20 Authors and Their New Year Resolutions 2023
20 Authors and Their New Year Resolutions 2023
Resolutions can mean many things to many people. Find out what it means to your favorite author! Perhaps they want to learn something new? Change a habit? Shift their focus? Do more or less of something? Continue something? These authors share what they’re focusing on in the new year (or maybe they’ve already started! I tend to start mine in December...)
I want to note that I do not get paid to do these posts, I just love authors and the book industry. However, they do take time and energy to create. If you want to donate a few dollars to my coffee fund, which keeps this blog going, you can do so here: https://venmo.com/AshleyHasty or here: http://paypal.me/hastybooklist.
Kelly I. Hitchcock
My resolution is to finish my 4th novel (currently a work in progress) in time to pitch at at the Writers League of Texas' agents and editors conference next summer. And maybe drop some baby weight before my "babies" turn 7.
Georgie Blalock
My resolution this year is to not buy more pens. I have an epic notebook and pen collection that I desperately need to put a dent in. I specifically have to ignore the call of the back to school sales when the gel pens I love, and already have too many of, go on sale. It will be a challenge to keep my resolution, but I will do my best.
Dianne C. Braley
I'm not sure I believe in resolutions, but I believe in goals and live to crush them. That said, my "goal" this year is to finish my second novel before Summer, but that's not that interesting. Resolutions are more intriguing. I think I resolve to get quiet more, meditate, get to a meditation retreat, and reset. With so much chatter in the world, constantly being plugged in, working non-stop, and all sorts of obligations, I need to stop and be still for a solid amount of time. How do we even know what we really want when we are inundated all day with people (mostly strangers) telling us on TV, social media, podcasts, etc., about what we should want and don't have and what we're missing in life? They don't even know us! I'm going to sit out in nature and figure some more out.
Shirley Russak Wachtel
In 2023, I resolve to spend more time looking out the bay window in my living room with notebook and pen in hand (my usual method of writing). During warmer seasons, the apple tree, lush leaves on the branches, and pink azaleas never fail to inspire me. Gazing out at the drift of snowflakes over a carpet of white puts me in a contemplative mood.
Avanti Centrae
Happy New Year! While I ring in 2023 at midnight feeling grateful for the recent success with the November release of Cleopatra's Vendetta, and the continued success of the VanOps thriller series, I'm hungry to complete my work in process. 2022 turned out busier than expected with marketing and PR activities; making time to sit at my desk and write has been a challenge. It's time to turn the page on a new calendar and commit to spending time every day with my new characters and their mission to steal shimmering royal jewels from an upstate mansion perched on the edge of the Niagra river. Although this story has less adventure than my usual work, I'm enjoying the strong conflict between the two primary anti-heroes. With my latest thriller now in bookstores, I'm looking forward to fulfilling my resolution and finishing this new story.
Susy Smith
Ah, the dreaded “New Year’s Resolution.” That’s what always crosses my mind when I think of the New Year. Followed by, “Who keeps their resolutions anyway? Most are unrealistic and people generally set themselves up to fail (save those hard-core Type A personalities). Who wants that? Not me.
That said, I do try to keep one long-standing resolution I remind myself of every January 1st. And that is to read three books I wouldn’t normally read. Books that I avoid are biographies, memoirs, non-fiction, you get the picture. I love fiction! Authors are voracious readers and this year between January 1st and March 1st I easily consumed over seventy-five books. Three books? Easy peasy. This has been good for me. I’ve enjoyed most of the biographies I’ve read. My favorite all-time autobiography is Confessions of a Prairie Bitch: How I Survived Nellie Olsen and Learned to Love Being Hated, by Allison Arngrim.
This year, I want to add something to my list and that is to have my sequel to Asylum published. This is an attainable goal. If I stick to my guns and don’t get lazy. Life sometimes gets in my way. It’s easy to allow your life to call the shots when you should be calling them!
If you want to improve your writing habits in the New Year, here are a few strategies that might help.
1. Schedule your writing. Remember when I said that my life gets in my way? Well, it completely consumed my day. My writing suffered. So, I decided to get up an hour early every morning and write. Before I go to work, feed the dogs, or pick up the house, I write. Guess what? It works. I am making headway on my sequel and a big bonus is it improved my mental health as well. When I don’t write, I’m miserable. Not to mention the little gremlin in my head reminding me I didn’t write.
2. Set a daily goal. There are many types of writers. I edit as I write. I know, I know, most professionals will tell you to just get that ugly first draft out there and edit later. I get that, but that’s not what works for me. So, my daily goal of one to two pages is a good one. Seem small? I can spend an hour on one paragraph!
3. Be fearless! One of the hardest things I’ve had to overcome (and I still have my moments) is self-doubt. Quit doubting yourself! I wish I had an easy answer to cure this, but I don’t. Meet other writers, join a writing group, go to a conference. These are things that have helped me.
I could go on, but there are scores of articles on the web to help you ferret out what works for you. So, make those New Year’s resolutions with attainable goals. Set yourself up to win this year! I wish all of you a Happy New Year 2023!
Don’t forget to check out my novel, Asylum. Here’s my WIP elevator pitch: Amidst a U.S. economic disaster, 19-yr-old Lacy Monroe finds herself in charge of a band of asylum-seekers and becomes a pawn in her uncle’s dangerous plot to take over the country. Jace Cooper, her brother’s best friend shows up at her family farm with a secret. He’s in love with Lacy and will stop at nothing to keep her safe. If you like romantic suspense, you’ll love this!
Jumata Emill
To travel more, take up a new hobby (possibly cooking, but I'm not completely sold on that one yet--I hate washing dishes) and eating less potato chips.
Michael Kaufman
Tell you the truth, I don't always do New Year Resolutions, but Chandler, the bio-computer implant and wannabe tough guy in Detective Jen Lu's brain certainly does.This year Chandler is going to try to prevent Jen from landing land neck deep in trouble as she takes on a spokesman for Big Oil as well as a convicted wife abuser--one of whom, she's convinced, is a murderer. "The Last Resort" is set in Washington, DC in 2034.
Colleen van Niekerk
It’s been a humbling and enriching journey to become a published writer with my debut ‘A Conspiracy of Mothers’. My resolution for 2023 is to continue the work of delivering my sophomore novel, which deals with a very different family contending with some of the same challenges, as they reckon with history and with each other, this time in a contemporary setting.
Heather Bell Adams
I'm an avid reader who enjoys reading multiple books a week, mostly novels and story collections. I do a pretty good job of sharing with bookish friends when I really enjoy a book. But I'm a little shy about reaching out to the author. I don't know why! As an author myself, I absolutely love hearing from readers. So this is my bookish resolution: to reach out and let authors know when I have enjoyed their work.
Maheen Mazhar
The past two years since 2020 have been such a blur. I graduated college in 2019 with big hopes and sky-high dreams like any young individual. Little did I know that the world would come to a halt soon after. I graduated from NYU with a degree in Fashion and Business. The summer after college I decided to take a break and go on a trip to Europe. I wanted to re-energize myself before entering the working world. When I got back from my trip in September, I began applying for jobs. I knew that getting the job of my dreams, that to in the Fashion Industry wasn’t going to be a walk in the park. The Fashion Industry is one of the toughest industries to break into anyway, but I was determined I will do it. On the other hand, my first book “Through Her Eyes” A Pakistani American’s struggles between two clashing cultures, was all finished and ready to be published. I had my whole 5-year plan set. Was going to get my book published, was going to get the job of my dreams, was going to travel the world as much as possible. Everything was perfectly planned in my head. Then came 2020, a year when the world went into complete halt. Priorities shifted from travel, careers, dreams to survival, staying safe and staying healthy. Plans went into the garbage and staying home and staying safe became the biggest priority. All our life, since a really young age we are taught to hustle, to chase dreams, work hard and attain, beat competition. Whatever it is that you are doing keep doing more more more, so you don’t get left behind in this race of becoming the best and beating competition. Since school, we are taught to keep being in the race, first it’s about grades, then it’s about making it to the honor roll. Then as soon as we get to high school it’s about having the best grade point average so that colleges can accept you. Then in the final two years of high school it’s about college prep, and SAT scores. There is just so much pressure that if you don’t get the best SAT score, you won’t get into a good college. On top of that you start comparing your score with your peers and classmates, which obviously sparks a fire in you that I want to better than everyone else. Then when you make it to college, again you are trying to get the best grades possible for grad school. If not grad school, you are trying to focus on giving the best interviews so you can land the job of your dreams. And even for that you won’t be judged by how much passion or enthusiasm you have for the job, but you will judge by a piece of paper called a resume where your internship experience as well as grade point average will be shown. But then you are a part of a competition again because on paper there can be 10,000 other folks like you with good grades, so how do you stand out from the crowd? Internships, People do all sorts of internships, I had four and I thought that was enough until I met a classmate at NYU Stern who had eighteen. I don’t know how but he did lol. But now that the world was at a stop, none of this hustling mattered in the moment. It was stressful because the first three months of lockdown were bliss, spending time with family, playing board games, binge watching all sorts of movies and shows on Netflix. But then a few months later all this anxiety kicks in about the future, because all your life you are taught to chase grades, scores, jobs, beat competition or someone else will get ahead of you. But here people who had established careers for 10 plus years were losing their jobs because of the pandemic so how was I going to even get my feet wet in the practical world as a starting step? So much stress and anxiety kicked in because the future was so uncertain, it was the worst time to apply for jobs and nothing, nothing was going according to plan. Rather everything kept coming as a shock. And all the chaos the pandemic brought with people dying because of covid wasn’t helping my mental health at all. New York, the city that symbolized the “American Dream” for me had now become morbid. With tons of people moving out, streets like Times Square that I had seen crowded as hell all my life were now completely empty with no people on the road, only sounds of Ambulances and freezer trucks carrying bodies of people who had died from covid, because the disease infected bodies had to discarded ASAP. It felt like the whole world had flipped upside down. A city that once symbolized hustle, the idea that once you make it big in New York, you make it big in the world was struggling to make hospital space available to accommodate covid patients. Everything became so morbid. I was grateful to be with my parents at this time in Virginia, away from the mess that New York was at that time but by the end of the year I was mentally exhausted. My future wasn’t going as planned, I hadn’t seen my friends in ages and making plans became scary because nobody wanted to go out anymore, thanks to Covid 19. Then came 2021, which was also a blur and felt like a continuation of 2020. 2021 felt like I was still picking up pieces from the damages that 2020 had brought or trying to get back up on my feet after falling. People were still getting sick, travelling anywhere was still a pain. I got infected with covid, meeting friends, and making plans was still painful because someone in the group would end up getting Covid and we would all go into quarantine. On the professional front, I still couldn’t find a job because tons of people were still getting laid off. Making plans with friends would almost never work out and then the overthinking would kick in that should I even go out? These were thoughts I never had back in college but now it was real. Do I want to go to overcrowded areas? Is it even worth the effort? Overthinking became even worse because now I was thinking too much about everything in life, instead of just living life. Then came 2022, when life was pretty much coming back to normal, working from home had become the new way of life, however Covid and its repercussions in the world were still relevant in life. Professional life wasn’t going as planned and in my personal life, every time I would meet up a friend in the city, something would happen, either we would run into a homeless person on the street who would follow us around through NYC or some random person would spit in our food while walking down McDougal Street (true story). The world was coming back to normal, but nothing felt normal. My friends in NYC from college no longer wanted to hang out late at night anymore because of the creepy people encounters we had at this point on the streets of NYC. My book finally got published since agents and publishers were back in business now, but the world was still not the same. Everyone my age and even recent college grads were still struggling to find proper jobs that aligned with their education. Thinking about all this, made my overthinking worse. Every time something didn’t go my way, it would make me want to break down in tears. At this point, I am much better at handling it but the most important thing I want to teach myself in the new year is letting go. Letting go of expectations and plans and living life as it comes. No one planned for the pandemic, no one knew that two and a half years of our life would go by just trying to survive through a global pandemic. When don’t we even know what’s coming our way tomorrow? Why do we live in this illusion that life is in our control, and everything will happen our way? It doesn’t always play out like that, not everything happens our way in life but in the end, it always happen the way it’s supposed to happen, so I want to free myself of plans and expectations. I want to focus on being grateful every single day for what I already have in life and take each day, each moment as it comes. Of course, I still have plans, I think we all do because hopes and dreams are what keep us alive, however I want to detach myself from how and when my plans will manifest. I want to learn to let go of the idea that I must do things by a certain age or a certain time in my life. Instead, now I pray to God that I want all these, but I want to trust the universe that the things I want will happen when the time is right. This way, at least I am not living each day in the hopes of another day. Instead, I want to live each day for what it is. The good, the bad, the ugly because all is part of being alive. I no longer want to do 5 year or 1-year plans anymore, I want to train myself to think how I can make this day and this moment I am in better. And to accomplish this, I have stopped planning. I still pray for things I want in life, but I am trying to let go of giving myself a strict timeline for them, instead I want those things to manifest naturally. So much of life is spent thinking about things that have already happened in the past or things that will happen in the future and in doing so, we lose the moment we are in today. When all we really have is today, this day, this moment that you are reading this. If you spend your today making the most of what’s in front of you, your tomorrow will take care of itself. That’s the motto, I want to live by in 2023. Completely letting go of what happened in the past in 2020, or 2021, or 2022, I just want to spend 2023 living each day for what it is, without attaching any excessive baggage to it from the previous years. In the new year I want to travel as much as I possibly can to new cities and new countries, exploring and appreciating the world as much as possible. My mom laughs that this isn’t a new year’s resolution but your entire life’s motto, just to travel as much as possible. But other than that, I want to flow like the ocean, always moving forward even when the winds blow against it. I want to live life as it comes, I am now ok with failing, I am okay with struggling, I am okay with falling, I am okay with facing challenges but every single time I want to get back up again and keep going. I am okay with trying again for something. I am okay if something takes longer than planned, BUT I am not ok with stopping. I am not okay with giving up on anything Not at all. Whatever life will bring to me in 2023 I will accept it with arms wide open.
Danielle M. Orsino
My New Year Resolution is to share the Veil with more of my Fae friends, to have more people get lost in the worlds I have created. The grind of day to day life can be overwhelming, I love the idea of being able to immerse yourself in a fantastical environment!
Judy Lannon
I live on an island off the coast of MA, Cape Cod, which is accessible by one of two bridges or boat. Cape Cod is a year-round ocean side community which is over run in the summer by tourists and summer homeowners. My "New Year" Resolutions begin the day after Labor Day, which is usually the first week in September. This is when the tourists and part timers leave our piece of paradise, and our kids get back to school. After having spent from June, sometimes May right up to Labor Day on the beach, eating, drinking, hosting beach parties, enjoying overnight guests and on and on, I need a big restart in September. I make a list of all of the things I didn't do all summer, things I should have done, but hey, it's summer on Cape Cod. I reassess my diet, exercise regime, my writing schedule, get back to meditating, walking my dogs, and getting the beach sand out of the house. For me this is a cleansing time, for myself, my home, my work. This is a ritual I have done since I was a kid. After a summer on the beach, I would start school right after Labor Day, and I would say goodbye to the summer and rejoin the real world. As an adult I enjoy January 1, knowing that I am ahead of the resolution expectations.
Katherine A. Sherbrooke
To sort through my stacks upon stacks of books to give each one a proper home, even if that means letting some of them go. Since my childhood, I have considered books to be like friends. There are books that changed my life that I want with me always, others that have taught me something important and I like to know they are nearby to call upon on a rainy night, even more that I have only just met but haven't yet found the time to get to fully know, and of course, there are sadly some I have met that I don't really like and don't need to spend more time with. This wouldn't be a problem if I had fourteen-foot ceilings, unlimited shelf space and rolling ladders to store and reach them all (wouldn't that be a dream?). Instead, my ever-growing collection of books has become less a source of comfort and joy and more a root of anxiety-- worry that I am not keeping up, that I am not reading fast enough, that I shouldn't acquire any more. And as a writer, that anxiety can transfer into wondering if the world really needs more books. But of course the world needs more books! Not every reader will read every book, but I am quite sure there are stories that haven't been written yet that will become part of my evolution and will need a respected spot on a shelf. Accordingly, I am intending to take the time in 2023 to sort through them all-- to gather the books most important to me and give them a cherished place, to create a visible spot for books I can't wait to read, and yes, to say good-bye to those books I don't need to keep, knowing I will be giving them a chance to find a home with a different reader who will clear space for them on their own special shelf.
Carol Dines
Last year I started a new ritual — dry January—and I gave up alcohol on New Year's Eve for one month, to build energy and strength for the coming year. And it worked. I'm not a heavy drinker, but I love actually giving up something I enjoy to shift my habits. I always feel clearer and I sleep better. It's a great way to start the year.
E.K. McCoy
As a young adult I quickly realized I had a love-hate relationship with New Year’s resolutions. I loved the idea but dreaded the inevitable disappointment I’d feel once winter ended and I was busy living life again. So I quickly decided that every year I would keep the same New Year’s resolution to “do more good”. I love this resolution. Through the years my family and I have volunteered at charities, donated money and goods to causes we believe in, and all while making memories. I feel like I can always do more good and this is a healthy challenge I happily accept.
Libby Copa
I like to set goals instead of resolutions (when I call them resolutions I never keep them!!). I have three big goals for 2023 - publish a book, finish writing and polish another book, and connect with 1000 new Instagram friends.
Lana Orndorff
I'd like to start a more consistent writing routine. Right now, I just write whenever I can. But it would be nice to set up a specific time and space to do it. And maybe a ritual like brewing a special tea or something that's just for writing time.
Erika Lewis
Living life moving one deadline to another, visiting fantasy world with imaginary characters is very rewarding. But it does mean time away from family, and friends, and too much time sitting, mostly indoors. My New Years Resolution is to spend at least one day a week away from the computer, in the great outdoors, and make everyone come with me.
Brenda Janowitz
This year, I resolve to not be so hard on myself. I'm always my worst critic, but that needs to change. I'm going to celebrate more wins, and cut myself breaks for those times where I don't. I'm going to speak to myself like I'm talking to my best friend, and show myself kindness.
