Word of the Year

Lots of writers are posting their words for the year.  Looking at my January Action Plan, it's pretty clear what my word of the year is.

REVISE!

Confession to my critique groups: I still haven't done the revisions on the last, oh, 12 stories you've critiqued.  Yep, my bad.  This fall I have been struggling just to get manuscripts ready for critique each month. This makes me feel very guilty. If I were a dog, I'd have my tail between my legs.  The Emotion Thesaurus tells me people show guilt by blushing, sweating and staring down at my feet. (Handy book, that is!)

And I value the critique so much, that it's like I was given a bag of gold, but haven't molded into rings yet. Just a big bag of shiny metal sitting in my closet patiently waiting to be honed into beauty. And that's the kind of thing that attracts pirates, and I'm so not in the mood for a pirate attack. 

Ah yes, a good pair of old scissors.
Just perfect to cut all those adjectives.
(image by asifthebest via sxc.hu)

So I needed to get my butt in my writing chair, but how? Well, I had to trick myself, which isn't that hard since I'm quite gullible.

First I signed up for Shannon Abercrombie's Start the Year Off Write.  Sunday Julie Hedlund kicked it off by informing us we needed to write a first paragraph to one of our PB ideas.  

How dare she? I thought. How dare she wake me out of my holiday coma to actually write?

So, I plopped in my chair like a snotty sophomore whose Mom said she couldn't watch Teen Wolf until her homework was done.  I may have even been loudly popping Hubba Bubba bubbles. It took, like, forever to pick out an idea and to coax my fingers to move. But then 250 words later, I had to apologize under my breath to Julie for being such a brat. J Just. Writing. Anything. Feels. Awesome!

January 12th starts Meg Miller's ReViMo which features 7 days of picture book revision. It's just what I need to really make some head way through my critique pile. 

Do you have any writing resolutions this year?