Every year, I write a list of resolutions because A) without goals I have no sense of achievement, and B) my lack of discipline is a show of disrespect for my art. Once the year starts, I’m off and running again. Not sure where I’ll end up in 2014, but I plan on living big through it all.

#1 Do not let your prose tie you down.

#2 Don’t try to please anyone with your writing, not even yourself.

#3 Don’t take yourself too seriously, the second you do you admit defeat.

#4 Invite friends over for cocktail parties.

#5 Let the noise be your muse.

#6 Take pleasure from the physical and the metaphysical.

#7 Honor the underground.

#8 Interview more poets coz they’re the shit.

#9 Take ethereal selfies.

#10 Believe in the senses.

#11 Kill the pain with words.

#12 Play the game your own way – with dignity and heart.

#13 Take a deep breath, take it all in, and smile.

#14 Make your characters complex, conflicted. Make your readers, against their better judgement, fall in love with them.

#15 Stay sexy.

#16 Quantity = haters. Quality = lovers. Choose wisely.

#17 Create with a singular goal – “speak truth to power.”

#18 Strive to capture life’s loop at the end of every story.

#19 Write with this underlying idea behind every story: “An injury to one is an injury to all!”

#20 Support fellow artists.

#21 Apply to places where you’re not wanted.

#22 Continue to reimagine the order of things.

#23 Resist the stream of conventional culture — figure out ways to interrupt, disturb, and deform it.

#24 Instead of expressing your disenchantment, transgress literary structure from within through your fiction.

#25 No matter what, have fun!

Happy New Year, all!