Heir To Magic

Okay, New Years is just around the corner, so it is time to make resolutions.  Am I the only one that is flinching?  Every year resolutions are made, and every year resolutions are broken.  The year starts out with such grand plans for what we want to achieve and then one thing or another happens that we just don’t get it done or we fall off the diet or we forget that we had promised ourselves we would do this or that… Then we hit the end of the year and look back and wonder why we even bothered to make the resolutions.

And yet we do it again.  We look ahead and tell ourselves, “This year will be different.  This year I will make more time to ______.”  We have such high hopes that I think we often set the bar to that same height, a height we can not realistically achieve.  So, this year, my resolutions are going to be small.  I’ll make a resolution that I can achieve and when I reach that goal I will renew it with a new goal.  Rather than resolving to write a full novel I resolve to write a single chapter this year.

Can I write a single chapter?  Yes.  I have no doubt that I can write a single chapter well before the end of January if I can find the time to work on it.  And yet that is the stickler, finding the time to work on the novel.  I will only write a chapter.  Then if I fail, I have not failed that much.  I only failed to write a single chapter, not a whole novel.  And yet, if I write that chapter I can renew my resolution and write another chapter, then another.  I may come out the end of the year with a novel, I may only have one chapter… and I may have failed to meet my resolution, but I think this year I will reach my New Year’s resolution and even surpass it.

So, in 2008, I resolve to write a single chapter of a novel.