New Year's Resolutions 2013: Reading, Writing and Thinking

New Year’s resolutions:

I don't normally make New Year’s resolutions. This year, however, three self-improvement ideas sprang spontaneously into my head, and I thought (modestly) that they were so good, I’d share them with the world via my sorely neglected blog. So, without further ado, here they are:

1. Write more

I am 'writing' three novels. Sounds good, right? Well, it's not that impressive when you consider that over the course of 6 years, their combined word-count comes to a mere 10,000. This is a dreadful record and must be addressed.

Perhaps my mistake in the past has been to think that one can simply sit down and write a novel. I’m beginning to think, however, that it might be best to learn how to write a novel first. Fortunately, someone once bought me a book on the subject, which I will make use of. And there must be other manuals and textbooks out there. Maybe organisation is the key: deadlines and suchlike.

I can also look to other successful writers for inspiration and tips. For instance, when asked whether he gets writer’s block, horror writer Garth Marenghi had this to say: “Never. But on the few occasions that I do, I just write through it. There’s no such thing as writer’s block. Just hold the pen and move it.” Sound advice.

Garth Marenghi: Author. Dreamweaver. Visionary. Plus actor.

2. Read more

Garth Marenghi also said, “I'm one of the few people you'll meet who's written more books than they've read.” But he can get away with that because he’s a goddamn genius. Mere mortals like me need inspiration from outside themselves, and to that end I need to carry on reading more, both fiction and non-fiction.

During the last year I have got some decent literature under my belt: The Great Gatsby, The Graduate, Heart of Darkness, The Rum Diary, David Mitchell’s wonderful Cloud Atlas and several of George Macdonald Fraser’s superb Flashman novels. In non-fiction, I concentrated on philosophy, reading Plato’s Republic and Symposium and the first few chapters of Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy. I also struggled through a sizeable chunk of Slavoj Žižek’s Living in the End Times, which I am placing back on the shelf in the library unfinished. Maybe I'll pick it up again when I am more familiar with the works of Freud and Lacan, Kant and Hegel. 

But that's still not enough, hence the resolution. I reckon I should read at least one pop economics paperback (Freakonomics or something), a history of British politics and something extremely radical this year, on top of as much high-quality fiction as I can lay my eyes on. I suggest you do the same.

3. Be more progressive

I have a confession to make. Sometimes I still catch myself holding on to my old jingoistic, male chauvinist attitudes, like some sort of politically incorrect security blanket, despite having reached the point where I really should know better several years ago. This is partly because I have a weakness for old things, tradition, baiting other progressives, shock-based humour and the right to freedom of expression, but mainly because being truly progressive is difficult.

You can’t be a lazy progressive – you have to work at it, and most of all you have to think. Take feminism. Inequality between men and women is probably the single biggest unfairness in human society worldwide. Illustrative cases such as the recent highly disturbing story from Delhi confirm the seriousness of the problem, but only sometimes make the news.

I’ve called myself a feminist for a long time now, but the fact is that telling people you are a feminist is not enough. It’s easy to tell yourself you’ve made the right decision: Sexism is bad and therefore I’m a feminist. Now that’s sorted, I can go back to my normal life, secure in the knowledge that I’m on the right side of history.

Obviously that's not going to eradicate gender inequality. There’s still a lot to be worked out, because although most feminists can agree on some fundamentals, if you look at the ones who take it really seriously, you’ll see that they actually disagree on a lot of things. Check out the comments on articles published on the mind-expanding feminist online magazine Jezebel, and most of the time you will see thoughtful and sometimes biting criticism from readers, who are in turn often counter-criticised by yet more readers. Engaging with these arguments and thinking them through is how really to become a better feminist.

So in order to be a better progressive in 2013, I am going to have to find out what some of the debates are around gender, race and class and try to understand them, rather than just vaguely asserting that sexism, racism etc. are bad. By happy coincidence, this overlaps with resolution two: Read more.