New Year's Resolutions (OH NO!)

There’s a mythical Harvard study that found that those who set goals and wrote down plans to achieve them actually went on to much greater success. Even if it doesn’t exist, it makes a lot of sense! If we don't create goals, we won't achieve them. It also makes sense that if we have no plan, we can't carry it out! (We also can’t fail at it, cause we never tried.)

But all of this can feel like a lot of pressure to achieve. That causes terror! The flip side of achievement might be failure. Cue the scary music here!

In reality I think failure is underrated. I think failure is just a critical and judgmental way of saying I put myself out there; I tried. Many of us are terrified of that. Very few people want to start the year with that kind of burden. Most of us might have an idea of what we might be doing, but we don't want to live with the stress of failing or falling short! Most of us would rather quiet the voice that says, you have stories to tell... than let that voice rule over us. 

But for those of us who don't want to keep pushing that voice away, Joyce Carol Oates suggests starting small which is ironic considering her output. I think she's right. The truth is I am working on something that I might call a book one day. Right now I think of it in terms of 750 words each day. (3 double-spaced pages.) That's something I can actually do in a Brave Space session, even when I'm sending out quarterly chat prompts and helping participants with their questions. 

If you are dreaming of writing a play or short stories or a memoir or novel or any kind of book of creative nonfiction or poems, you can use Brave Space as an anchor. Even if you only come once a week and share once a month, you can build a practice from that. 

Don't let that voice stress you out with the thing it wants to do; set some boundaries around how much of your time and effort you are willing to give it. Then do just that much. 

I'll be offering more one-off classes on skills for those of you who are interested in learning more about structure, creating higher stakes, free-writing, image-systems, and using metaphors and setting to inform character and story. You'll be able to come in with your questions and needs or send them before we meet, so I can really tailor the classes to you! And you are free to participate as much or as little as you want.

Brave Space is for people who aren’t interested in making a huge commitment with their time. You can drop in once a week. You can drop in once a month. What are you creative needs? What are you looking to make in the New Year? What will you let yourself dream of doing? Brave Space is here for you.