New(ish) Year: New (utterly transformed) Me
Everything is different, bright and rosy! This will be the year.
I have made a resolution, of sorts. But it is fitting that I should have waited over a week beyond the usual time for resolutions to announce it.
Happy Christmas, by the way. For it is, by some measures, still Christmastide, even though our decorations were down and packed away earlier than ever this year, before we jetted off for a short break in Lisbon.
Today, back at my writing desk for the first time after our little holiday, I settled down with The Write Habit writer’s planner that I bought myself last month, which was produced by one of my fellow writers’ hour Zoom-boxers. It’s the sort of thing I inwardly shy away from, and used to outwardly scorn, to be honest, yet somehow I keep buying self-helpy things of this sort, usually when they are either massively reduced on Kindle, or as an app, in the hope beyond experience that this will be the one upends decades of ploughing the same furrow, shallow and wonky, and turns me into someone who actually farms words, rather than occasionally opening a packet of letters and spilling them haphazardly.
But guess what? This time it’s worked!
I am truly transformed. This Substack that I started with high hopes of making a glittering garland of bright cystals, but soon became — to me, anyway — a noose studded with dull lodestones all pointing south, is now a box of delights. The mere fact of writing in my ‘Write Habit’ planner that I would shrug off the burden of feeling the need to polish every word (even if in reality many remained stubbornly abrasive), and simply take, at least, the 50 minutes of one London Writers’ Salon writers’ hour a week to indulge in the practise of writing at least something, even if it didn’t get finished, and get it published here regardless, has already resulted in
It was nice to "meet" you in writer's hour today! Hope to see you around Substack and LWS again! Looking forward to your next article!
Happy New Year and good luck with the new writer’s tool!