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	<title>writing goals &#8211; Newfound</title>
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		<title>All Triumphs are Triumphs: Getting Organized in 2017</title>
		<link>https://newfound.org/2017/02/05/all-triumphs-are-triumpsh-getting-organized-in-2017/</link>
					<comments>https://newfound.org/2017/02/05/all-triumphs-are-triumpsh-getting-organized-in-2017/#respond</comments>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Megan Andreuzzi]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Sun, 05 Feb 2017 12:27:34 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Staff Blogs]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[daily planner]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Megan Andreuzzi]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[organization]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[writing goals]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://newfound.org/?p=17263</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[<div class="entry-summary">
I finally did it! I purchased my very own daily planner, and in late December 2016, I actually wrote in it. As you can tell, I am proud of this moment. It may not seem like a huge feat to&#8230;
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<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://newfound.org/2017/02/05/all-triumphs-are-triumpsh-getting-organized-in-2017/">All Triumphs are Triumphs: Getting Organized in 2017</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://newfound.org">Newfound</a>.</p>
]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I finally did it! I purchased my very own daily planner, and in late December 2016, I actually wrote in it.</p>
<p>As you can tell, I am proud of this moment. It may not seem like a huge feat to all, but for a disorganized mess like myself, it is certainly something to celebrate.<span id="more-17263"></span></p>
<p>I&#8217;ve had planners before that were given to me. As a treat to us—or you know, to actually try to train us into being productive, organized, and motivated adults—my high school would provide each and every student with a daily planner for the year. As a teenager, I used it to doodle or pass notes. Or I just let it go empty. I think I even tried turning one into a scrap book.</p>
<p>I am not so sure I have ever been very organized, and it shows. My bedroom is a mess. My car is a mess. My office was a mess—when I had one. No matter how much I swore these things would never be a mess, they always were. I have read so many times that disorganized individuals are simply creative creatures or even <em>geniuses</em>. I have read that some people can maintain functional lives in organized chaos. That was me, I swore..Megan, the creative genius. Megan, the master of organized chaos. I couldn&#8217;t work without clutter. I can do this. I can do everything.</p>
<p>But I can&#8217;t.</p>
<p>A 40+ hour work week, platonic relationships, romance, family time, and fur babies all serve as constant reminders that I simply cannot.</p>
<p>I look around my bedroom every day and suffocate in a mess of what I own, what I cannot find, and projects I desperately want to complete. Like many of us, I am exhausted from the day-to-day, but I am also further exhausted by this suffocation.</p>
<p>Usually I sleep to cope with the suffocation unless someone pushes me to leave my house, and I put my shoes on and breathe in the fresh air that is not found in my bedroom.</p>
<p>Recently, I realized that even though I was always so sure I was a high-functioning disorganized person, I was only just lying to myself. Sure, I handed homework in on time, met work deadlines, and so forth, but the reality of the situation was that it was all just piling up and waiting to crash down on me.</p>
<p>And it has.</p>
<p>With a New Year upon us and the smell of resolutions is in the air, I decided it was my time. Now is my time to get it together and get it done. I&#8217;m no longer going to be a disorganized, unmotivated shell of a person. I pray this planner doesn&#8217;t simply become a symbol, or worse, an empty book of what could have been done or what might have been.</p>
<p>Instead, I pray that it is a book filled of words, check marks, and adventures. A tangible acknowledgement of accomplishments and goals in real time. Real life triumphs—no matter how big or small.</p>
<p>I crave the check marks. I crave being able to walk into my bedroom and not only be able to see all the carpet on the floor but to see all my progress. I crave being able to breathe again.</p>
<p>I am encouraged and motivated by these cravings.</p>
<p>A month into 2017, I already see a lot of check marks. It reminds me that all triumphs are triumphs.</p>
<p><img fetchpriority="high" decoding="async" class="alignleft wp-image-16674 size-thumbnail" src="https://newfound.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/megan-a-225x225.jpg" alt="megan-a" width="225" height="225" />Megan Andreuzzi is an animal lover and a traveler from the New Jersey Shore. She earned a degree from Arcadia University in Glenside, Pennsylvania, USA in Liberal Studies with a dual concentration in writing and a minor in theater.</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://newfound.org/2017/02/05/all-triumphs-are-triumpsh-getting-organized-in-2017/">All Triumphs are Triumphs: Getting Organized in 2017</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://newfound.org">Newfound</a>.</p>
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		<title>The Rewards of a Resolution: Why I Rush My Writing</title>
		<link>https://newfound.org/2016/01/10/the-rewards-of-a-resolution-why-i-rush-my-writing/</link>
					<comments>https://newfound.org/2016/01/10/the-rewards-of-a-resolution-why-i-rush-my-writing/#respond</comments>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Josh King]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Sun, 10 Jan 2016 12:03:20 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Staff Blogs]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Josh King]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[new years resolution]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sherlock Holmes Arthur Conan Doyle]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[The Brief Wondrous Life Oscar Wao Junot Diaz]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[writer reflection]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[writing goals]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://newfoundjournal.org/?p=15631</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[<div class="entry-summary">
Another New Year has come and gone. Another year of writing, revising and wondering how time slips by so quickly. The merciless cliff-drop of New Year is a tough time to be a writer. No deadline feels as definite or&#8230;
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<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://newfound.org/2016/01/10/the-rewards-of-a-resolution-why-i-rush-my-writing/">The Rewards of a Resolution: Why I Rush My Writing</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://newfound.org">Newfound</a>.</p>
]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Another New Year has come and gone. Another year of writing, revising and wondering how time slips by so quickly.</p>
<p><span id="more-15631"></span></p>
<p>The merciless cliff-drop of New Year is a tough time to be a writer. No deadline feels as definite or as looming as that of the year’s end. Something about the inevitable reflection, the alcohol-induced emotion, the atmosphere of change makes me feel as if I should have so much more to show for myself.</p>
<p>So, inevitably, come the resolutions.</p>
<p>Every year my New Year’s resolutions are the same: finish the book, finish the play, write more, drink less, run more, complain less. The same old empty promises. And probably common enough for anyone living the literary life.</p>
<p>The problem with resolving to finish a book is that there’s no set amount of time that it takes to write a masterpiece (or a flop, for that matter), so I had no way of knowing if it was enough time to give myself. Arthur Conan Doyle wrote his first Sherlock Holmes novel in under a month. Junot Diaz, on the other hand, took almost ten years to write <em>The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao</em>.</p>
<p>After making these rash resolutions each year and failing every time, I started to wonder whether I was setting myself an impossible task.</p>
<p>Last year I decided that enough was enough. 2015 was the one in which the work would be done. I had moved to a new country, I had started an MFA, now was the time to make it or break it.</p>
<p>In the midst of last year, around month three or four, as I was trying to stare through the vibrating patchwork of my migraine vision, I started to tire. I started to think that writing a novel was not something I could do at all.<em> Arthur Conan Doyle is just a better worker than me</em>, I conceded.</p>
<p>Forcing myself to rush and break through the wall seemed to me a bad idea. A novel, I concluded, was something that should be worked on with respect and time. To rush my future masterpiece seemed like sacrilege. If I wrote when I didn’t want to, just to finish, my writing would surely suffer.</p>
<p>Perfect excuses, my subconscious chuckled.</p>
<p>Luckily, optimism, the fear of deadlines and the ever-looming knowledge of the year’s end struck me with enough anxiety during 2015 to get the work done. And now it is done (or the third draft is, but we can’t have it all), and my resolution as close to complete as I’ve ever managed, I realize something.</p>
<p>As I look at the couple of hundred pages I have, I realize that a year is not a long time at all. Or, rather, I realize that it has been no longer and no shorter than any other year. And that means that I will never have an excuse to not complete just as much writing.</p>
<p>That’s not a bad thing, I must keep reminding myself. Seeing the document there, representing a year of my life, does not remind me of the effort, the loneliness, or the migraines, but rather of the great deal of satisfaction that came with completing it. And within my own personal deadline. I did, I confess, have a good time.</p>
<p>So, perhaps as I always hoped it would on the first day of the New Year, my mind has changed. Rushing is not only a great idea for a writer, but maybe even necessary. Especially for one who is in the throes of their first substantially-sized piece of work.</p>
<p>Without the fear of another wasted year breathing down my neck, I know that I would never have been motivated enough to finish. And having finished a complete draft, I no longer see a novel as a holy object, a piece of work that must be written only when one is in the most capable state of body and mind. It is something that should, if it is worth writing, be written at any cost. Because only once it is finished can you look back on it and start the equally arduous process of making it better.</p>
<p>So, what are my resolutions now? Well, I will write more, I will watch a little less television, drink a little less and, of course, I will rush to finish another long piece of work. Because not only do I know that it’s possible, but I know that it’s worth it.</p>
<p><em><a href="https://newfound.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Josh_King.jpg"><img decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-15015 alignleft" src="https://newfound.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Josh_King.jpg" alt="Josh_King" width="90" height="108" /></a></em><em>Josh King is a second-year MFA student at Adelphi University in New York, and moved from the UK in 2014. He is curator of the blog <a href="http://vocasandwhen.tumblr.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">As &amp; When</a> for the literary website <a href="http://www.villageofcrickets.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Village of Crickets</a>, and divides his time between writing fiction and sampling the New York literary scene.</em></p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://newfound.org/2016/01/10/the-rewards-of-a-resolution-why-i-rush-my-writing/">The Rewards of a Resolution: Why I Rush My Writing</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://newfound.org">Newfound</a>.</p>
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