New Year's Resolutions -- For Keeps

The first week of a new year is a great time to curl up in your favorite chair with How to Reach Your Full Potential for God by Dr. Charles F. Stanley. His seven essentials provide a compelling framework for those of us who can’t resist the urge to make resolutions. The book’s path to healthy hearts, minds, and bodies is paved with spiritual insights and practical suggestions.

For example, Essential #1: A Clean Heart encourages us to set our hearts toward purity. In this chapter, Dr. Stanley discusses the power of daily abiding in Scripture and God’s call for “us to actively and intentionally yield our entire selves to His will on a day-to-day basis.” Essential #4: A Healthy Body presents practical advice on sleep, nutrition, and exercise. Other essentials discuss such topics as relationships, scheduling, and taking risks.

The motivational book provides a Godly foundation for this year’s resolutions. The prayerful resolve to improve oneself and grow spiritually within the seven essentials may prove stronger than the making of isolated, easy-to-make/easy-to-break goals. May this be the year to live the book’s subtitle: “Never Settle for Less than His Best.”

(NOTE: I received a complimentary copy of this book from Thomas Nelson, Inc.)

Priority Projects

My writing resolutions aren't SMART goals, so I'm calling them Priority Projects instead. Here they are in their unadorned skivvies (in other words, the basics).

Dream Trail

• Polish Twirl (renamed When Sparrow Falls);
• "Snowflake" a previously abandoned novel; and
• Devote at least twenty-five to thirty hours per week on fiction projects.

Publishing Trail

• One query/submission per week.
• Write every day.
• Update blogs at least once a week.

The details are more complex, but these priorities fit on a postcard that I've placed in a prominent place in my Daytimer. And they're easy to remember.

What are your writing priorities for 2010?

Passionate Pursuits

Goals The word hangs in the air, casting its long shadow across the falling grains of sand in Time's hourglass, a pall over our good intentions. To join in the New Year's emphasis on resolutions, I wrote this poetic treatise.

Goals: A Poem

Make 'em.

Break 'em.

Actually, I make goals every year. Sometimes I even keep them.

Sometimes I go beyond them.

Passionate Pursuits A couple of days ago, I found a list of 24 potential hobbies and interests from July 2005. A few I've already embraced or accomplished. Some no longer interest me.

Two intrigued me -- one of those aha kind of moments. So in 2010, I'm going to:

• learn how to operate that expensive camera we bought for our daughter's wedding two years ago;
• participate in Florida's State Forest Trailwalker Program.

Goals guide us.

Passionate pursuits propel us.

You've been thinking about goals. Now think about your passions. What are you pursuing this year?

Fanatics

My oldest and my youngest are shivering in the rain at the Gator Bowl. Bethany and Nathaniel are longtime Seminole fans so they're ecstatic to participate in college football history.

3:26 pm text message: Sun came out, not freezing anymore. All food places running out of food.

I indulge in my fanaticism tomorrow at the Seventh Annual Lord of the Rings Extended Version Movie Marathon with the bonus showing of The Hunt for Gollum. Here's a photo from last year's gathering the fellowship faithful.

The posters was a gift from my son-in-law. Somehow he talked a video store into letting him have them and then he passed them on to me.

A Christmas Legacy

"Do you think they'll read these?" my son-in-law asked as he helped me insert the plastic-protected pages between the covers of the two navy blue albums late Christmas Eve 2007.

"I know they will." I smiled, more to myself than at him. I knew in the deepest abyss of my heart that I was giving my daughters a treasured gift. The timing was perfect as both girls looked forward to life-changing joys: Bethany's pregnancy for her second child, Jill's after-Christmas wedding. They faced the future, but my gift transported them to the past.

On May 9, 1981, only days before my 24th birthday and a few months before my first pregnancy, I wrote on the first page of my first blank book. I've filled up enough blank books since then to fill a small plastic tote. Books I allowed no one to read.

Until that Christmas. I typed selected entries from each journal using a cursive font, scanned and inserted photos, and printed the entire document, twice, onto pale mauve paper.

Thanks to my intermittent journal-keeping, I gave my girls the gift of knowing me when I was a young wife and new mother. I shared childhood anecdotes about them and their younger brother. I entrusted them with joys and with sorrows.

And, yes, Bethany and Jill read their copies just as I knew they would. Laughing. Crying. Because of a Christmas gift begun before I knew them.

If you keep a journal, consider sharing the gift of your younger self with your loved ones. Or begin keeping a journal now. Your current words are a future treasure.

Merry Christmas to you and your loved ones.

The Lazy Trap

In an early draft of my latest novel, I wrote that my protagonist stole a truck and then continued on with the story.

Lazy, lazy, lazy!

I didn't want to figure out how she stole the truck and I very much wanted to get to the part where she helps the man of her dreams escape from a prisoner-of-war camp.

My critique group thought differently.

"Show it!" Karen demanded.

"No!!" Jeanie admonished.

The latest draft shows my protagonist finding the truck, considering the truck, stealing the truck.

Please tell me I'm not the only writer to fall into the lazy trap.

Need + Passion + Vision = Something Big!

See a need. Discover your passion. Pursue your vision.

When nine-year-old Austin Gutwein sees the heartbreaking need of African orphans, he discovers his passion for basketball can raise money for these children. Over the next few years, Austin pursues his vision to raise money to build a school and a clinic.

The young founder of Hoops of Hope writes about his experiences in Take Your Best Shot (co-written with Todd Hillard). In his book, Austin challenges other kids to discover their own passions to “do something bigger than yourself.”

Each chapter ends with questions to help the reader pursue his or her own vision.

Just think what great things can be accomplished just by following Austin’s example – no matter one’s age!

[Note: I received a copy of this book as a reviewer for Thomas Nelson, Inc.]