How to Choose Your Best Writing Yes in the New Year

by Kristen Hogrefe Parnell @KHogrefeParnell

A few years ago, I read The Best Yes by Lysa Terkeurst, and if you’re looking for a New Year’s read, this one is worth adding to the list (or reading again). My takeaway was that in order to give my best yes, I must also be willing to say no to other good things.

Right now, many people have pledged themselves to resolutions, but the truth is, we must first evaluate our current commitments before we can take on anything else in the year ahead. As writers, this exercise is essential to maximize our potential and prevent burnout.

The Danger of Overeating and Overcommitting

We probably all ate some delicious meals over the holidays, so let’s consider a food analogy. Your Christmas or New Year’s menu might have included:

• Appetizer
• Beverage 
• Main course
• Side one
• Side two
• Dessert
• Seconds?

You likely had choices of drinks, sides, and desserts, and not everything would fit on your plate. You had to make the best choice based on your preferred tastes. If you were tempted to go back for seconds, you might have overeaten and felt bloated as a consequence.

Our plate of commitments is similar. Some aren’t optional, and these include writing contracts and deadlines we’ve already accepted. But we get to pick the “sides” and “desserts” or how we spend our spare moments. If we try to stuff everything into our calendars, we’ll end up miserable afterward.

What’s on Your Plate?

Adding to our plates seems easy to do. After all, who doesn’t want a second dessert or another helping of your favorite side dish?

Subtraction is harder. Saying no to something good (like grandma’s apple pie or that fun short story contest) feels somehow—wrong. 

But just as we should choose a food sampling instead of taking every option available, so too we need to selectively choose the “good things” we commit to this year. In the process, we also have to say no or not at this time to some options that we might actually enjoy.

Take an inventory of everything writing-related that you’ve already committed to, and don’t leave anything off. Here are some possible categories:

• Back-burner projects
• Blogging
• Book reviews
• Conferences/travel
• Contests
• Contracted work and deadlines
• Critique groups
• Guest blogging
• Marketing
• Podcasts
• Proposals
• Reading 
• Social media
• Teaching opportunities
• Website maintenance

Then, looking at the same categories, ask yourself what you want to add this year. Then, do some simple math (concerning your time, energy, and resources) and decide what you want to keep, what you need to remove, and what you can add.

Choosing Well

As we’ve turned the page to a new year, today is a perfect time to evaluate our current commitments and what we hope to accomplish with our writing in the year ahead. Before plunging forward with resolutions that might wear us out or make our time too thin, let’s consider what’s currently on our plates and choose carefully, so that what we commit to do, we can do well.

What is something you need to pass on or something you want to add to your writing plate this year?

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How to Choose Your Best Writing Yes in the New Year, insight from @KHogrefeParnell on @EdieMelson (Click to Tweet)

Kristen Hogrefe Parnell writes suspenseful fiction from a faith perspective for women and young adults. Her own suspense story involved waiting on God into her thirties to meet her husband, and she desires to keep embracing God’s plan for her life when it’s not what she expects. Kristen’s books have won the Selah Award and the Grace Award, among others, and her romantic suspense novel Take My Hand is now available. An educator at heart, she also teaches English online and enjoys being a podcast guest. Kristen lives in the Tampa, Florida area with her husband and baby boy. Visit her online at KristenHogrefeParnell.com.