Thoughts

It’s that time of year again. The well-meaning crowd into gyms, flocking like vultures on a carcass for a few weeks, until the lure of their previous lives becomes too strong, rendering those automatic, monthly gym membership debits an obsolete waste of money. Loose change and random dollars find themselves stuffed into jars like nuts stashed by a squirrel, where they’ll remain unspent until about March. The Goodwill sees a sudden influx of clothing, electronics and random crap as Purge-fever strikes across the land. Yep, it’s resolution time.

But “resolution” doesn’t have to be a word that elicits a groan of agonized dread, or instantly calls up geeky visions of pixels on a screen. Believe it or not, resolutions can actually be your friend. They don’t have to be some grand creature of good intention. In fact, they shouldn’t be if you want any hope of actually keeping them. After all, they’re really just goals disguised in a longer, more pretentious-sounding word for intimidation factor. Goals aren’t scary, are they?

Personally, I find them highly motivating. When I meet them, that is. They give me a clear-cut mission, something to work towards, a path through the aimless. The trick is making them specific. And New Year’s Resolutions are no different. Everyone has the standard “lose weight/get in shape,” “get out of debt,” “fall in love,” “spend time with family,” resolutions. But those are also the ones we never keep. Why? Because they’re a vague description of some ideal we’d maybe kind of like to get to. They don’t give us any direction. No instructions. No plan. Of course we can’t keep them!

We’ll try valiantly for a few months, until we decide that we just don’t like sweating as much as we like donuts; that the mountain of debt isn’t going anywhere until we win the lottery; that love is a fickle bastard who likes to play practical jokes; and that there was a reason we didn’t hang out with the relatives.

Instead of focusing on unattainable, murky-type goals, narrow the playing field to one specific region– say, writing. Think about what you’d like to achieve over the next year. And don’t just throw out things like, “I want to write more,” “I want to get published,” “I want to stalk Stephenie Meyer.” (Ok, maybe not the last one, but you get the idea.) These are no different than the goals I listed before. Instead, break those vague resolutions down to their individualized steps. Like a to-do list on steroids.

You want to write more? Great. How much? Define it by word count, pages or chapters, but define it. You want to be published? Awesome! What do you need to do to get there? Write a query letter? A synopsis? Both? Figure out the small steps that will ultimately lead you to your goal and make each one its own resolution. You want to stalk Stephenie Meyer? I’d suggest investing in some psychiatric help instead. But that’s cool. I’m pretty sure you can still read this from the computer lab in jail. 😉

The point of a New Year’s Resolution isn’t to put so much pressure on yourself that you fail the second you write it down. It’s more about defining the larger tasks you want to accomplish within a year’s worth of time, rather than on a day to day basis. So don’t make them so specific that you’ve gone through the whole list within 5 minutes on Jan 1st. But don’t let them be so broad that you’re left without a sense of direction either. That perfect balance in between is the key to a successful resolution.

Let’s give it a try, shall we? Below are my personal writing resolutions for 2013. Notice how each goal is specific enough to give me a plan of action, but not so specific that I can accomplish it quickly. Chances are, I won’t meet most of them, (because let’s face it, I’m better at planning and organization than I am at follow-through), but at least I defined them into plausible chunks I could attain if I applied myself. And that’s the first step.

Writing Resolutions 2013

Finish the rough draft of Unmoving
Upload Chapters of Unmoving every two weeks to Wattpad & Authonomy
Revise and Re-publish The Bardach, Spinning & Confessions via Createspace/Amazon KDP
Compile brief synopses of all plot bunnies
Write, Edit & Publish one new short story

Now it’s your turn. What are your writing resolutions for 2013? Share them in the comments below! 🙂

(P.S. A big Thank You to everyone who entered the Holiday Giveaway. The winners have been chosen and notifications will be going out via email. Congratulations to those who won; keep your eyes on your inbox to find out if it was you. 😉 )

Over the past week, I’ve been involved in several conversations about the changes to the way we find and consume media. And it got me thinking. Over the past 5-10 years, there really has been a dramatic shift in the way consumers find and purchase entertainment. Gone are the CD store dinosaurs where I got my first job, except for a couple that refuse to face the music. (Yes, horrible pun intended. 😉 ) Gone are the days of browsing genre aisles of shiny new books in Borders (now just depressing, vacant buildings scattered across America like the remnants of a zombie apocalypse). Even the way we watch TV has changed, our schedules no longer dictated by the networks. But is that a bad thing?

Most articles you read talk about this shift from the perspective of the artists, the people creating the products. But what about the impact it’s had on the consumers, on the way people buy? That’s what caught my interest and made me realize just how much my own buying habits have altered over the past few years. Yours probably have too.

Until the digital era began, entertainment industries, whether music, literature, or film, were all dominated by the same business model– large companies that acted as gatekeepers, filtering the creative content the public received. Record labels told us which artists were worthy, the “Big 6” publishing houses defined what “good” literature was, and large film/TV studios determined which movies and shows made the cut and when we were supposed to watch them. But then suddenly, consumers were given choices. Upstarts like iTunes, Amazon, Hulu and Netflix challenged the traditional, declaring that there shouldn’t be a middle man between artists and consumers. And we liked it.

This shift has taken the vast majority of power away from the gatekeeper companies, resulting in larger royalties for artists, a broader spectrum of content and an overall increase in interaction between artists and their fans. But it’s also created a mess of the shopping landscape. From an artist’s standpoint, yes, having to get through the gatekeepers made things more difficult. It sometimes seemed unfair to be forced to bow to their rules and standards, to compromise artistic vision in the name of profit. But the one thing they did was make it easy on consumers. They placed content where it could be easily found, creating focused avenues that shopper’s knew to go to when they were looking for that type of entertainment.

All that has changed. The majority of entertainment consumption seems to happen over the internet now, thanks to the advent of iPods, eReaders and Tablet Computers. And we all know how vast the internet is. So how do people find things? How do they discover new artists, new authors, or TV shows from around the world? How do they wade through an unfiltered swamp of products without the direction the gatekeepers always provided?

I think there are only a handful of strategies:

Personal Recommendations from friends, family or professional reviewers.
Website Algorithms that recommend based off previous purchases — think Amazon’s recommendations, iTunes Genius, or Pandora Internet Radio type services.
Random browsing.

Things like bestseller lists, or recommendations based on your previous purchases and what other people bought after viewing the same product have become far more important in a shopping environment overwhelmed by billions of titles. But while this approach to filtering content can give the illusion of a more personalized shopping experience, there’s one flaw– the lack of a vetting process.

With self-publishing becoming such an easy option for every type of media, the markets are being flooded with products that are released prematurely, leaving consumers to wade through the bog, looking for the gems among the crap. Which, I think, gives rise to the stereotype that self-published equals bad as customers become more and more frustrated with the lack of quality. The gatekeepers might have controlled what the public received, but they also had a built-in quality assurance system. Regardless of personal taste, people could trust that the products they were getting were something of quality that would be worth their hard-earned money. Now that those gatekeepers are being sidestepped, that expectation of professional-grade work is often disappointed.

So we can’t have it both ways apparently. At least not yet. On the one side, we enjoy the wider diversity of content, supporting indie artists in all genres with enthusiasm. But on the other, we complain about the lack of quality in a majority of products, feeling that we’re wasting our time and money on rubbish. Where’s the happy medium?

I expect that the next few years will continue to see a significant shift in the way consumers approach entertainment as both artists and customers adjust to these new shopping strategies. I think that eventually the customers themselves will become the gatekeepers, and that the quality products will rise to the top because they deserve to, not because they’re backed by a large company. But it does beg the question of what purpose the traditional avenues of distribution, the record labels, publishing houses and film studios, will serve in the future. Will they adjust to the changing times, taking on a different role, or will they eventually go the way of Borders, disappearing into nostalgia? I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.