From healthy living and travelling, to gratitude and positive thinking, our writers reveal their New Year’s Resolutions for 2019!

New Year’s Resolutions for 2019

• I want to live a healthier life. Use my time more wisely which will include seeing my grandchildren often. I hope to watch less TV and go outside instead. When buying something I will ask myself ‘Do I really need this? – Susan Carlisle

 

• The same ones I make every year: eat healthily, exercise more, write a dozen bestsellers and swear less. I might as well add in marry Chris Hemsworth for all the probablility of achieving any of them! – Elisabeth Hobbes

 

• I try not to make resolutions on January 1^st. Perhaps my head works differently to others but I find I kick against the rule’ that says if you want to make changes, there’s a date for that! On an ongoing basis I try to be kind, to find time for family and friends, and to look after my body as best I can. I’ll try to do the same in 2019! – Catherine Tinley

 

• After reading about creativity and the science behind it, plus how we can sabotage ourselves by negative thinking, my New Year’s Resolution is to give myself a healthy diet of positive reinforcement. Although our emotional responses are ingrained in us, the thoughts we create leading up to those emotional responses are within our control. It’s as simple as seeing only the part of the cup that is half full, and enjoying life – Liz Tyner

 

• I’m so excited for 2019! My resolution is to continue taking time every night to pause and reflect on all those lovely little things that have lit up my day. I know gratitude is ‘so hot right now’, but I’ve found it fabulous. I write a list from the littlest things such as spotting a new blossom on the tree, or a child bringing me breakfast in bed (always wondrous and welcome!), to those bigger milestones and major celebrations. I love flicking back through my journal every so often and remembering all those lovely little things that can be so easy to forget, but that are so meaningful not just in the moment, but making a long and happy life. Wishing you a wonderful and joyous year ahead – Natalie Anderson

 

• My New Year’s resolution is to stop sweating the small stuff and to learn to live more in the moment – Janice Preston

 

• My New Year’s Resolution is to be more focused and productive in my writing. I need to be much more productive and that means not just having a calendar but scheduling with that calendar and adhering to that schedule. I read a brilliant book brain science and writing this past summer (Around the Writer’s Block by Roseanne Bane) which means scheduling in self-care and process time (the time necessary to free write/free think/refill the well), and counting such things as social media as admin time rather than not counting it at all and wondering where the day went. Wish me luck as I’m going to need it! – Michelle Styles

 

• I want to make a garden with a worm farm and beehives on our land next to the sea. I’d like a bird drinking fountain and lots of wildflowers in the meadow and drinking places for the Tuis and Woodpigeons and Fantails – Sophia James

 

• So 2019 is going to be the year of the spreadsheet and the pretty colour coded timetable. If all goes to plan, by 2020 I will have written a million books, have a decluttered house than could feature in an interior design magazine, have achieved more than one haircut and had at least three romantic weekends away with my husband. Or I will be flying through space and time in a big blue box! – Nina Milne

 

• I love making New Years goals, rather than resolutions. I usually sit down somewhere between Christmas and December 31st to hash out my exact goals for the year ahead, but I’m always thinking about them from months ahead. For 2019, my main aim to keep improving the balance in my life – between kids, work, home, marriage and looking after myself. Now I just need to figure out which exact goals will get me there… – Sophie Pembroke

 

• I want to declutter and simplify. My husband recently had to clean out his family cottage for sale and it made me realize how much we’ve collected over the years. I want to lighten my life-load, too. Do less, but do things better – Dani Collins

 

• To be more productive! I have too many book ideas to write and too many items on the bucket list that I couldn’t possibly cram them all into this lifetime, but my goal is to do as many as possible – Jennifer Faye

 

• To write three Modern books AND to finally finish the women’s fiction story I’ve been toying with for years about a run-down arthouse cinema in Notting Hill, the movie-loving manager who inherits half of it and the movie-hating New York  property developer who’s inherited the other half…. No pressure, then! – Heidi Rice

 

• To stop stepping on my own feet. To accept I’m clumsy and can’t be perfect, but that it’s better to dance than to stand, longingly, off to the side – Nicole Locke

 

• Take a risk, every day. Okay, I am not talking about skydiving. I am talking about stepping, however tentatively, outside of one’s comfort zone. It might be exploring a new writing project but it could also be greeting a newcomer in the staff room, trying yoga, Zumba or playing the Tuba, or, for the culinarily challenged, roasting a chicken! (I haven’t actually done that one-guess I know what I’ll be eating January 1st!) – Eleanor Webster 

 

• I have a long list of things I want to achieve this year (I always do!), but who I want to be is more important: a confident author! I’ve resolved to thank people who tell me they’re reading my books instead of apologising to them. I might even start promoting myself as if I believe my books are the best-written-books-ever. You should totally read them (see, it’s working already!) – Therese Beharrie

 

• My big resolution is to travel. I burned myself out when I lived in the Middle East for three years, travelling mostly long-haul for work generally every two to three weeks and sometimes every week, so by the time I arrived back in Australia the mere thought of packing a bag exhausted me. But the bug is back and so am I, and 2019 is my year to traipse around the world every chance I get. Since I always, always keep my resolutions, I already have an Aussie road trip and a visit to Spain and Italy inked into the diary – Avril Tremayne

 

• As always, one of my resolutions will be to eat healthily and exercise more – probably induced by all the delicious Christmas food I enjoy so much! To read more – especially authors I’ve not read before. To learn a new skill. I have no idea what yet, but I’ve got all year! – Rachael Thomas

 

• My New Year’s resolution is the same every year – to be more productive. There are so many distractions that pull me away from the things I must do (like my writing) that it’s easy to get caught up in them and lose track of time. In other words, distractions waste my  time. So every year I set a goal to be more productive, which means less distracted. Less social media, less procrastination, less playing with the cats who love my keyboard. More diligence toward my writing, more time for my family, better organization of my day, week and even month, as in long range planning. All this improves my productivity and helps me meet my New Year’s resolution – Dianne Drake

By Sanjana Cunniah