Tuesday 5 January 2010

New Year Detox


Never mind Carol Vorderman and five gallon bottles of Evian, I'm talking about flushing out the clutter from my writer's brain with a few timely resolutions:

1. Spend less time trolling the Net
OK, this one seems to come up every year and all that happens is I end up signing onto yet another writers' forum and wasting too much valuable time on things like avatars, signatures and bickering about adverbs. We tell ourselves it's good to stay connected, but really how much use are these sites when you come down to it? Yes, you can make a few friends and pick up a few tips, but you can also accumulate trolls and convince the wider world what an asshole you are. There's a lot of bitterness and bitchiness around too - a pretty toxic environment for the delicate ego and hardly conducive to creativity.
So I'm trying to limit myself. I'm not optimistic I'll be able to do it, but I'm going to try.

2. Spend more time reading and writing.
Last year I got into quite a nice routine, writing in the morning, reading in the afternoon. That is when I could resist the lure of Sky. This year things should be better as the Sky box breathed its last the week before Christmas and we've switched to an incomprehensible combination of Freesat and Free View. So there's no chance I'll be wasting time watching TV since I can't figure out which remote does what.

3. Be better organised.
When I can do it, sitting down to write first thing in the morning works best for me. I'm going to try and be more disciplined about this. Facebook and Twitter will just have to wait.

4. Get more exercise.
Another perennial. I know it makes sense to get the blood flowing to the brain but each year that passes sees me more firmly glued to my chair. However I will try and jump around to my Davina DVDs at least twice a week.

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