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This time of year brings out the pencil scribblers and list makers in all of us, as we take stock of where we are and where we would like to be this time next year. New Year’s Resolutions are practically an international tradition. Rather than delude ourselves with impossible weight loss numbers and financial heights, as writers, we need to take time to tone our writing muscles with goals, yes, a plan, certainly, but more importantly, a new set of challenges.

What are you scared to write? What genre haven’t you tried? You may find within its parameters some of your best writing yet. Does your heart bleed regularly on paper? Or do you keep your writing nice and neat, black & white? In the column I write for my local newspaper, I dared myself to new risks and opened up my fears and failures to my reading audience. Worried that the editor would return the submissions with a “what were you thinking?” written in bright red all over it, I was surprised when he called to say, “Some of your best work yet, Westman.”

For nearly four years, column topics had ranged from cancer walkathons to women’s conferences and general points of interest to the community. However, when I wrote of my terror when, one evening my hand slipped while preparing vegetables and I found myself alone, hurt and bleeding, and suddenly realized I did not know any of my neighbors, people I had lived next to for seven years, a real get-to-know-you syndrome started in our small town.

I did not even expect the column written about my despair when my mother died to be published. However, almost two years later, I still hear from readers who were moved and comforted in their own grief because I shared my own.

When I let loose with an angry column on the audacity of developers who were destroying a centuries-old way of life here in Minnesota with their tedious changeover of farmland to suburban sprawl, I was rewarded with hoots and hollers from farmers, families and merchants alike.

It was my challenge in 2004 to put more of “me” into my writing. To take a risk and abort all efforts to be politically correct. It was terrifying, and cost me emotionally, but the rewards have been more than worthwhile.

As writers, we must challenge ourselves to reach across the chasms that terrify, to dig deep into our craft and find new capabilities, new talents, simply waiting to be developed. So do make out your list of goals, weight loss numbers and financial heights. Be sure to include in big, bold red marker, a set of challenges that will indeed carry you to new success in 2005.