It's resolution time, writers. Here's Ann Patchett with hers:

My New Year's resolution for 2010 has its origins in a couple of conversations I had late in the year 2008. The first was with the bassist Edgar Meyer. I live in Nashville, where it is possible, even easy, to have conversations with famous musicians, and on this night we were at a dinner party complaining to one another about work. Edgar had several promised compositions he had yet to write. I was trying to get started on a new novel. Neither of us was having much luck. We were bemoaning the commitments that kept us from pursuing our most important obligations. But then Edgar admitted he had made a discovery: He put a notebook by the door of his studio and kept a careful record of the number of hours he actually sat down to work. The startling conclusion of this experiment was that the more hours he spent working on compositions, the more music he actually composed.

I don't know why this struck me as such a radical concept, but it did -- time spent working equals output of work. Amazing! I have long tried to fit my work in around all the other obligations in my life, and many days the work finds itself low on the list of things to do, way below laundry and replying to e-mail. Was it possible that by giving my art the same amount of time and attention that I gave to, say, meal preparation, my art might be more likely to flourish?

The second important conversation I had that winter was with my friend Bethany, who teaches yoga. She told me that her teacher, a great and wise yogi, believed that whatever a person did with thoughtful consistency for the first 32 days of the year set the course for the entire year. As a Catholic, this struck me as a warm-up for Lent, and I am a great fan of Lent. I am a genius at giving things up. Since the conversation with Edgar was still kicking around in my head, I decided that I would work on my then un-started novel, or at least make a concerted effort to work on it, for at least one hour every day for the first 32 days of 2009.

Block out time on your calendar. Go somewhere with a minimum of distraction, like the business section of the library, or white-collar prison. And when you're ready to get honest with yourself, start tracking your time. You can do it in a notebook, or an excel document, or, if you're an Iphone or an Ipod Touch person, you might want to check out a free app called Hours Tracker. You can clock in and out every time you read or write. But I have to warn you—the first couple of weeks that you track your time, you'll probably be surprised at how little you're actually reading and writing compared to how much you thought you were.