New Year’s Resolutions for Writers

Laura Maylene Walter:
Welcome to Page Count, presented by the Ohio Center for the Book at Cleveland Public Library. This podcast celebrates authors, illustrators, librarians, booksellers, literary advocates and readers in and from the state of Ohio. I'm your host Laura Maylene Walter, the Ohio Center for the Book Fellow and author of the novel BODY OF STARS.

Laura Maylene Walter:
All right, listeners. 2024 is on its way out, and for better or worse, we are staring down a new year. Maybe you’re the type to make new year’s resolutions—and if so, good for you, because I usually do not. I don’t see the point in inserting more failure into my life; being a writer seems to do that on its own. But whether you love to make resolutions or whether you never make them, I’ve come up with a few that apply to writers and that are, for the most part, pretty manageable. It’s more about mindset than accomplishments: so no resolution that this is the year you get an agent or a book deal, those things are often out of your control, but what you can control is your approach to writing and the effort or energy or attitude you bring to your writing life. 

Laura Maylene Walter:
To that end, I’ve dug into the author interviews I’ve conducted through Page Count this past year, and I’ve handpicked some writing advice from those guests and framed them as resolutions that you might want to work on in 2025. We’re talking about insight from the likes of Hanif Abdurraqib, Jacqueline Woodson, Ross Gay, Alison Stine, and many more. We’ve got resolutions involving fast food and cockroaches and survival, and so much more . So take a listen, think about how you want to shape your own writing life in 2025, and have a happy new year.

Laura Maylene Walter:
Our first resolution is courtesy of Ross Gay, and it’s simple and to the point: Stop trying to be brilliant. So in the new year, when you sit down at your writing desk, don’t set out to write great things. Just write. Here’s Ross Gay with more:

Ross Gay:
Don't write great things, just write. I learned that in writing quickly and quick enough that I wasn't trying to be brilliant. I wasn't trying to be excellent, and I wasn't going to be proficient. It made me do these syntactical things, these thinking things, these grammatical things, these dictiony things that I otherwise, if I was trying to be good, which if I had two weeks to write an essay about something that delighted me, I would be, I'd be trying to be good. I would not have had those discoveries that those kind of quick rapid, like got to get to figure out why a public high five is so delightful to me. It feels like, to me it's a lesson about constraints. It's a lesson about imposing on yourself ways that will make you think, move, do et cetera differently. Which is also to say ways that will remove not only your mastery, but your aspiration for mastery.

Laura Maylene Walter:
Now, if you’re listening to this before you head out to a New Year's Eve party, here’s some advice: don’t talk about the plot of your novel at said party. Obviously, look, you can do what you want, and if helps you to chat about your writing with friends after a glass or two of sparkling wine, go for it. But otherwise, author Claire McMillan has some thoughts on why talking about your novel before it’s done or published can be tricky:

Claire McMillan:
When you have to go out and talk about your book, they'll ask, what are you working on next? And I hate to talk about what I'm working on. I think it's horrible for a number of reasons. Number one, I think just energetically, it lets all the air out of the balloon, you know. For a number of reasons. Number one, I feel like because a novel is such a big thing, if you can boil it down like that while you're writing it, then it's kind of like, why are you writing it? I mean, once you're done writing it, you'll have to boil it down and your agent will help you, your editor will help you. Like the marketing people will help you. But if you can do it while you're doing it, it might be too simplistic in a way, I think. Or if you go into like an overly long explanation of all of it, then it's almost like you've written it already in a way like you've told the story, so all the air goes out of it.

Laura Maylene Walter:
Next resolution: don’t be precious about where you write. In fact, at some point in the new year, challenge yourself to write in, say, a fast food restaurant. Here’s Alison Stine with more on that front:

Alison Stine:
For the entirety of my son's life, I've been a single mom and he's 12 now, so he's very supportive of my work as much as a 12-year-old boy can be. But you know, it wasn't always the case, just the time, you know, not giving me time, not understanding that I needed to be alone. I wrote a lot of ROAD OUT OF WINTER at Burger King in Athens, Ohio. They had a great play space and he would just play and they had free Wi-fi and the cashiers would bring me free French fries and coffee.

Alison Stine:
Like they were worried about me. So they were always like giving me food and you know, that was a big help. You know, that was a big help. And also it was a constraint, of course, knowing I only have an hour while he's asleep or I only have three hours while he's at preschool. Why wasn't preschool all day? I don't know. But you know, knowing that I only have that time meant that I really worked during that time. I couldn't mess around. I had to sit down. I would ride in my car a lot. I would bring my laptop to the preschool and ride in the lobby. You know, if, you know, you only have a few hours, you got to work through those hours.

Laura Maylene Walter:
And wherever you choose to write, focus on the work itself. Write for yourself, to make sense of the world, to find your place in the world, to connect with others—in short, find your meaning behind writing and don’t get distracted by the possibility of the outcome, such as awards or recognition. Look I get it, we all daydream about accepting our National Book Award, or whatever, but at the end of the day, you’re not doing this for awards and recognition. Or at least I really hope you’re not, because there’s no faster way to a lifetime of disappointment. But here are two greats, Jacqueline Woodson and Hanif Abdurraqib, discussing this very issue:

Jacqueline Woodson:
I feel like everything that came after the fact that I was able to write is the gravy. You know, I never thought I would get this many awards, write this many books or be considered a quote unquote genius by some people. Even though I lord that over my kids all the time. I'm like, you know, your mama's a genius <laugh>, but I truly would be writing if none of this was happening. For me, it's survival. It's a way of making sense of the world and having some power in that world because once you get the story on the page, like I'm a little bit different than when I started writing it. And that growth is so important to me.

Hanif Abdurraqib:
In THERE'S ALWAYS THIS YEAR, I write about being unhoused. There was a point where I lived in a storage unit, I had a mattress and a little lamp and that was all I had. And I wrote because no one was publishing me, no one cared, no one knew. But I wrote because like you couldn't really make noise 'cause you're not like supposed to live in storage units. So I was writing 'cause it was something I could do quietly. And so for me that was very literally survival to say I am writing as a bridge to get from one day to the next. That's still the ethos that I operate with.

Hanif Abdurraqib:
But also, I mean, folks who know me well know that I really don't care much about awards and decoration, which I get is easier to say when you've won things. But I didn't care about when I didn't win things. Some of that is because I'm really grounded here. I'm accountable to this place I love and the people in it who first and foremost value me as a neighbor and not as someone who produces things. 

Laura Maylene Walter:
Brian Broome suggests to his students that they write outside of themselves. Try to see the world through someone else’s eyes. It will help give you and your writing a fresh perspective. 

Brian Broome:
Write what you want, but also try to experiment a little bit. You know, Toni Morrison said to her students like, don't write about your little self. Like nobody cares. Like try to imagine somebody else's viewpoint. One of my writing prompts I give is like, okay, so think about some horrible thing someone did to you. What is it? You know, some slight or some lie they told or something like that. Nothing traumatic. Just think about somebody who pissed you off, right. Now, write the story but write it from their perspective. You are now a character in their story, so write that. So I try to like move the perspective a little bit. A lot of times when we sit down and write about ourselves it becomes this litany of complaint. And I don't think that that's interesting for the reader to hear about how great you are and how horrible everybody else is because you know, you're fucked up too.

Brian Broome:
I think that when you admit that on the page, that's a great thing that also frees you up a little bit. So as far as my students go, I'm like, tell me everything. Tell me as much as you're comfortable telling me. We're not going do the five paragraph essay. Like keep going, keep going and use as many curse words as you want and call people horrible names but have it have a purpose. And you know, when you're dealing with first time, particularly first year college students, it's such a breath of fresh air for them. And also keep in mind that the reader is the most important thing in this equation. You have to keep that in mind.

Laura Maylene Walter:
On a similar note, get out in the world, do some research, experience something beyond your writing desk. For example, maybe you’ll do as poet Sara Moore Wagner did and go to a small-town Annie Oakley festival:

Sara Moore Wagner:
Annie Oakley actually came to me because my mother was also a champion sharp shooter. So yeah, she was really a fan of Annie Oakley growing up. And so when Covid started, I had kind of two books that I'd already written that were a little bit personal and I thought, you know, I'm going to just go research a person. So I discovered that Annie Oakley lived about 45 minutes north of me here in West Chester, Ohio, and I took a trip to her hometown. I went to her museum and then the poems just started to kind of take over. I decided I was going to write a hundred poems about Annie Oakley just to kind of pass the time <laugh>. Just to see if I could. But I was really fascinated by her story and I was really drawn to the connections between her and my mom and the things that I was kind of starting to understand about super stardom and gun culture in America. The beginning of America I just started learning and going down rabbit holes and then because her hometown is so close to me, it was really easy for me to kind of escape there and go right there and be in the place too.

Sara Moore Wagner:
the Annie Oakley Festival's amazing. It's in July so I really suggest everyone goes...like the Annie Oakley Foundation and Center that is responsible for her research, they're fantastic. They put this on from the Garst Center, there's a little bus that takes you around to all her locations. Girls come and they compete to be Little Miss Annie Oakley and they shoot and they stand on horses and they do all these tricks. It’s really cool. 

Laura Maylene Walter:
A new year brings up a lot of anxieties for people, in terms of what you may or may not have yet accomplished in the past year or in your entire life so far. So in 2025, try to keep in mind that this is no timeline, necessarily, for a writer. You can spend years developing your art. Maybe you’ll come into your own as a writer at age 30 or 50 or 70 or who knows? But don’t put pressure on yourself to publish a book by the time you’re X years old. Chiquita Mullins Lee shares how Elijah Pierce, a folk artist from Columbus, didn’t gain widespread recognition until he was seventy: Here’s Chiquita with more:

Chiquita Mullins Lee:
It always impressed me that Elijah Pierce came to sort of fame, I guess, or notoriety recognition later on in life. You know, he had spent all those years doing this work because he loved it. And even though he did travel around with his wife and they would preach and you know, talk about his carvings, he still didn't make that connection. I mean, he was self-taught, nobody taught him how to do this. And his uncle kind of showed him some things, but he just kind of played around with it and discovered, wow, I can use glitter to make it look like this and I can add some paint and I can add some colored drawings and colored pencils. And so he just kind of really discovered it as he did it. And it took form, you know, as he continued to do it. And then all of a sudden somebody's saying, wow, this is great, this is art. He's like, wow, this is art? <laugh> And then getting that recognition when he was in his seventies, you know? And so it's good to know that you don't have to be this child prodigy, even though he probably was to some extent. I didn't recognize that, but, but you don't have to be that way. You can just do what you do and let the work speak for itself.

Laura Maylene Walter:
As writers, we face a lot of challenges: rejection, distraction, not much money, etc, but remember the positives. Compared to other art forms, like acting, writing is relatively accessible and affordable and something you can do without, say, getting cast in a production that costs a ton of money to put on. After writing a novel about actors, author Leah Stewart shared why she’s grateful to be a writer:

Leah Stewart:
As writers, we have this sense that we're working really hard on an art that the world—that at least our country—perhaps doesn't care a whole heck about. With actors obviously they can achieve heights where people care about them really obsessively, but they can't do it on their own. So that is the thing that they struggle with. That actually made me feel like I was really lucky to be a writer and not an actor when I was talking to them. Because it's funny how many of them actually have fantasies of being writers because they like the idea of being able to pursue what gives them creative joy without needing the whole apparatus around it.

Laura Maylene Walter:
I think a lot of us—and by us I am definitely talking about myself—can probably stand to take ourselves a little less seriously. So don’t beat yourself up for the little things in 2025, like, say, mispronouncing a word. But just for fun, let’s hear how podcaster and journalist Rob Harvilla is able to laugh at his own mistakes: 

Rob Harvilla:
This actually didn't go out in the episode, but I almost referred to the National Organization of Women as the NWO. That is not the correct, that's a wrestling term, NWO. That is not correct. I've mispronounced so many words. I mispronounced O-B-G-Y-N, I pronounced it "ob-gin." I have no explanation for this. I have three lovely children; I should know better a thousand times over. And yet that did occur. I choose to think that one of the charms of my show is charming mispronunciation of various very common English words and phrases. You know, it's fun for people when I don't know what I'm talking about <laugh>, even when I'm talking about it at great length.

Laura Maylene Walter:
Here’s a good resolution for 2025: make a new writing friend. I know it can be hard to make new friends as an adult, but the simple act of showing up to book events or programs can really make a difference and you never know who you’ll meet. In Libby Kay’s case, she met someone at a book club who ended up becoming her podcast cohost.

Libby Kay:
I think the only thing I like more than writing romance novels is reading them. And that's how Romance Roundup started. My co-host Liz Donatelli has the Reader Seeks Romance channel already. And so she's been doing a variety of shows and interviews that are romance-related. We met a few years ago at a book club here in Columbus, Ohio, and we started basically just talking about books to the point of insanity. And we thought, oh, we're pretty fun and witty and we think we have good opinions. So what happens if we start coming up with different themes, you know, each week having a different theme. And then we had some connections to other romance writers, influencers, podcasters. And again, it's just two friends having a good time and we've met some really great people along the way this past year. And I’m just very fortunate that people still want to listen to us talk about romance books cause I’ll do it until they stop.

Laura Maylene Walter:
In 2025, find inspiration in your daily life. Poet David Hassler is here to tell us that poetry is everywhere, and if you’re open to receiving inspiration, you just might find it: 

David Hassler:
The beautiful thing I feel is there's an incredible renaissance of poetry and the appreciation for poetry in our culture. Poem are everywhere, on Instagram, on the web. You know, we turn to writing because we want to emulate, we want to be in that conversation with what we've read. You know, William Stafford, a wonderful American poet, he talked about our bias in our contemporary culture is to talk about to be strong is a kind of active muscle, you know, pushing outward. He said, what about the muscle of receptivity? What about strengthening that muscle of being open and receiving inspiration, which from Latin "inspira" means to breathe in. You know, inspiration comes from outside of us and we’re open to it and we breathe it in. So I would encourage folks to just find poems that speak to them. 

David Hassler:
Go to travelingstanzas.com, go to poetryscience.org, go to Literary Cleveland, Lit Youngstown. And once you are passionate about what you are reading, then it's an easy step to say, well I'm now I'm going to start writing. And you know, reading and writing are not separate acts. You know, I talk of active reading and writing that is drawing down for everything that has inspired you and it's coming out through your pen or through your keyboard. That back and forth is happening all the time. And I think strengthening our muscle receptivity to allow that to happen is all it takes. And giving yourself time that little pocket of time, whether you get up early and it's 20 minutes or an hour, it's that little pocket of time, that moment of pause, that little stanza in your day, step into that room or be open to the voices around you.

Laura Maylene Walter:
And we’ll end with one of my favorite pieces of advice an author has shared into the microphone this past year on Page Count: be a cockroach. Alex Rowland is here to explain:

Alex Rowland:
That is the one piece of advice that I always give people if they are thinking about being a writer or if they already are like a published author who's struggling in the publishing industry and wondering if there's a place for you or if your stories matter. The publishing industry is hard and scary and you're not always going to win the roll of the die. You know, misfortune will happen. Sometimes your book contract will get canceled. Sometimes you will hit writer’s block or burnout or your agent will retire or your editor will explode <laugh>. But if you want to survive in the publishing industry and you want to have a career as a writer, be a cockroach, be un-killable. All you have to do is survive. No matter what happens, something good, something bad, your next move as a career writer is just to write another book. If you hit the New York Times Bestseller list, that's cool. Write another book. If your book contract gets canceled, cool. Write another book. That's it. You just have to survive. You just have to keep going and you just have to, like, be un-killable.

Laura Maylene Walter:
All right, thank you to all of Page Count’s guests in 2024, thank you for listening, and I wish all you—all of us—a happy and healthy and productive 2025, both in our writing lives and beyond. Happy new year.

Laura Maylene Walter:
Page Count is presented by the Ohio Center for the Book at Cleveland Public Library. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and leave a review for Page Count wherever you get your podcast. Learn more online or find a transcript of this episode at ohiocenterforthebook.org. Follow us on Instagram @ohiocenterforthebook or find us on Facebook. If you'd like to get in touch, email ohiocenterforthebook@cpl.org and put "podcast" in the subject line. Thanks for listening, and we'll be back in two weeks for another chapter of Page Count.