Hello! I am doing a Blog Tag today (on the last day of the first month of the new year, as if that matters to anyone, least of all me – I really could not care less about resolutions and new years, I just thought the questions sounded fun!). I wasn’t tagged specifically, but Lauryn Trimmer invited anyone who wanted to, to participate! (There, I just linked back to the website I found the tag on!)

Here are the rules:

1. Include the official Writerly Resolutions banner in your post.
2. Link back to the person who tagged you. If you weren’t tagged, link back to the website you found the tag on.
3. Tag at least 5 other bloggers who are also writers. You can tag as many people as you want!
4. Ask them 5 new questions about their writing goals.

And now the questions I answered:

Do you have a Work In Progress you’d like to finish this year?

I have so many Works In Progress I would like to finish this year! Goodness, I would like it if I could finish ten trilogies this year, though that is not possible I am sure! Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. But I’m writing so many different stories – I will be posting an update on some Writerly Things on my blog come the beginning of February – and they keep multiplying! To be realistic though, I would like to finish the Lìrulin-and-Eldor Work In Progress, a sort of standalone prequel to the Legend of the Singer Duology telling the story of Tara-lin’s parents, and I would also really like to finish the Slave-Becomes-Dragonrider trilogy. I’m currently writing book two. Also, I would not mind finishing the Dawn-song/Library series! I think that is as much as I can even remotely reasonably hope to get done in a year? I suppose it’s conceivably possible, but I really think it highly unlike I can get very far with my new world Work In Progress! It is just so new, in so many ways, and I have so much else I’m doing. It does not feel like something I could get done too fast, though one never knows for sure what is possible until it happens!

What kind of character do you want to try writing in your next project?

I don’t think about ‘kinds of character’ before I write them! At the moment, I am taking sort of a dive into something new with the Lìrulin-and-Eldor Work In Progress, as that one features two main characters who are a great deal more sexual and romantic than I usually write! My characters have a knack of being the way they choose to be, and I just let it be. Sometimes they surprise me, sometimes not so much. And I never want to try writing a ‘kind of character’. I just want to write about this character or that character.

What aspect of your writing to you want to improve this year?

Will it come off as absolutely arrogant and insufferable if I say None? I find the dichotomy of perfect versus imperfect stifling, creatively speaking. The very narrative of improvement is suffocating. That’s not how learning works for me. I’ve never, ever wanted to improve my writing – oh, something incidental, sure, but those ‘something incidentals’, like a habit of using a particular wrong grammar construction, can always be fixed in editing and have never been my focus – but my writing has certainly developed (so, for that matter, has my thinking, and I hope that never stops; the day a tree stops growing is the day it dies). Sometimes I call what I wrote as an eight, nine year old, garbage or trash, and certainly some of it was not worth keeping around, but I think thinking of it as trash is the wrong way to think of it (a young tree, a tender seedling just popping out of its seed, is no less good than an ancient tree, full-canopied, deep-rooted, weathered and strengthened by the years).

No, I just want to write the story I’m currently focusing on as it deserves, to be perfectly the story it is. That can mean a lot of different things at different times, but it does not even mean thinking about how to make my writing as understandable as possible to all people! I’m not going to make it so that absolutely everyone, when they read my book, sees and understands and feels exactly what I did writing it, and not only do I think this is impossible, I’m not even sure it is an ideal. People need to see, understand, and feel what they need to in a story, and as much as I would love to communicate exactly what I see, that might not be what they need. What I see isn’t complete or all-encompassing, and no one else is me, or should be me, so it would stand to reason that they can’t – and should not – feel or know exactly as I do. But, still, that remains my main objective, always – to communicate, as well as possible (whatever that means) the story I see, the truth I see.

But specifically? I would like it if I could always remember the word I want to use!

If you had time to try a completely different writing form in 2022, what writing form would you try? (Poetry, screenwriting, flash fiction, etc)

What have I not tried that interests me? I don’t have any interest in screenwriting, but I did dip a hoof into writing a skit once. I write poetry regularly, and I write short stories, some of them as short as a page, with some frequency. I’ve written a number of philosophical/spiritual/religious essays in the past and still do so occasionally. If anyone has any suggestions on what I both might have not tried yet and might find interesting, you are welcome to offer them. Whether I will actually try it will depend on whether I get specifically inspired!

In one year, what do you want your writing routine to look like?

I don’t give a sand about routine, honestly. Trying to keep a routine would kill my creativity. That’s not to say that I don’t sometimes feel like something that would appear like a routine, or that the demands of life don’t sometimes force one, but I don’t want a writing routine at all. I intend to write when I feel like it, however much or little I feel like it, and to not write when I don’t feel like it as long as I live.

Seeing my novels, I think this works for me. It’s not as if productivity matters, but I do seem to be fairly productive working in this way! But what I really think would suffer if I tried to make myself fit a routine would be the quality, not the number or length of the stories I could write, but the stories themselves. Though I don’t think I would be able to write at all? Anyway, I shall not try. Not all people are made to keep routines!

The New Questions (this is the hardest part for me):

• Do you have a new story (or something else) you want to start writing this year?
• Do you have a story (or some other project) you’ve always wanted to write, but never been able, that you think you might get where you want to be (or closer) this year?
• Is there something you want to do or learn related to your writing (interpret this question however you want to)?
• Is there a kind of scene you’ve never written before that you want to try?
• Is there a kind of story (interpret this however you want, but I’m thinking less of major genre distinctions like high fantasy/urban fantasy/thriller/science fiction/historical fiction, and more of things like, what defines the progress of your story, what drives it, what is the plot about or is it about a plot at all) you want to try writing?

There we go! I hope that works!

Now for the Nominees (and anyone who isn’t in this list, you can feel free to do exactly what I did and go for it anyway, if you like!):

(I hope none of you mind the tag. Feel free not to participate if you do. Hopefully, no one needs me to say that, but just in case!)

Marian L Thorpe

Mariella Hunt

E.G Bella

R. Ramey Guerrero

A.R.K Horton

And a bonus Nominee!

Julia Witmer

I’d love to hear what any of you think! And if any one wants to answer the questions I did, go for it of course!