Now to join the clamor of year-end posts, blah blah blah. I already covered what I learned. So now I’m going to look ahead to next year (or, I guess, 14 hours from now):

1. Take a few minutes to read and write every day. During the three months that made up fall quarter, I didn’t finish a single book that wasn’t for class. Similarly, I’ve been working on this draft of SHARDS for a year and I’m only 13,000 words in. Both of these things must change.

2. Try to avoid future nervous breakdowns by taking a break when I get stressed to the point of completely shutting down and/or throwing tantrums. Sometimes I just need to go for a walk, go downtown to get coffee, or go to the gym and beat the crap out of something.

3. Each day, find at least one thing that made me happy. I didn’t focus enough on the positives this year. This is something else I need to work more on.

…and by revise, I mean more or less rewrite it.

I got three pages of written comments back with my draft, in which my professor conceded that I did a very good job using my primary sources, but other than that didn’t really have anything positive to say. This professor is notoriously critical. He does a very effective job of (very politely) making you feel like a complete idiot. But if I could pick anyone in the world to help me revise my novel when I finally finish this draft, he is probably one of the people I would choose.

So, basically, my poor paper is about to be Humpty Dumpty’d: I am going to shove it off the wall and try to put it back together again. And, when I’m done, it will hopefully be a much better product than this one was.

(Confession: I didn’t turn in a completed draft. It was due the same day Harry Potter came out, which I made sure to note when I turned in 20 pages and a detailed outline of the last 6 or 7 pages.)