Happy New Year, everyone! We have snow here, can you believe it? Well, maybe you can, but around here we have had years when we did not get any, and we are currently blanketed by eight powdery inches. You cannot even make a snowball out of this – it’s too cold!

My odd New Year’s resolution is working. I didn’t really frame it as one before I began, but it fits the tradition nonetheless. The goal is simple; don’t lose count. I picked a daily habit I want to build, and keep track of how many days I’ve missed so far. No writing it down or anything. The fewer times is changes, the easier it is to remember, right? I know it has only been a few weeks; still, I have missed zero days so far this year. That encourage me to keep it at zero for another day.

Cleaning up my writing files and notes get a kind of constant, background effort as I focus on a personal project. That should move to its next phase this Spring, and my priorities can shift back to writing. No, I’m not going to tell you what the project is, it’s personal. Instead, I shall describe Fanfic February, something I came up with which probably already exists.

Fanfic February would be, to my mind, a time when an author may ignore all strictly professional writing pursuits guilt-free, and explore the not-for-profit yet just-as-fun castles one can build in the sandboxes of others’ stories. Such a thing is beneficial for many reasons.

Can I make bulletpoints here?

• Any and all writing is practice and grants valuable experience.
• Indulging these ideas clears the mind and frees it to think of other things.
• Some of those same ideas may expand beyond their framework and become “inspired by” rather than “an ode to.”
• It is a community of fiction lovers – therefore, a potential audience and set of peers worth interacting with and cultivating.

Wow! I got the bulletpoints by accident. I was all set to tell you I couldn’t and would have to look for them later. Yay! I still will. It’s best to know how to do things on purpose.