If you survived the holidays intact, you’re probably in full resolution mode right now. Santa Claus has stepped aside for Father Time and Baby New Year. These two figures have more impact on our writers’ lives than we imagine.

Take Father Time, for instance. Bowed and bearded, this old man reminds us of all the time we’ve spent the last year banging our heads over writer’s block, suffering through rejections, enduring stinging (yet helpful!) critiques, and wasting time playing Angry Birds when we could have been writing. Father Time is regret personified.

Smooth-skinned, happy Baby New Year, on the other hand, is our hopes, ambitions, and promises of reform wrapped up in one cherubic package. “This year,” we promise ourselves, “I will write every day without fail,” or “I will push aside all other interests to concentrate on writing,” or the clincher, “I will sell.” And with Baby New Year gurgling in our ears, we believe without question that all those things will happen.

But there’s someone we forgot—Mother Nature. We all have natural preferences that aid our writing process. Sadly, though, we often ignore these preferences when making our New Year’s writing resolutions. We try to become writers that we aren’t. Is it any wonder that so many of our resolutions are irretrievably broken before Valentine’s Day?

If you naturally write in bursts, don’t swear you’ll stick to a hell-or-high-water daily page count. You’re just asking for trouble. Likewise, if you thrive on structure, adopting huge, non-specific goals like “sell a book” won’t help you do it any faster. To ensure success with your resolutions, tailor them to fit who you are as they push you along. You’ll find greater satisfaction and more positive results.

So learn from your past and look forward to your future, but never forget how you’re designed. As the commercial said, “It’s not nice to fool with Mother Nature.”

An earlier version of this post was originally published in Magical Prose, the newsletter of Central Florida Romance Writers.