New Year, Old You? (Amber Intro) (01/18/2020)

New Year, Old You | The Weekly Atticus

January 18, 2020

A recap of the week's writing at Atticus Review. Introduction by Amber Shockley.

Hot on the heels of holiday festivities, we awake from a stupor of high-calorie cream sauces to the ringing alarm of resolutions. If you’re a writer, that typically translates into tallies of pages or poems written, submissions sent, pieces published.

Back on the ol’ treadmill, eh? Chin up, right? Being a writer is hard. Muse and motivation don’t always meet you. When sending out what you do manage to produce, you face constant rejection. However, you must crack on if you want to get anywhere. Keep writing, keep submitting, keep trying. That’s the common advice. Set goals, even if those goals are to collect rejections. Laugh in the face of rejection. Laugh like a maniac! At least you tried. The consensus holds that attempt may be valued in lieu of achievement.  

Forget New Year’s resolutions, here’s a New Year’s confession: I’ve never managed to step on the treadmill of write, submit, repeat. Not even close.

I write and submit in fits and starts. With the rate at which I work, I’m lucky to have any publications to my name at all. My productivity and engagement as a writer – my record of attempts, my at-bats – is abysmal. 

Ray Bradbury says, “You fail only if you stop writing.” He doesn’t specify if breaks are allowed, although one assumes that stopping to shave, or eat, or kiss your lover are all acceptable. But what if I stop for longer periods, for more complicated reasons?  

I’ve never made New Year’s resolutions around writing. I think that’s because I’ve always sensed the inherent futility of believing that an arbitrary, man-made milestone such as the start of a new calendar year could have any changing impact on the struggles I’ve faced the year before.  

If you make a New Year’s resolution that is dramatically different from your previous experience and prior action on this earth, you really do have to buy into the concept of “New Year, New You.” You have to believe that you can be a completely different person than you have been, for all these years. 

Resolutions are more likely to work when they are reality-based and incremental. But those aren’t as impressive or exciting. Besides, if in terms of your life, you’re sitting smack dab in the center of suck zone, your low-ball reality-based and incremental resolution can be kind of depressing.

What’s your New Year’s resolution? Well, this year I’ll be writing five pages of my novel.  

This year, I’m taking on a new tactic. Instead of “New Year, New You,” I’ll be doing something I call “New Year, Old You.” I’m taking a look back at the person I’ve been up until now, and working on the issues that have kept me from writing. I’m focused on resolving those issues, which range from anxiety, to financial stress, to medical issues that have been endured, ignored, but never fully treated.  

Resolution is a noun that comes from the verb resolve. Resolve comes from the Latin word

resolvere

.

Resolvere

means to loosen, undo, settle.  

This year, my resolution will be to resolve – to loosen, undo, settle – that which has kept me from making progress.  

Are you a writer who struggles to write? Are your page counts pitiful, your publications scant? As you march forward into the year (with February nearly here!), I hope that, if needed, you will consider joining me in resolving that which holds you back as a first step toward making progress. 

Thanks for reading. We’re glad you’re here.

Amber Shockley

Assistant Poetry Editor

ATTICUS NEWS

DEADLINE EXTENDEDYou still have this weekend to submit!

THIS WEEK AT ATTICUS

BOOK REVIEWMEMOIR LOG INA Review of PEOPLE I'VE MET FROM THE INTERNET by Stephen van DyckReview by James Chapin"Van Dyck should be applauded for taking this exhaustive trip down the memory hole. He has come up to the surface with some fascinating relics."GET THE BOOKREAD THE REVIEW

FICTIONBLACKOUTby Bill Gaythwaite "I watched him descend into a prickly impatience, something I’d later come to think of as his everyday personality."READ ON

POETRYLOVE IN OUR EIGHTH AND NINTH DECADESby Ruth Bavetta"We give ourselves to those well-known melodiesas if our bodies were as they were before,and our hearts slide into the world of sheer delightwhere we tangle ourselves"READ ON

CREATIVE NONFICTIONCANNA LILIES by Barbara Shoup"When you’re fired for drinking, someone who knows someone gets you a job as the caretaker of a small city park. Your 'office' is a padlocked maintenance shed on one end of an open shelter."READ ON

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