Writing Resolutions by Clair Wright

My New Year’s Resolution is to write more (again). This year I’m going to write more, and I’m going to submit more. I’m going to enter writing competitions, and submit my work to magazines and websites. Yes I am. 

So here I am sitting at my laptop, ready to go. I am surrounded by writing magazines to inspire and inform me.  They date back many months, and several are shamefully still in their postal polythene.  I leaf through their pages, which contain useful articles about how my social media profile can promote my novel, or the pros and cons of self-publishing. 

I need an article entitled “How to Sit Down and Write Some Words”. Now that would be useful.

I have a new “Writer’s Diary”, a Christmas gift which I requested especially, to help me to organise my writing. I flick through it. It is alarmingly blank (of course). I don’t have a plan.  I pluck up the courage to write my name and address on the front page, then close it again. 

My inner critic, never one to hold back, is particularly vociferous on the subject of submitting anything.  “You can’t do that!” she declares, as I consider the guidelines for a short story competition. “They aren’t looking for the stuff you write! They want something more highbrow / funny / serious / innovative / better! Best not bother.” 

I persevere, and find a competition which, maybe, I could enter. The deadline is in a couple of months, so I open my new diary to make a note.  The blank white pages stare back at me. I put down the biro and pick up a pencil. I note the details of the competition in very small, rather faint writing on the page for March. It’s a start, I suppose. 

Whichever way you look at it, submitting your writing is a scary thing. It’s like pushing little paper boats out onto the water. Except these little paper boats carry your thoughts, your time, your hopes – a little part of yourself.  What if they are rejected? What if they fail? And they probably will, almost certainly in fact. (My inner critic tells me she doubts they are sea-worthy). Scary indeed.

But wouldn’t it be sad if the paper boats just stayed on the beach forever? There would be no point in them being boats, if they never made it into the water. They probably won’t reach their destination, but isn’t it better to be wrecked in the attempt than never to launch at all?

So, I’m going to give it a go. I will try not to get disheartened by the inevitable rejection letters, and the “Sorry you’ve not been shortlisted” emails.  I’ll just keep pushing out those boats and hope my inner critic is wrong about some of them, at least.

A writing friend recently shared a post from Elizabeth Gilbert, about forgiving ourselves for all those broken New Year’s Resolutions. It contained this line: “…let us never let our failures, embarrassments, and shortcomings stop us from TRYING AGAIN”.  

I am going to shout those words at my inner critic next time she pipes up.