Happy New Year! It’s that time of year, the time when we all look back on what we’ve done (and what we haven’t) in the past year. 2011 was a great year for me—the best year of my life, actually—and I say that in spite (yes, and definitely not because) of the fact that I hardly wrote at all the entire year.

If you’ve been following along, you know that I had a very on again/off again, false start kind of year as a writer. A lot of things changed in my life, pretty much all of them for the better, but my shifting world (and my disappointment over the anticlimax of publishing my first book) left me with a bit of difficulty getting anything productive done. My mind was a jumbled mess for the better part of the year, and once the baby came in September, I’ve been running on amounts of sleep so infinitesimal it’s a wonder I can even think at all.

But my Amalie is nearing four months old now (wow, it’s going by so fast!) and is sleeping longer stretches at night. Getting her down for a nap is still a nightmare, but overall, she’s a very easy, sweet-natured little baby, and I’m feeling more and more well rested every day. So, time to get back on the wagon for once and for all.

During my winter break from teaching, I had planned to write for a steady schedule of at least fifteen minutes a day. That plan, ambitious though it wasn’t, crumbled by the end of my first week off. I’m not going to bother coming up with excuses. It’s embarrassing to think I couldn’t even keep up such a basic writing schedule as that. But the important thing is I’m not going to let that failure prevent me from trying again. I know I can get back into the groove of writing. If there’s anything my years of making a serious go as a writer have taught me, it’s that writing is just like anything else in life—just like exercise. It can be hard to get yourself in the habit of it, but once you get your momentum going, there’s no stopping you. 

So here I am, at the beginning of a new year (and at the beginning of a new quarter—yes, school is already back in session this week), and I’m ready to make it count this time. I’m not going to set the goal of writing absolutely every day—I just can’t do it, with my crazy, new mom life right now. But I am going to make a goal for 2012: I intend to complete and begin circulating at least five stories by the end of the year. That’s actually not that ambitious of a goal, either. Back when I was an MFA student, I would be working on at least that many stories each semester. I’ve already got a good three stories in completed draft form, which have been revised multiple times already. I can easily finish up those three and write and revise two new ones in a year.

A year, after all, is a very long time. Even if I have several more false starts, there’s time enough to make this happen. There’s time enough, yes. There always is.