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We are continuing on with our deep questions to start in 2020. Today’s question is:

What is one thing you want to leave behind in 2019 or would you be happy to say good riddance to?

There are so many things that we do and have in our lives that we’re not happy with. There are parts of ourselves that we don’t like; things we do, things we have that we simply don’t want or need or know we need to change. But for this question, I really want you to think about your business life, your work, your writing. Are there habits that you have that you want to get rid of? Are there writing tics you have that you know you need to get past?

For myself, in my own writing, I know I love the word “that”.  Just as I was writing the last paragraph I started to write the word at least three times before I backspaced and deleted it. I know this is a serious problem—before I send a book out to my editor, I do a search for the word and double-check to see if I can’t delete it. I remove, literally, hundreds of instances!

So, my number one thing that I want to leave behind in 2019 is the word “that”.

I have to say I have full confidence in my ability to change my writing habits because I’ve done so in the past.

If you’ve been a long-time reader of this blog, you know that I used to have problems with a lack of description in my books. It was one thing my editor constantly harped on—what do these characters look like, describe the heroine’s dress, what does the drawing-room look like? I took her comments to heart because I know that when I’m reading I want to know all these details even if they’re just super-fast and cursory just so that I can, in my mind, imagine these characters or where they are.

I worked on it. I consciously remembered to add in these descriptions as I wrote—even if it meant going back and re-reading and adding them in immediately after writing a scene. Slowly, after working on this and being deliberate about it, my writing habit changed and now it just happens as I’m writing without me having to think too much about it. Yes, it took a year of working on it for the change to happen, but it did.

The other thing I’d like to leave behind in 2019 is being in limbo. That probably sounds strange, but I thought a lot about my business last year and started to make some changes but I didn’t follow through with them. I didn’t go all-in in a consistent way. For me to really make a change I need to really throw myself into it whole-heartedly. The reason I didn’t go all-in was because I hadn’t found the best way to do so. As I’m writing this now, I’ve found my way and I’m going to finally be moving forward.

Being half in, moving slowly, is hard for me, but now, I feel like I can do this—and yes, I don’t know if you can hear from my voice that I’m still kind of thinking about this, but I am because going all-in means making a drastic change to what I do. It means making a huge investment in time and money. Do not worry though, dear friends, I am still going to be writing my blog every week because the direction I’m moving is closer to helping you. Yep, I started toying with being a book coach last year, I did a lot of reading and studying, but this year I’m actually going to take an accreditation course and make this thing happen. No more being in limbo. No more sort-of-kind-of being a book coach. By the end of 2020, and hopefully a lot sooner than that, I’m going to have completed an accreditation course and be out there actively looking for book coaching clients. (By the way, I may be looking for people to test my new editing/book analyzing skills on, so if you want to be a guinea pig, just contact me!)

Okay, now, over to you! What are you looking forward to leaving behind in 2019? What do you want to get rid of? Oh, and please do try to comment. A friend of mine tried to do so last week and found the process to be really complicated. I’ve since changed it (I think) so that it should be much easier now! Give it a try! Maybe that’s something you want to leave behind—not commenting on blogs! 😊