High Resolution by Poppy Gee

What are your literary resolutions for 2025… as a Writer, as a Reader?

Great question! I love this topic for my first post on this blog. Making a to-do list always gives me a surge of energy. Whenever I write down my goals, no matter how big or complicated they are, the path to them becomes clearer.

This feels especially true for resolutions made in January. Here in Australia, we’re in the middle of delightfully long summer school holidays. We’ve shared the time between Tasmania, staying with my parents, hiking and fishing, picking cherries in local orchards and barbecuing fish the day it’s caught; and at the beach in Queensland near where we live, swimming and snorkelling, mucking around in small vessels on the bay, eating fresh mango, and finding more time to read – this is a relaxing, rejuvenating month.

 

There are big changes happening in our home this year. In February, my 17-year-old daughter will move interstate to live on campus at Melbourne University. We’ll still have our 16yo and 9yo boys, but with one less child to care for I’m hoping to have more time to write. (And more space, I’ll get to use her bedroom to write!)

What can I achieve this year as a writer?

Currently, I have one crime fiction manuscript which my agent has sent out on submission. That’s a novel I’ve been working on for more than twenty years. I couldn’t let go of it, it’s a story I keep returning to, revising, tweaking tiny details. I’ll be beyond excited if it finds a home - I’ve got all my fingers and toes crossed.

With that one off my desk for now, I’m free to start something new. This is my favourite part of the writing process. I love the limitless possibilities of the blank page. But I’ve decided not to start a new novel straight away. I have several almost finished manuscripts that I set aside for various reasons. One is a historical crime novel, two are psychological thrillers. Time apart has sharpened my sense of what I need to do to them. I teach crime fiction workshops via the local writers’ centre and bookstores, and the key advice I give to aspiring authors is: Finish Your Novel. I need to take my own advice. So, my New Year Writing Resolution is: Polish and Submit.

Separate to my novelist goals, there’s an essay I want to write. It’s an ‘investigative memoir’ about my grandfather, Ted Embery. I remember him as larger than life, a vivacious man who was passionately proud of his family. He was the son of a house maid and an ‘unknown’ father. His mother had two children but was only allowed to keep the little girl at her live-in employment, so my grandfather was placed in an orphanage when he was only four. He joined the navy at fourteen and met his bride at a servicemen’s function. She belonged to the Alvey family who made fishing reels in their factory on the banks of the Brisbane River, and they warmly welcomed him. My mother recalls him determinedly trying to find out who his father was but he hit a roadblock. I’d like to see if I can find out more. I don’t even know if it’s possible. So far, I’ve recorded interviews with relatives, and last year I attended a memoir writing workshop with the highly regarded Australian writer Kari Gislason. His advice regarding writing a memoir is to structure it like a crime story - what is the question at the heart of your story? That made sense to me. My essay will probably be best suited for submission to a local literary journal. I’m putting it here to hold myself accountable.

 

Kari Gislason's memoir Running with Pirates

Now, the hard bit. Reading resolutions. Here are some:

Stop buying so many books. Finish reading the book stack by my bed. And the books on the shelf near the front door. And those on my desk. Stop reading multiple books at one time because maybe it’s not respectful to the author. Read outside my comfort zone. Read an Agatha Christie book in full for the first time. Stop pretending I’ve read any Agatha Christie books when I’ve only seen the movies. Read more widely. Read just what I want to read, not what I feel I should...    

I’ll stop there - I know I'll break them all. Except for the one regarding Agatha – I’ve outed myself now. Genuinely, I want to scroll less on my phone and read more; and borrow more from the library. I’m not too worried about my reading goals. I’m a good reader. I finish a book each week. I’ll keep doing that.

Current read: Dice by Claire Bayliss (it's a legal psychological thriller about a jury and it's excellent)

 

My last library haul. I'm resolving to borrow more, buy less, in 2025.

My writing goals are very important to me. There’s much I want to write, and only so much time, so I need to set high-resolution goals. There’s much in this world we can’t control but we can control how we move through it, and for me, writing is a satisfying way to do that, and to try to make sense of the confusion. 

Thank you, Eric, for inviting me to be part of this blog. I’m excited to be here, and I’m looking forward to getting to know the other writers via their blog posts and their books.

Happy New Year to all the readers and writers in this wonderful blog-community!