Resolutions can be tricky—just an exercise in fooling yourself! But they can also be  a dynamic trigger. In this post, I will share a writing resolution that paid off big for me.

If you have not decided on New Year’s resolutions for your writing, it is a good time to choose priorities for the next year.

It is not my competence to speak to you about economic or weight-loss resolutions. But, I do have some track record as a writing coach, and I would like to suggest writing resolutions that might be very productive for you in the coming year as a writer —you are a writer (or an aspiring writer), after all, as evidenced by your reading of this blog.

How this post is organized

First, I will provide you with an example from my own life and then I will move on to offering you a few ideas about how you might structure a writing resolution for the coming year.

2025 for me

In 2025, I had a partially finished manuscript—actually, it might have been 90% finished—but I had put off publishing it. I kept telling myself that there was too much work left and I probably didn’t have enough time to polish the text as I wanted to. When I examined the manuscript, however, I realized how far along it was in being ready, and if I gave it a serious effort, I could publish in 2025.

I decided that I would definitely publish my book—no “try to” or ”do my best” but “publish it!”

I had been referring to my book in generic terms—the story of early Canadian settlers—but part of my writing resolution was to call it by a definite name. I chose to call the book Here to Stay — which I had been tentatively calling it anyway.

To prompt myself to significant and progressive action, I set a publication date for the fall of the year. To make the publication date more solid, I decided on scheduling a launch party. I did not have a date or a place for this launch, but it was going to be in October or November.

Then, I began an editing process with a time-based schedule. I would show up every day! That is, each day, I decided I would write for a half hour or one hour on Here to Stay. My goal was to have a major edit done by April 1. This focus characterized the first three months of the year. As a result, I made some serious improvements on the manuscript.

As I was editing, I realized that I needed some illustrations, and therefore I began to search for and choose historical illustrations and maps. (These had to be in the digital commons—the public domain.) I created a subfile to store these illustrations and stored the subfile in a large file called Here to Stay which in turn was in a file labelled “Books in Progress.” Many of my saved illustrations found their way into the finished manuscript, and then, of course, many did not.

I set a publication date to firm up my writing resolution.

Sometime in the spring of 2025, I set a more definite publication date of October 2025. I approached a group that agreed to host a launch party on October 15 of last year. This gave me a firm endpoint for my work.

Seeking Blurbs

By the spring, too, I had enough confidence in the manuscript to request blurbs. I approached six people who had PhDs in Canadian history or in French with specializations in the North American French experience to blurb my book. I asked them if they would be willing to write a blurb by July 1. That gave them three months to read the book and to write something (eulogeous, I hoped!). Three of the six agreed to furnish a blurb. I was very pleased and sent the manuscript to the three.

I asked my blurbers to critique the content rather than the format and repeated the caveat that Here to Stay was still a work in progress.

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The blurbs as abbreviated for the back cover:

“Ledoux comes down from the 10,000-foot view offered by history books to uncover the daily lives of ordinary men and women. If you are ready to trade names and dates for history that comes to life, that immersive experience awaits you in Here to Stay.”

Dr. Patrick Lacroix, Director, Acadian Archives, University of Maine at Fort Kent

“Ledoux has done a prodigious amount of historical research…to reconstruct his ancestors’ lives and convey the nature of life in New France.”

Dr. Leslie Choquette,Director, the French Institute, Assumption University

“Anyone interested in learning more about what life was like for early settlers in French North America would do well to read Here to Stay/Lives in Seventeenth-Century Canada.”

Dr. Susan Pinette, Director of Franco-American Programs/University of Maine

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Mechanics of book preparation

Meanwhile, to meet my writing resolution, I continued to edit the manuscript. During these three months (early April to late June), I made numerous small changes. These included deleting text which might be redundant or irrelevant, adding text to make my point clear and complete, checking the spelling of names, and, of course, fact-checking to ascertain that the information in Here to Stay was reliable and accurate.

In June, I turned to the front and the back covers. By the time the blurbs came, I was well along in the design of the covers. I also had finalized parts of the book that would not change such as the pages of testimonials for my previous books. Two of the blurbers sent in useful suggestions for alterations of the text—which I mostly included.

Then, I began a meticulous proofing that included Grammarly and Microsoft Word Spell Check.

This occupied the month of July and August and was frankly tedious work. At the same time. I was inserting illustrations into the text, knowing full well that I would probably have to tweak their positions.

By mid-August, I was under a certain time constraint. My launch date being October 15 2025, I had to get the manuscript ready for printing and then receive copies of the manuscript in time to sell at my launch.

I began “burning more midnight oil .” And by golly, it worked!

As has been my custom, I used Amazon’s KDP to print the book. By early September, I was ready to have a proof copy. When it arrived, there were a few glitches, including a cover that was too dark! Back to the prep stage! Then another proof order.

This time the book passed muster and clicked the publish button for Here to Stay on September 19 and placed an order for 100 copies. The books came in at the beginning of October. (Exciting to see my books “in the flesh!”) This left me with almost a two-week leeway before my launch.

About 40 people attended the launch in person while some 45 participated via Zoom. I sold some 20 books at the event and, in the following days, orders came in from Zoomers. I had scheduled six more programs in the coming two months.

My assessment of my writing resolution

Without setting time goals for myself, I am confident that I would not have published Here to Stay in 2025. (See Making of Here to Stay.) I would have been justified at some level in deciding “there is too much to do” and “I have to be perfect.” But, as it was, I had a launch deadline, and I did not have the luxury of saying “I have tried my best.”

The situation had called for a book to be launched on October 15, and I met my goal successfully.

My suggestion to you: make a writing resolution

Look at your writing projects. Ask yourself what would you like to experience on December 31, 2026. At what stage do you want your memoir or novel to be? Do you want to have a book published? Do you have some other writing goal?

Whatever you decide, create a timeline to structure your decision. Decide that whatever your goal is you will accomplish it by December 31, 2026. No “try my best. “No, “you know how it is.” Only, “I’ve met my goal.”

The secret to meeting a goal is to

• Be realistic. You are not likely to write five books this year. One, yes, but five—probably not!
• Break your writing resolution down into parts that are clear and doable: finish the text, choose illustrations, format the book, find blurbers, etc.
• Date by which you will accomplish those tasks. Work backwards from your end goal. Date everything you need to do to meet your end goal.

One common problem is to formulate too large of a writing resolution. Such a resolution might be to start to write and publish a book this year. Unless you are aiming for a short book, this may simply be too difficult. Why not aim for a smaller goal?

• I will write the first draft this year of my memoir or novel.
• Or, I will capitalize on my existing manuscript and publish it.

Either of these goals are more doable than a vague decision such as “I’ll write as much as I can this year.”

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I have created a discounted book bundle containing Here to Stay/Lives in 17th Century Canada, French Boy/a 1950s Franco-American Childhood and We were Not Spoied/A Franco American Memoir

In conclusion

Whether or not you make goals for yourself this year is, of course, your decision, but I do hope that you will be ambitious for yourself and be the writer you have so long dreamed of being.

Make a writing resolution now!

Oh, yes: my 2026 goals? I’ll write about those in a subsequent post.