The New Year and Small Changes

With New Year’s comes resolutions, and often these are big changes we want to accomplish in our lives. It’s easy to want to jump right in, hoping for huge changes with quick results, and then they pitter out before the month of January even comes to an end.

A couple of weeks ago, I came across this photo I took last January. At the beginning of 2020, I had pulled out an old nanowrimo manuscript and decided to start the editing process, hoping to have it ready to send to agents in a few months.

Like any first draft, I slogged through the first edits, wondering how it was possible that I could string so many bad sentences together! I used the bright sticky notes in an attempt to untangle the messy plot, and at times wondered if it would ever turn into something enjoyable to read.

Trying to get the plot figured out!

The next thing I knew, I was adjusting to our crazy lives during covid with the kids at home 24-7, and simultaneously running our busy market garden season while my husband put in a lot of hours at work. Progress on my novel came to an instant halt, but after we settled into our “new normal”, I came back to it a little at a time.

I wasn’t until I saw the picture with the sticky notes that I realized how far that novel has come and how much it has changed! What a difference all the small changes made over the course of a year! It went from a mess to a manuscript, from something painful to read to something fun to read.

Binders with the seven rewrites of the book!

It made me realize that small changes can make a difference, a really big difference. If you can’t do it all at once, try something small, because it might really surprise you where you are and how far you have come a year from now!