This is not a New Year’s Resolution...honestly, it’s not.

This was the first year in a long time that I made no New Year’s resolutions. I spent New Year’s Eve in the Lebanon in a restaurant called The Titanic, but with no fear that it might sink because it was firmly set in a mountainside. As midnight crept up, I thought about all the things I should make resolutions about, which were pretty much the same things that I make resolutions about most years, and decided, no, not this year.

Midnight arrived with an amazing explosion of fireworks and lights, a magnificent view over Beirut and the bay, but with not a resolution in sight. It was strangely liberating.

Instead, those things that were once called ‘resolutions’ are now on a list of things to be done this year. They have a “higher priority” than most other things on the list, but there is far less stress attached to them now that they are not governed by those stringent, guilt-inducing resolution laws.

So, I’ve got lots of things on my list of things to do this year: a book to finish and a book to develop, another to possibly rewrite, and a few ideas to explore, most of them dark, edgy, gritty, and contemporary. One of my "high priority plans” this year is to explore another genre. It might just be a case of dipping my toes in, or I might want to paddle, and if I dive in then the writing will still be dark and edgy and gritty, but it might just take you somewhere else, different land, different time...

“High priority” plans may sound very similar to New Year’s resolutions, but believe me, they are not. They have a different feel about them: stress- free and guilt-free, and they can’t be broken. Now let’s see if they work!