I think I told all of you that my New Year’s resolution was to be more positive in 2009. I’m still working on that and can report that I’ve made a tiny, tiny bit of progress. I have other goals as well, and these are more long-term and not really resolutions. They’re just things I want to do in life and work.

In life, I’d like to get better at hearing and singing harmony. I sang soprano for years, and now that I’ve joined this band at church, I’m still singing soprano—or the higher parts at least. But our lead singer sings the melody, and she needs singers to sing harmony. Well, after years of singing melody, it has been a challenge for me to even hear harmony, much less sing it. I might do better if I had some sheet music, but the sheet music usually just has the melody. I have to download the song we’re singing from iTunes and then pick out the harmony. We sang Natalie Grant’s “I Will Not Be Moved” last week, and I must have listened to that song 25 times to hear the high harmony and practice it. This week we’re singing “Ocean Floor” by Audio Adrenaline, and I have the harmony for it (maybe I’m getting better!), but I’m still struggling with Chris Tomlin’s “Your Grace is Enough.”

In work, I’d like to get better at pacing in my first drafts. I think in an effort to get to know my characters better, I write far too much internal dialogue, which is boring and slows the action. I almost always have to revise it. In fact, on my current wip, my critique partner just told me that my chapter 4 is too slow. She asked where the action was.

Darn! Guess I’ll keep working…

What about you? Any goals you’re working on?