Natasha Ngan

With New Year’s Eve just a day away, I thought I’d have a think about my writing resolutions for 2013. 2012 was a crazy year for writing – it way surpassed any writing dreams or goals I had for it. If I’m honest with you, I’ve only ever had one dream in life – to have a novel published – and now that it’s coming true all I can hope for is to continue having more books published! Luckily my publishing deal is a two-booker, and I have plenty more books I want to write, so it’s definitely within reach. But it helps to have more specific writing goals than general become-a-bestselling-author-and-get-loads-of-film-deals-and-live-off-my-millions-in-a-house-with-a-custom-built-garden-writing-room sort of things. That’s just a little unlikely :P. So here are my 2013 resolutions …

• Write two more books. Yes, two – I’m half way through one at the moment, so I want to finish that one, and then I have to write the second book in my contract with Hot Key. It might be a push, given what I’m sure is going to be an even busier year than 2012, but I think I can just about do it. As long as I keep to my second resolution, which is –

• Give more priority to writing. It’s so easy to always put writing after the day job, socialising etc, but us writers need to give it the priority it deserves. I’ve had to start thinking of my writing time as work now just to make sure I’ll sit down and do it, and my friends are fantastic in understanding that it is work for me, so I can’t always brush it off to see them. Luckily I only need a couple of hours a day to get a chapter out, so hopefully just being a bit stricter with writing will be enough.

• Be proud of my writing. I am a hugely critical person. I think it’s the Chinese side of my culture – to always see the fault in things I do and push myself to keep on improving. I remember when I got into Cambridge and my mum was like, well, what about Harvard? Haha! But I do think I need to take the time to actually look at what I’ve achieved – finished my first novel! Got an agent! Got a book-deal! – and be proud of myself. And so should you! No matter what stage of the writing process you’re at, you’ve got there. A lot of hard work’s gone into our achievements. We should acknowledge that.

What are your 2013 writing resolutions? I hope it’s an amazing year for eveyrone 🙂 x