Mindy Carlson

Happy New Year! Welcome to 2024.

There’s nothing more joyous to me than the idea of putting the past year to bed and allowing yourself a fresh start. Cleaning off the slate to have space to begin anew.

But it’s equally worthwhile to review the past year before you move forward. I start with contemplating my Word of the Year and the intentions it was meant to invoke.

My word of the year for 2023 was CRAFT. I focused on practicing the “craft” aspects of my writing and also crafting the life I wanted to live as I hit (gulp) Middle Age.

This resulted in me “retiring” from the preschool to write full-time and gussying up my office space. (I’d show you pictures, but my office is an absolutely trash heap right now after being a holding space for all of Christmas.)

I hit most of my goals.

• drafted a new book
• submitted a manuscript for publication
• attended 3 conferences
• attended by 30^th class reunion (lord, I’m old)
• wrote a short story (I actually wrote 2!)
• knit a sweater

I didn’t get the rewrite of manuscript I’m working on finished, but I’m close. I’m rewriting a greater percentage than I’d anticipated and conjuring new words and rethinking the entire flow of a novel takes time.

I also didn’t train to run a 5K. I thought about it several times, though. Baby steps.

I did, however, have a new character spring, fully formed, into my head and is now running amok and demanding to be dealt with like a 3-year-old on a sugar high. So that’s fun.

As I look back on it from here, 2023 was a building year. A planting year. Seeds are in the soil and in 2024 will (hopefully) bloom into a riotous mass of joy.

But building, planting, waiting, and hoping are hard and each has their own setbacks to accompany them, so for 2024 I’ve chosen RESILIENCE as my Word of the Year.

1. the capacity to withstand or to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.
2. the ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape; elasticity.

I intend to produce a lot of stories (short and long) this year, and I intend to send them to many, many different publishers and magazines. But sending doesn’t guaranteed they will get published. When you’re an author, you’re pelted with No’s.

It takes a lot of resilience to keep going; to power through all the “No’s” and get to the one “Yes” you need.

Resilience isn’t an exciting word. It’s not a dynamic word of action. It’s a word of survival. It’s a word that plods along and tries to get from point A to point B no matter what. And that’s okay. Some days it’s all we can do to simply power through your day. To keep at it. To let go of what isn’t serving you, what’s weighing you down, so you have the energy to make it until bedtime.

But resilience is also a word of self-care. Of finding what you need from yourself and those around you to survive the tough days and thrive on the easy ones.

Resilience is a word of love and strength.

I hope you have a year filled with joy, peace, love, and resilience.