not an apocalypse end, just The End of my Book 3)
Mood: Pre-post-apocalyptic

As a child of the Cold War, I have a special place in my heart for apocalypses.  Total world destruction was forever imminent — but it was survivable as long as we got under our desks in time, and meanwhile there’s still a lot of ice cream to eat when you’re 10 years old so it was hard to get too freaked out.

Of course, I planned to be a survivor (the aforementioned ice cream was motivation and I’m super quick sliding under a desk) so — thinking ahead — I even decided to study Russian.  It was us or them, I figured.

Who knew, I should’ve studied Mandarin.  Oh well.

Over the years, I studied apocalyptic literature and movies with great and horrified delight.  Here are a few of my favorites apocalypses you might have missed the first time around.  I even learned a few more tricks — besides the head under desk thing — that might help you survive the end.

ALAS, BABYLON by Pat Frank
One of the first post-apocalyptic books written in the nuclear age, ALAS, BABYLON was also one of the first post-apocalyptic books I read as a kid.  Set in a small Florida town, the book chronicles the breakdown of the society — naturally — as well as the heroism of those who kept their heads and their hearts.

Apocalyptic lesson: When the bespectacled doctor’s only set of eyeglasses are destroyed, I was horrified.  As a four-eyed kid myself, I understood this was a death sentence.  The lesson I learned was read lots now because you never know when you won’t be able to read again.

SWAN SONG by Robert McCammon
In a post-nuclear world, two children become the leaders of opposing camps of good and evil as the rebirth of civilization hangs in the balance.  Apparently the author hates being compared to Stephen King, but this story does read as a more digestible version of the themes in King’s THE STAND, another fun post-apoc — plague, this time — story.

Apocalyptic lesson:  The survivors are afflicted with keloid scars that worsened through the course of the story… and then revealed the true, inner nature of the afflicted.  The lesson being, you better be pure and good if you want to avoid permanent radiation burns and possession by creeping evil.

Mad Max with young, hawt, pre-crazy Mel Gibson
Because post-peak-oil is definitely post-apocalyptic as anybody who wouldn’t be able to fuel up their sweet 1973 XB GT Ford Falcon Coupe aka Max’s Interceptor would agree.  You probably saw this movie when it first came out and then it got buried under layers of Tina Turner’s hair in Beyond Thunderdome.  Go back to the roots where surviving the apocalypse meant being badder ass than the bad guys.  Yes, I know this contradicts the earlier post-apocalypse lesson of being pure of heart, committed to humanity, and not so quick on the trigger.

Apocalyptic lesson: Invest in black leather now, before it’s too late!!!

Logan’s Run (the 1976 movie version)
Spoiler alert!  This was an interesting take on post-apocalypse because… whatever bad thing had happened (some sort of environmental disaster, apparently) was over, but the people didn’t know it and had barricaded themselves inside a domed city and were euthanizing themselves to avoid any overcrowding that would force them out into the bigger world.  Allegedly, a remake — in the works with various producers and directors since the mid-1990s — has been again rescheduled for 2012.

Apocalyptic lesson:  The only thing worse than an apocalypse that ends the world is living as if an apocalypse has ended the world… when it hasn’t.  Doh!

Apocalypse has gotten more sophisticated over the years, from the fabulous climate change pseduo-science of The Day After Tomorrow — cold air from space swirls down to freeze our heroes!!! — to the amok-running of technology in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (my fave of the franchise — girl crush!) which taught us that (contrary to the waif-like Jessica 6 in Logan’s Run) upper body strength will be vital to post-apocalypse survival and, yes, black is still THE color for Armageddon.  But for all the changes since the fall of the Soviet Union, apocalypse remains full of good times in the end times.

Don’t forget to pack your Zippo.

Do you have a favorite apocalypse story?  Do you think you’d be the brave assistant deputy mayor who leads the survivors to safety?  Or would you be the well-armed loner who vows not to get involved?  Or would you be the mutant screamer?

Currently working on: The race to The End
Mood: High on naturally induced painkillers

Last week, I talked about how at the end of the year, I like to look back and see what I learned (if anything).  So of course the start of the new year is a time to look forward.

Because I’m looking forward and see mostly a monstrous looming deadline, I was gonna totally cheat and review last year’s resolutions… maybe cut’n'paste since I never keep my New Year’s Resolutions anyway…  Imagine my horror when I scrolled back and realized I totally cheated last year and didn’t actually write down any resolutions at all!

Who’s in charge of these things?

So, okay, fine, this year, I resolved to make real resolutions.  But I decided resolutions aren’t enough, since we all hear stories (I think I might have just mentioned one) about how nobody keeps their New Year’s Resolutions.  This year, each resolution (a “how”) is backed up by a goal (a “what”) and a dream (a “why”).  That way, whenever I’m tempted to not keep my resolution, I’ll be able to see what I was trying to accomplish and — more importantly — why.

Physical
Resolution: Add 10 minutes to my daily workout.  (Since my daily workout is currently zero if I don’t count the dog walks, this should be achievable, even for a slug like me.)
Goal: Stave off the cookie-induced metabolic collapse I’m told is in my near future.
Dream: Touch my toes with my head on my knees — Literally, I’ve had this dream, like, a half dozen times in the last two years, and I’ve never been able to bend completely in half like that.

First attempt: I’m typing this while sitting on an exercise ball.  My 1950s office chair (complete with cigarette burns!) is the antithesis of ergonomic, and I can’t splurge on a real chair right now.  I read that people stuck for long hours on computers can benefit from rolling around on a ball.  It’s definitely more fun than a chair. 

Career
Resolution: Increase my writing pace by 500 words every night by June; increase by another 500 words by this time nex year.
Goal: Write faster.  (This is my eternal goal; I should just say that now.)
Dream: Sneak a new book into my writing schedule.

First attempt: In the rush to The End of Book 3, I have to actually meet my old resolution on word count.  I figure that’s a place to start before stretching forward.

Emotional
Resolution: Say once nice thing about my achievements aloud every day week.
Goal: Transition my Eeyore mindset to a more Piglet philosophy.
Dream: Learn to assess my fears and wishes in alignment with the truth of the challenges that face me.

First attempt: I haven’t fallen off my balance ball.  Yet. 

I’m off to a great start!  Update coming next year!