by John M. Floyd

A question for our readers: How are you on new year’s resolutions? Do you come up with things each January 1st that you feel you can accomplish or improve during the next twelve months? More importantly, do you fulfill those resolutions?

Personally, I’m good at making them and not so good at keeping them. But since I have plenty of shortcomings, I’m never at a loss for items to include in the list.

Some of the things I plan to try to do in 2011, at least as a writer and reader, are as follows:

Write better descriptions. The parts of fiction writing (and reading) that I like the most are dialogue and action scenes. The parts I like the least are description and exposition. But I need to work on that; if the devil is in the details, it can also be in their absence.

Cut out clichés. I’m one of those people who use them when I speak, so I tend to also use them when I write. And since I can’t seem to resist clichés in first drafts, I resolve to try to look harder for them (and weed them out) when rewriting.

Read more classics. I confess that I often push them aside in favor of fast-paced modern mysteries and thrillers. But I hope to read (or re-read) more of the greats this year. When I do, I always wonder why I don’t.

Watch more classic films. See above.

Let my stories “cool off” awhile before submitting them to editors. That third draft that looks so final might reveal itself to be more of a second draft after a few days or a week, and in my haste to send it off into the great beyond I sometimes still have to remind myself of that.

Keep detailed, ongoing records. I always jot down the dates of writing payments, expenses, etc., during the year, but — because I hate this kind of thing — I also always wait until March to put them into a workable format I can give to our CPA. I hereby resolve to do better (can you spell “spreadsheet”?) in 2011.

Create characters with more depth. One of my many faults is concentrating more on action than on character. What happens to the players is often more interesting to me than the players themselves, and that’s something I constantly have to work to correct.

Set up a writing schedule. This is a resolution that I often make and so far have never kept. I know it’s a good thing to establish a certain time, place, and duration for writing sessions, but I just haven’t gotten a round tuit. Truthfully, I don’t plan to do it this year either, but it makes me feel good to include it in the list.

Use fewer semicolons. I love them; I admit it.

Read more female authors. For some reason, my list of favorite writers still includes more men than ladies, although I admire and enjoy the women authors I do read. (By the way, if you’ve not read The Help by Kathryn Stockett, it’s excellent. So is Burn, the latest Nevada Barr mystery.)

Download more e-novels and e-stories. I do this occasionally on my iPad, but not enough. Like it or not, the e-reader is the way of the future. Besides, my publisher says my new book will soon be available via Kindle, so I have a vested interest.

And that’s it — my view of the coming year, through prose-colored glasses. Will I try to carry through on these to-do’s? You bet. Will I be successful? Well, that’s another story. By including them in this column, though, at least I can’t later say I misplaced the list.

How about you? What are your writing/reading resolutions?

Whether you make them and whether you keep them, I wish all of you a wonderful new year, with many sales and publications and great reads.