Hands up all those whose January resolutions have fallen by the wayside? Me too! Difficult isn’t it. Too many obstacles to January, too much pressure. The shops and magazines are full of the latest diets and diet books. We feel we should be goal setting, decluttering and overhauling our entire life. Out with the old, in with the new.  We are all going to emerge into February slimmer, brighter, cleverer and most of all successful.

But what’s wrong with the old life that we need to take such drastic action.  That’s quite possibly the reason we fail. We try to do the whole thing at once. It’s the same with writing. Nothing scarier than saying you’re going to write a novel and sitting there with an empty page. Not one word written and only another 100,000 to go. No pressure then!

I have a tip that works for me. Don’t try to do the whole thing at once. It doesn’t matter what your goal is, you have to break it down into small parts. You don’t lose  a stone in one day, you lose it one pound, even one ounce, at a time. Starting is the thing that counts. You can’t edit that empty page you need to put words on it. Bad words, rubbish words, nonsensical words. But you need to make a start, one word at a time, one page at a time. Off you go. Get started.