Try, try...and try again by Cathy Ace

Do you have any New Year's resolutions as a writer, and what are your plans for 2023?

Write better

Write smarter

Write faster

Don't beat myself up if I don’t achieve all my resolutions (this is an annual resolution I ALWAYS fail at, whatever the others might be!)

Will I be able to stick to the first three? Hmm…only time will tell.

Write better? This is what I always strive for. I hope I’m writing “better” now than when I began, in the same way we all hope our craft improves as we practice it. But improvement doesn’t just come from doing more of the same, it has to come from trying different things, too. So my plan (hope…aim?) is to do that this year. See below...

Write smarter? I'm a plotter – anyone who knows me, or has read my posts here, or has listened to me speaking at events, knows that. What I learned during 2022 is that I plot better when I plot faster…by which I mean I have to get it down on paper as quickly as I can after I've finished seeing the movie in my head. In the past I’ve let a plot/"movie" percolate, but the last two books I wrote were noted on paper pronto – and that worked well for me, so I plan to repeat that in 2023, and aim to nail this technique - maybe helping with...

Write faster? Do I mean write more books in the time available to me? Not really, but I found with my last two books that if I’m able to organise my time better, I’m able to write a book more quickly – this means putting in more hours over a shorter number of weeks, and that’s worked for me during 2022, so I shall try to keep up with that for 2023, and improve upon it. In 2020-2022 I wrote and published six books, and my hope is to write three books in 2023, but...hmmm...see below...

Do I have any specific plans for 2023? Oh, this is dangerous…but, yes. I plan to write a new Cait Morgan mystery (it’s pretty much plotted), a new WISE Enquiries Agency Mystery (ditto), and a new psychological suspense novel that won’t be exactly a “second in series” for retired DI Evan Glover, but he will feature in it, as will his wife, and it will revisit some of the characters from The Wrong Boy - which I very much enjoyed writing, and which was well-received.

But…only if time allows: if the past few years have taught me anything, it’s that life can change your plans in a heartbeat, so that fourth resolution – about not beating myself up if I don’t write three books this year – is the one I might find myself most challenged by towards the end of the year.

If you have resolutions for your writing or reading, I wish you luck with them…and recommend you consider adding my fourth resolution to your own 😉

HAPPY NEW YEAR - AND HERE'S TO YOU AND YOURS BEING HEALTHY AND HAPPY, WHATEVER YOUR RESOLUTIONS MIGHT BE! 

And THANK YOU for allowing the release of the 6th book in the WISE Enquiries Agency Mysteries series be the most successful I've ever had!

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