New Years Writing Resolutions by Joan Donaldson-Yarmey

http://bwlpublishing.ca/authors/donaldson-yarmey-joan/

 

 

A New Year’s Resolution could be described as promise made by a person to change themselves or something in their lives for the better. It could be being nicer to their neighbour, reading more, or having more fun. This change begins on New Year’s Day and is supposed to last for the year.

Making a New Year's Pledge is a custom observed mainly in the Western Hemisphere but is sometimes found in the Eastern Hemisphere.

Eight of the top ten resolutions are: spending more time with loved ones; getting in shape through exercise; losing weight; quit smoking; stop drinking; enjoy life more; pay off bills; learn something new.

How do these resolutions relate to my writing?

1.)    Spending more time with loved ones.

Writing is a solitary undertaking. I sit in a room alone with my computer (some writers use pen and paper.) I don’t like to be disturbed because that disturbance usually comes when I am right in the middle of a scene and I want to get it all down the way I am visualizing it. In order to spend more time with loved ones, I have to cut back on my writing. I read an article about one best-selling writer. Her son asked her if she would go to his baseball game. She said she couldn’t because she had to work on her next great book.

2.)    Getting in shape through exercise.

I spend my writing time sitting in a chair. If the story line is going well, I want to keep at it to the detriment of other activities.

3.)    Losing weight.

Hunger distracts me. I find that I write better if I have a full stomach, usually full of chocolates, but anything works.

4&5.) Quit smoking and drinking.

I have never smoked so that is easy. I only have an occasional drink so I am fine with that, also.

6.)    Enjoy life more.

Again, doing anything outside that room takes time away from my writing. And since I enjoy writing my books and planning more stories, I guess I am enjoying life.

7.)    Pay off bills.

Many writers write in order to pay off their bills. Some write hoping that they will have the next great best seller and earn lots of money. Most write because they love to write. Learn something new.

8.)    Learning something new.

Most beginner writers take writing courses to learn their craft. For others writing comes naturally. Many writers take a course in something they are writing about so the reader feels that the writer knows what they are putting in their books. When I write my historical novels I do a lot of research—reading books, visiting the places I am including in the book, and checking sites on the Internet. I have learned so much about Canadian history that I didn’t know before. I like to live by the saying: keep learning because it doesn’t cost anything to store the information.

So how do my New Year’s pledge(s) relate to those resolutions? I am going to continue doing my exercises in the morning before I begin writing so that I stay in shape. In spite of liking to write with a full stomach I work at maintaining my normal weight and will make sure that I continue to do so. Luckily at this time in my life, I don’t have any large debts and can write because I love to. I am not going to take up smoking nor will I drink more. But I think the most important one is I am going to continue enjoying life by writing more but also by spending more time with family and friends.
       In the past I have set aside my writing so that I could do things with my family and friends. They laugh with me, go places with me, are happy for me when I do something new and different. Writing is words on paper.

Starting Over

For more information about Susan Calder's books, or to purchase visit her Books We Love Author Page.

For the past decade or so I've stopped making New Year's Resolutions mainly because I inevitably break them by Jan 2nd.

But this year I made a specific one that I'm determined to keep: finish the first draft of book # 3 in my mystery series by April 30, 2018.

For me 2017 was good year for getting published. Books We Loved released my second mystery novel, Ten Days in Summer. Two of my short stories appeared in anthologies, Passport to Murder and Writing Menopause.

A third short story was turned into a work of art by Calgary artist, Sylvia Arthur.

At Loft 112, this Saturday, Jan 13, 7:00 p.m., Sylvia and I will be talking about our joint creative process. I'm told the event is sold out. 

That's me at the back beside the green wall, a year ago when the Loft announced the writing/art projects 

But 2017 was not my most productive year for writing. I got distracted by travel, visits from family and friends, promoting my recently published works and the birth of my first grandchild, all fabulous happenings I wouldn't have missed.

Now it's winter in Calgary, I have no serious travel plans for a few months and it's time to write.

April and June of last year were my only two months of serious writing and I accomplished a lot, I thought at the time. I got half way through the first draft of my new mystery novel before I had to set it aside for summer activities. I was reasonably satisfied with the work, but my subconscious had other ideas. While mulling the novel through the summer, I came up with a different approach that would fit more with what I want to do with this story. So it's back to page one.

   

Starting over isn't as painful as it might seem. My scribbles in April and June helped develop the main characters and plot, and some of the old material remains in the revised version. A departure for this series book will be multiple narrators. My first two mysteries were told entirely from the viewpoint of Paula, my sleuth. In the current draft, Paula's investigation alternates with back story chapters narrated by two suspects. Their perspectives point to motives for all of the suspects that build to one of them 'doing it.' Among other things, I hope this will help readers understand the 'why' of the crime, which is as important to me as the 'who' and 'how.'

The good and bad of New Year's Resolutions is that by putting them out there I feel pressured to follow through. It's now 10 days past January 2nd. The work is going a little better than I'd expected, so far, but I long to travel somewhere warm, hang out with friends, Skype with my granddaughter. I have to prepare for this Saturday's presentation at the Loft. I should line up some book promotion and could easily spend all winter organizing my basement and files.

Except for my resolution.    

FEMINIST---19th Century Style by Karla Stover

Does everyone have a list of deceased people who would have been fun to meet for a cup of coffee? Three Puget Sound ladies are on my list: Mrs. Alice Blackwell, who came in Tacoma 1873, when the future town was nothing more than a few dozen people living on Commencement Bay, and who helped her husband establish the first hotel there; author Betty MacDonald, whose books The Egg and I was a huge best-seller, but who wrote a wonderful memoir, Anybody Can Do Anything,  about being a single mom and trying to find a job in Seattle during the Depression, and camouflage artist, Enid Jackson Kemper.

Camouflage isn't new. The ancient Greeks painted their boats blue-gray for concealment; the reconnaissance/intelligence-gathering boats Julius Caesar sent to scoop out the coast of Britain were painted entirely in bluish-green wax, as were the sails, ropes and even the crew. The French are generally credited with developing camouflage for use in war. In fact, "a 15th-century French manuscript, The Hunting Book of Gaston Phebus, shows a horse pulling a cart which contains a hunter armed with a crossbow under a cover of branches, perhaps serving as a hide." Then World War I came along and that brings us to Enid Jackson, as she was known then.


World War I Dazzle Camouflage

Enid was born I 1897 to a wealthy Canadian doctor, Robert G. Jackson and his wife, Robina Ann. The Jacksons moved to Tacoma sometime around 1912. She went to Annie Wright Seminary and after graduation began studying art at the Ogontz School for Young Ladies near Philadelphia. There she paid particular attention to learning how to disguise roofs. While in Tacoma, she learned to drive, while in Philadelphia, she learned to fly, saying, she wanted "to learn from the sky how to correct colors for purposes of deception."

The earliest camouflage artists came from France's Impressionism, Post-Impressionist and Fauve schools of art. However, cubism and vorticism, both of which often focused on disrupting outlines and played with abstraction and color theory, contributed to the war effort.

Soldier inside a fake tree

As German aerial reconnaissance ramped up, disguising tanks became of paramount importance. British artist Solomon Solomon, (why would his parents do that?) a private in the Artists Rifles, a "home defense corps," was taken to the front lines to investigate techniques already being used by the French. He devised an elaborate four color scheme, which crews were required to copy exactly onto their own tanks. He also worked on tree observation posts and arguing tirelessly for camouflage netting. (tree, net, fake figures.)


Hiding under netting



Fake soldiers to fool the enemy

There appears to be no re4cords of how much war work Enid did. What is known is that she married into the wealthy Kansas City Kemper family, went through a kidnapping scare when a man broke into her home, and eventually made a substantial donation to Annie Wright Seminary, the school she attended in Tacoma.  What fun  it would have been to visit with these ladies.

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