Resolutions old and new

The old year is ticking to its close and it’s time to review my reading and writing resolutions from January. I made two, one more ambitious than the other and I can't be certain that I’ve fulfilled either of them because my main failure, as usual is in record-keeping.

I challenged myself to read an average of a book a week and to write an average of 1000 words a day — so, over the year, 52 books and 365,000 words. You wouldn’t have thought either was too hard to keep track of, but you’d be wrong.

I lost count of the books early on, telling myself it wouldn’t matter if I didn’t write down whichever book I’d finished late at night because I’d remember. Oh, and there was always my Kindle, which would keep a neat track for me. Except it didn’t. As any reader knows, books can sit on a TBR pile for many, many months and when I checked back a few weeks ago I didn’t know which of many downloaded in the latter half of 2017 I actually read in that year or which were carried forward to 2018. Oh, and I don’t read all my books on the Kindle. Yes, I can go through my bookshelves and hope I can remember which print versions  read when, but there are others that I've bought from second hand bookshops and given away again, or borrowed from friends and returned.

At the time of writing the confirmed minimum figure stands at 45, with five days of the year still to go in which I will certainly finish at least one more. I can, however, add a further six full-length manuscripts which I’ve read for other writers (again, that's a minimum. It's probably nine). Can I count those? And can I count the four full-length manuscripts I’ve written? In which case, surely I can says I’ve fulfilled the spirit of my resolution, if not the letter of it.

The same applies to the writing, or I hope it does. There were four books in my detective series (at various stages of drafts) plus an abandoned draft of a different novel, totalling 336,000 words. But can I include my blogs? Can I include the weekly article I write? If you allow me those, at roughly 4-500 words per blog post (about 30 of them) and 900 words per article (probably over 40), then I’ve covered that one, too.

All right, I’ve stretched things a bit, but even if someone were to quibble about the small print I’m happy with what I’ve achieved in terms of those two resolutions. I might be a bit more realistic next year, though. I might set myself to the book a week without committing to the thousand words. Probably more importantly, I think I’ll be resolving to keep a proper note of what I’ve read…