New Year’s Eve has been and gone but for those of us who have trouble making New Year’s resolutions, let alone keeping them,  there are there are plenty more opportunities to have another try. In February the Chinese usher in the Year of the Snake, while at Tibetan Losar you sweep out the old to make way for the new. Cambodia, Thailand and Laos celebrate Songkran in April and Bali has Galungan twice a year.

For writers it’s less about resolutions than making an ongoing commitment to your writing. I once asked Charlotte Wood if she had a particular writing routine and she replied “I write when I can.”  I knew she didn’t mean some far off  moment in the future when all her other work would finally be done, but  as soon as she got a spare moment, she would use it for her writing.

To activate the Write When You Can method all you have to do is flick the commitment switch inside you. We do it for love, for sport, for work, why can’t we do it for writing? The Write When You Can method doesn’t have word counts or weekly quotas, promises you can’t keep or contracts waiting to be renegged on. All you have to do is get on the writing train and write until you arrive at your destination – every every day, every spare moment you simply make this offering to yourself – to write when you can.

Coming up…

Summer Writer’s Lab, began Nov 25. Three workshops remaining,  Nov, 6 Jan, 28 Jan, 3 March. You can still join on Jan 6.

The Haiku Art of Petite Bookmaking  see pics from our Dec workshop here. More coming in 2013.

As well as:
Jan 10-22: Moroccan Caravan

Feb 1-9 :  Temple Writing in Burma (including Irrawaddy Writers Festival)

March 9-16: Fiji Island Writers Lab 

Oct 7 -13: Backstage Bali (following Ubud Writers Festival)

Nov 24 -30 :  Mekong Meditations Luang Prabang Laos