I refuse to write about making New Year’s Resolutions because the majority of them don’t meet with success. Usually New Year’s Resolutions are lofty goals that we know we are not going to accomplish, thus the same ones are repeated year after year. I’m not going to do that.

Instead I want to think about those things I had some degree of success with over 2014. Instead of looking at a list of what I failed at, I chose to look at a list of what I actually accomplished over the past year.

I wrote a screenplay. It’s not sold, but this is something I wanted to do, and I did it. It was actually harder than I thought it would be because in the book-writing world, the rule is “show don’t tell”. In other words, as a writer I write so the reader with enjoy the journey sharing the thoughts and motivations and struggles of the main characters. A book-writer would write something like – Susie struggled to hold back the burn of tears, but just looking at the red hat reminded her of quirky Aunt Esmeralda and how she used to angle her gargantuan hats depending on her mood.

A screenplay is the opposite. It’s all visual. When writing it, the writer has to tell the actors what to do and what they want to see, and there are no internal thoughts at all. A screenplay-writer would write – Susie looks at the hat, is sad.

Whoa. That’s it? But that’s harder than it looks to actually write.

So now that it’s done, I’m going to see what I can do with the finished screenplay, and I’m going to go back to writing books.

My next success is my continuing journey to learn to play the viola, violin, and the cello. This is a challenge because the bass, which I’ve been playing for years, is strung in 4ths, and the violin, viola, and cello are strung in 5ths. To make it worse, music for the viola is written in the alto clef, which I haven’t read since high school, and that was only because it was required for my exams. Still, I’m having a lot of fun with them, but I sure wish I had more time. But I’m still having a blast (if you can call it that) playing my acoustic bass for a community orchestra, and electric bass for a local jazz band.

For those of you who are not musicians who read this and your eyes glazed over, my apologies. For the musicians out there, I can hear you groaning, knowing what I’m talking about.

Another success – I had 2 books out in 2014, one in the summer, and one for Christmas.

Overall, 2014 was pretty good.

Now, onward with 2015.