By David E. Sharp
As the curtain closes on another January, take a moment to reflect on any New Year’s resolutions you may have made. Statistically, over half of you have dedicated yourselves to personal improvement.
Fitness is a common goal. Eliminating bad habits. For readers of The Writing Bug, there are probably goals related to producing regular word counts or sending out X number of queries each week.
According to a Forbes study, eight percent of you are already out of the running. (And I’ll see YOU at the ice cream bar). Stay calm if you are among those whose resolutions have already withered away.
Twenty-two percent of resolution failures will join you in February, and another twenty-two percent will be added to your numbers in March. That means over half of those January good intentions will have gone to live at the happy resolution farm where they’ll live better lives than in our daily routines full of loose discipline and lax dedication.
At least, that’s what we tell the children.
I’ve played the resolution game. Some years, I made real strides. Other years, I decided real strides were overrated. Artificial and synthetic strides would do just fine. Most of the time, I set noble goals with every intent to keep them.
Then life intervenes, and I decide noble goals can wait for next year. Why is it so hard to make positive changes in our lives? The answer should be clear to a readership of writers.
People are flawed.
Writers examine their characters’ flaws every time they set their fingers to the keyboard. They analyze vices with microscopic focus down to the last meticulous detail. Shortcomings are their bread and butter.
Characters with problems and failures take center stage in the world of stories.
And well, they should! Who would ever read about someone who’s already got it all together? Not me. Give me problems and lots of them!
As January approached this year, I wondered: Why am I putting so much effort into being someone I wouldn’t read about? I’m not saying I don’t believe in making advances in personal growth.
But this idea that I will suddenly be a perfect version of myself through the following year with all my ducks in a row isn’t just naïve. It’s also a lousy story.
The more realistic scenario is that the coming year will be fraught with plot twists, complications, messy relationships, and disappointments. I’ll have to scrape and claw through it, tired and bedraggled long before December hits.
I’ll see victories turn to failures, failures turn to victories, and ducks will be waddling wherever the hell they want! Who’s trying to line up all these ducks anyway?
I’ll draw from the support of my friends and family, and I’ll try to help them get a leg up on their own plots in progress in return. By the end, I will barely recognize that starry-eyed version of myself from back in January. What a fool that guy was with his flimsy resolutions.
I’ll have gained new insights into my own flaws and overcome a few. But don’t worry. There’s more where those came from.
Now that’s a story! That’s what real personal growth looks like.
And once I’ve become intimate with my issues, I have plenty to work with in my writing projects. I’ll dial all my flaws to ten, then drop them onto my characters’ shoulders. Let the writing begin! It will take my characters the length of a novel to get through all my problems. They’ll resent me for the rest of their fictional lives, but I’ll find it therapeutic.
Even soothing. Watching my characters dance on the hot coals of every resolution I failed to keep. And the writing will be super authentic. Why?
This January, I intend to become even more intimate with my flaws. I am making an anti-resolution! I will analyze my dark side with brutal honesty. For every deep-rooted, self-destructive, problematic issue I find, I will say, “Oh, yeah. That’s going into the novel. That’s going to be good.”
Why lie to ourselves that we will magically become better people just because we bought a new calendar? Instead, I invite you to set your own New Year’s anti-resolutions.
Acknowledge your vices, pick up a pen, and inflict those troubles on your characters. Bleed on that page! Revel as your characters fail, and fail, and fail again. It will make their ultimate success all the sweeter.
The Writing Bug 