My New Year’s resolutions are usually a complicated affair, a written document with numerous categories, goals, outcomes, and checking off against last year’s list. I love the opportunity for a fresh start the process allows. This year, however, 1 January came and went and I had not made a start. I realised my resolution for 2009 is simple; write.
It isn’t that I am completely satisfied with all other areas of my life, or that I am unhappy with my writing. Rather, I have reached a point of clarity about the place of writing in my life.

Like many fellow writers, I was shocked and saddened to hear of the death of Dorothy Porter late last year. It was difficult to understand that someone so feisty, so full of life, so talented, could be gone. Best Australian Poems 2008 mentions she was working on a new collection of poetry – talking about her in present tense of course – and I found myself wondering about the work she left unfinished, the future projects in her head.

In a somewhat morbid exercise, I looked back at the other authors who died during 2008: David Foster Wallace, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Studs Terkel, David Bradley, Michael Crichton, Arthur C Clarke, the list goes on. I was reminded of something a well-published fellow writer said to me about her response to reaching a recent significant birthday. She had suddenly seen life ahead in terms of how many more books she could write, and realised how finite and small the likely number, how much time had elapsed. Her words, and the distress on her face, stuck with me.

It is hard to justify – to yourself and to others – time spent writing when there is so much work to be done, gardening, ironing, parenting, partnering, shopping, renovating, earning a living. It can be hard to take yourself seriously when there seems little to show for your hours of work, and little or no financial return. Not everyone understands why you do it, why it consumes you, or, if they do understand, why you aren’t yet a best-selling millionaire author star. It can be difficult to keep going in the face of rejection, more rejection, or feedback that your project is not yet ready for publication, that more work is needed. Time goes by, the novel remains unfinished, doubt creeps in, and resolve is lost.

So this year is about the writing. The ‘just do it’ approach to writing. Writing for at least an hour, six-days a week; dedicating a day each week to writing projects; making time for reading; sending submissions out; and surrounding myself with other writers – who do understand and give support and constructive feedback. While I do have writing goals, it is not so much about the outcomes, but the process; improving my writing and continuing to improve. The rest will follow.

There is a short list, stuck near the computer in my studio. The names of five writers I admire and wish to emulate in some way, to aim toward. The list is my resolution.

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