Books

6 Canadian writers share writing resolutions for 2018

Posted: May 11, 2017
Last Updated: March 01, 2018

A new writing year, a new writing you? CBC Books asked six writers who juried the 2017 CBC Literary Prizes to share their writing resolutions for 2018. 

1. Charlotte Gray

"Tell the nonfiction facts as I see them, but acknowledge other people have other truths. Even if I don't accept another person's version of events, get beneath their words to see why they are saying it."

• Charlotte Gray on the worst interview she's ever done

2. Carmen Aguirre

"Get started on my new novel, Three Virgins!"

• Carmen Aguirre on tabloid addiction and the view from her window

3. Shyam Selvadurai

"Keep writing despite all the other demands on me!"

• Shyam Selvadurai on childhood memory, Buddha and answering your own questions

4. Marina Endicott

"I resolve to finish my book in 2017. I mean 2018. Okay, that is my resolution every flipping year, but this year I mean it."

• Marina Endicott on abandoned workouts, stubborn knots and her most lovable character

5. Humble The Poet

"My resolution is to not have any resolutions, but to continue my journey of lifelong learning as well as improving my health, my art and spending time with those that matter most to me."

• 5 poets that inspire Humble The Poet

6. Gary Barwin

"I don't usually keep or make New Year's resolutions about writing. I mean what has the calendar to do with procrastination or deadlines? Any resolutions that I make are more of the 'rolling' type. Indeed, resolutions are as in Twain's quip about giving up smoking easy to make. Heck, I've made 16 resolutions today. Including the one where I promised I'd finish this piece of writing this morning. BTW, I had a sandwich for lunch.

"But it can be productive to take stock of one's writing life to consider what one would like to accomplish, and how. It's valuable to think about what one values and what has become a habit that one wants to eliminate, continue or interrogate. Though it often seems like the writing is the one making the resolutions and my job is just to learn from the process and consider what it all means.

"What does it mean? It means that I haven't finished the novel I'm working on. It's a bit like that exercise machine in my recently flooded basement. A beautiful and marvellous thing to consider. Sheer potential sloshing about in a surprise lake.

"But I hereby resolve to finish that novel. There, I've said it. So now I have to do it. Just like last year, when I said I'd become an astronaut. Or was it a dolphin? In any case, writing can be like echolocation. Or, at least, echolocution. A lot of sloshing around and only avoiding disaster by beaming out transmissions and listening for what they sound like coming back.

"What else? O New Year, grant me the temerity to write about the things I cannot change; the courage to write about the things I can; and the wisdom not to know the difference.

"But also, O Year that is New, grant me the serenity to accept the writing I do not understand; the courage to edit the writing I can; and an editor to know the difference.

"And be calmed and not becalmed. And read more, write more, wash more, walk more, be quiet more. Just kidding, I don't need to walk more. There are many things to do. I resolve not to worry about the things I'm not currently worrying about. Except when strictly necessary. Incidentally, I love the biblical name for the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, "Yom Teruah.' Apparently it means, literally, 'day [of] shouting/blasting.' That is how I hope to begin the year, ecolocuting the heck out of the future, sending blithe huzzahs into the corners of the past, and chortling frabjously at the strange and slithy present."  

• 7 books that excite CBC Poetry Prize juror Gary Barwin