What’s your inspirational word for 2019?

To be honest, I’m about as good at keeping New Year’s resolutions as I am at going into Kmart and only buying one thing, which is to say I am CRAP at it. But choosing a word or two as my theme for the year? That I can do!

I’ve seen this idea around a lot of awesome places, most notably in Jen Storer’s writing group on Facebook, The Duck Pond, and the Australian Writers’ Centre blog. Of course I got the ‘bird is the word’ song stuck in my head first (you are welcome for the earworm). But then I decided on two words for the year:

Motivation & self-belief.

Overall, they’re two things I know I have somewhere in me – I’ve seen them make appearances over the years – but lately they’ve been MIA more often than not and I’d like to change that.

If I had been more motivated last year I could have finished umpteen drafts on my MG novel by now and started on the new idea that has been floating around in my mind. Instead, I’ve been doing the classic ‘hey look at me working on my manuscript by re-writing the first few chapters a thousand times and not getting around to the rest of it!’ thing. I am excellent at that thing.

But I know that’s also tied in with my self-belief – or lack thereof. Because a lot of times when I’m writing my stories I get that annoying inner critic voice in my head that’s like, “Oh… you think what you’re writing sounds interesting, do you? That’s a pity. You know people would rather read the manual that comes with their vacuum cleaner than read this, right?” (Sometimes it’s in a Regina George from Mean Girls voice, sometimes it’s Professor Snape & sometimes it’s just Ross Geller screaming PIVOT! at me).

The point is, I need to start having more faith in myself. And I also need to remember to aim for progress, not perfection all the time (another shout out to Jen Storer for that pearl of wisdom!) 2019 is the year of motivation and self-belief and I’m excited.

What’s your word for this year?

 

Rollin’ into the new year like…