A new year without resolutions

Source: mariathomasonline.com

I'm an overly wordy person. I write blog posts over a thousand words, and then painfully trim them down (wincing all the way) to maybe 600 or 700 words. I write novels over 100,000 words and then slash them (wincing all the way) down to 90k. Then I give up in exhaustion in the pursuit of a more marketable 75k or 80k.

Anyway, as this new year starts, I find myself at a loss for words for once (or at least, a lot less words!) This would normally be the post where I share my writing goals or resolutions for the year to come. I'm skipping the whole resolutions thing this year.

Though I do plan to set some short term goals from time to time. Those seem to work better for me.

Also, maybe I'm not getting a big rush of words because, as the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words, and  the beautiful picture above (with just a few words) says everything I want to say perfectly.

Here's a wonderful article, A Sense of Self  (from Writer Unboxed),  that's sort of related to the picture above - how life is a voyage of discovery.

What we want from  them [heros or protagonists] is not just entertaining stories but examples of how we can feel, see the world, conduct ourselves, grow and change. We admire them, learn from them, celebrate them and return to them over and over for inspiration.

(There's also some great writing tips for developing characters that people want to return to for inspiration).

For writers - or at least, for me as a writer - I  think I learn a lot from the protagonists that I write about - they travel with me on my journey through life, showing me sometimes surprising and unexpected things about myself. I'm wondering if anyone else has ever discovered something on the voyage of their own lives from the stories and characters they've written about?