Daily Archives: January 12, 2021

New Year, New Planner, New Word

I love the beginning of a new year, starting a new planner, and working with a new word! Last year, I wrote about how January is a reset month, and how using a planner can help you stay on track.

Aren’t new planner’s fun?

The pages are yet to be written and there’s this anticipation of setting goals and plans for our writing and our life.

This is my second year I’m using the My Brilliant Writing Planner, and this year the pages have been simplified, with two sizes available. I’m using the smaller 8 1/2 x 5 1/2 as I hoped I could take it with me more easily and it would sit on my desk and not take up a ton of room, but alas, I’m not going anywhere and I now have a bigger desk.

However, it doesn’t make me any less excited to use it.  

One of my favorite pages in the planner is the One Word Page.

Every year, I select a word to represent my year. I know a lot of authors do this, so if you have a word, I’d love to know what it is. I have found the process of selecting a word and the focus all year long, has given me extra blessings and has fit me where I am in my writing journey, as well as my life.

I’ve written about some of my words in past posts. 2016, my word was Believe. In 2017, my word was Strength, In 2018, my word was Steadfast. And I liked it so much I did a summary at the end of that year. 2019, my word was Purposeful, yet I couldn’t find a post about that (that was very purposeful on my part, right?)

Last years word was Courage and I did a wrap up blog post as well.

For this year, my word is Wisdom.

As I research this word, I have found several explanations that really fit where I’m at in my writing journey. Wisdom is an integration of knowledge, experience, and deep understanding.

I hope that in all the time I’ve been working on my novel, that I am able to incorporate all of those and be able to move on to the next step.

There are other terms associated with wisdom including: insight, judgment, decision-making, discernment, and sense of balance. That last phrase speaks to me. There’s a balance between all the differing feedback I’ve received from others during contests, and figuring out what is best for the book overall. 

I love this quote I found on wisdom.

Wisdom involves a healthy dose of perspective and the ability to make sound judgments about a subject while knowledge is simply knowing.

This is the wisdom I seek.

I also hope to share my wisdom when it comes to branding and SEO. Launching my Marketing for Authors newsletter last year was a huge leap of courage (my 2020 word), and now that I’ve done that, I want to learn more and share that knowledge with others.

I’m still exploring quotes, verses, and synonyms that are connected to wisdom. It’s an interesting word in that, quotes about life and such are considered words of wisdom. So if I’m looking to simplify, I might need to limit to those phrases that only include the word wisdom in them. Not about wisdom in general. 

Although I do love quotes and words of wisdom in general, too!

To end, I wanted to share some of the synonyms of wisdom. I feel like I can apply many of these to my writing goals this year:

Acumen, gumption, foresight, experience, savvy, caution, poise, prudence, reason, discrimination, discernment, practicality, shrewdness, solidity, stability, judiciousness, comprehension, astuteness.

Alas, I hope To grow in my writing with comprehension, astuteness, & gumption this year.

Here’s to a great year of writing for us all.

Share below what your word is for 2021! There are so many words to choose from, I love reading all the different ones people choose.