Happy New Year, everyone! I don’t know about you, but I’m not remotely sentimental about seeing the back of 2020. I’m just glad to have finished the year, having started it. Lots of people were not so lucky.

I don’t do New Year’s resolutions. I find I habitually assign myself extra helpings of guilt when I don’t keep them…typically starting somewhere around Martin Luther King Day. This year, though, I’m making one. Between you and me, I’m telling myself it’s not a resolution, but if you want to split hairs about it, fine, it’s a resolution. I choose to call it a practice, because that’s what it’s going to require.

In 2021, I’m going to finish what I start.

Thanks to a podcast I recently found, I’ve discovered that I start new projects to avoid the hard parts of writing. Everything’s delightful in its initial stages: It could be this! Or it could be this! Outlines give me joy. When the gush of words from my pen dwindles to a trickle—say, 20,000 words in, when I have to make the muddle in the middle compelling—well, that’s when I get tempted to write something new. It’s an avoidance tactic to stop digging into the deep stuff. (The lava, as Meg LeFauve calls it.) Why avoid it? Because the lava is scary. It’s where we get vulnerable.

However, the fact of the matter is that all writers live in fear all the time, so I might as well get used to jumping into the lava. It’s not like nobody else will be there. Fortunately, according to last night’s fortune cookie, I’m totally prepared for it.

Then again, I could feel that way just because it’s January. And who doesn’t love the clean slate of January?