Do you think the phrase “ringing in changes” arises because church bells used to be rung to mark the new year? It seems likely, but then again, what seems a likely explanation of linguistic tradition frequently turns out to be “not so.”

However, that’s not what I’m talking about today — I guess I just got a tad distracted by my love of language. 😉

On New Year’s Day, I decided not to talk about resolutions, which was partly because I was in the midst of the great visiting family & friends Christmas-New Year road trip and partly because I was feeling somewhat poorly, having contracted a bad summer cold. Consequently, I did not feel resolute at all!

In any case, I tend to be a little chary of resolutions, because I find they are honoured mostly in the breach, if at all, and so seem to be chiefly be formed in order to be broken. So rather than resolutions I would prefer to talk about my main (personal*) aspiration for 2017 and the key decisions I’ve made to support that.

My 2017 Aspiration:

My main aspiration is for 2017 to be The Year Of The Book.

I say “the book” advisedly, as opposed to “writing” since many activities fall within the general heading of writing, including penning emails and letters of all kinds, sharing recipes, tweeting, and the thing I’m doing right now, i.e. blogging — to name just a few and without being at all exclusive.

All are writing but all are equally something very different from writing books. And the reason I decided to pursue the writing path, dear readers, was because I wanted to write books — and secondarily poetry, which like the ideas for novel-length stories, is pretty much always with me. The other reason (although not entirely disconnected from the first) is because the Muses were waking me up every night to demand an explanation as to why I wasn’t writing; specifically, why I wasn’t writing books.

Recently, the Muses have resumed their midnight visits (or visitations, depending on your point of view), although this time their demands appear to be centred on MOAR books. 😉

In fact, our aspirations in this respect are completely aligned, which is why I have decided to make this the year of prioritizing the book, as opposed to any other writing (although I am quite sure poems will creep in through the cracks: they’re tricksy like that.)

So  that’s New Year’s decision number one, with any others flowing from that — like the “how to” of prioritizing the book.

Putting up the shutters & goin’ writing — 2017 style

Supporting the Year Of the Book

The main one that will affect “…on Anything, Really” readers  is that after nearly seven years of blogging — which in itself probably means it’s time for a change — I have decided to cut my commitment back to at least one, but no more than two posts per week.

I don’t want to give the blogging up altogether, because I enjoy it, but I believe that one to two posts a week will still allow me to share any writing news, host friends, do interviews from time to time, as well as continuing to share a few of my ‘terribly important thoughts’ on life, the universe and everything…

So that, dear readers, is part of The Plan to facilitate the Year of the Book.

Another is to actively seek out more opportunities for sustained periods of solitude and uninterrupted time to facilitate the creative process, so expect to see an update or two through the year, letting you know how I’m going with that.