First of all, I don't agree that people always break their resolutions. For the past three years, I've kept my resolutions simple, fun-even-if-diffecult, and made sure they had a tangible end result -- some thing or event that I could look back on and say: "This was my contribution to the world this year."

And I've kept all three of those resolutions. It feels wonderful. When the years have drawn to a close, and I've looked back, the success of completing my long term goals makes all the yuckiness and sorrow of the year pale in comparison.

It's a trend I intend to continue.

So this year, I resolve to:

(A) Write some fiction every day, even if it is only a single scene. I've chosen this, because although I've done a lot of writing over the past year, whenever I tried to write fiction, I found myself in the grips of a panicky sort of writer's block. Writing poetry and essays allows me to seperate myself from my subject -- to view it from some artistic distance, as if I were looking down at it from above. But in writing fiction, I have to get inside the life of my viewpoint character, and open myself up to all the pain and joy that that character feels. It's riskier, and it's something I haven't done enough of in the last couple of years.

and:

(B): To finish writing and designing a board game that has been ratting around in my head as an idea for the better part of a decade.

(one more of those "finish what I start" resolutions!)