Tuesday, December 31, 2024

2025 New Year's Writing Resolution (for writers): Recycle Your Work

Every year, I make a New Year's Resolution just for writing. I don't bother with personal resolutions, because I never keep them. (I have not, for example, run the Boston Marathon, cured cancer, or finished my PhD...yet.) But, without fail, I do keep my writing resolutions. 

In past years, I have made writing resolutions to Write What I Feared (we must all face our writing demons), and to get more rejections than C. S. Lewis. (He got over 800; I clocked in at a measly 160 that year.). In 2020, I resolved to begin (facing a blank screen is always daunting) and the following year, to finish what I had started. (This is a perennial problem for writers such as myself, who have a wealth of ideas, but little patience.) 

I have resolved to read, because it is only through reading and re-reading that we hone our writing skills, and I have resolved to observe the ordinary, because observing what goes on around us, and listening, really listening, with the heart as well as the ears, is the basis of all subject matter. 

Perhaps most important of all, I have resolved to be true to my own work - that is to say, to not conform to what I think an audience might like (or dislike, as the case may be), but to be loyal to my own message, my own thoughts, my own feelings. Most writers may not realize it, but ignoring a prospective audience is actually quite difficult, especially once editors and publishers get hold of your manuscript. 

Where was I? Oh yes...

After resolving to get off my butt and get published, and, miraculously, having done so, and having started, finished, faced my writing demons, observed, revised, and re-read the greats ... what is left?

Nothing. I am completely bereft of ideas.

No, just kidding. I do have one goal this year. Over the past few years (or is it decades?), I have gotten a number of short pieces published. It was exhilaring to see my work in print. So, like an addict, I kept pursuing the intoxication of publishing new work. Meanwhile, my older stories (some of which are quite good, even if I do say so myself), have been forgotten in my lust for novelty. 

There is simply no excuse for abandoning your prior work, especially when it has appeared in journals which are now defunct. (My strategy has always been to submit to print journals first. That allows me to submit to online journals later.)

So, this year, I shall delve into my neglected writings and recycle them. There are plenty of journals that accept reprints, and, because I happen to have a list of them right here, I shall begin to recycle.

*    *    * 

If you want to follow in my footsteps, this is my excellent list: 185 Literary Magazines Accepting Reprints. You are welcome to make ample use of it.

Previous resolutions (all of which are worth following in case you're stuck for inspiration):

2024 New Year's Writing Resolution: Revise Your Darlings

2023 New Year's Resolution for Writers: Motivation

2022 New Year's Writing Resolution: Observe the Ordinary

2021 New Year's Resolution for Writers: Read

2020 New Year's Resolution for Writers: Begin

2019 New Year's Resolution for Writers: To Thine Own Work Be True

2018 New Year's Resolution for Writers: Finish

New Year's Resolution: Write What You Fear

2016 - Your Year to Get Published!

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