J.K. Rowling's New Year's resolutions

Writer plans to clean up study, stay healthy

J.K. Rowling

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NEW YORK (AP) -- Some "New Year's Writing Resolutions" from J.K. Rowling:

1. "Muck out my study."

"Frankly, I shudder to think what I will find when I finally reach the bottom of all these teetering piles of garbage," the "Harry Potter" author wrote in her online diary Thursday. "However, as I currently have to negotiate an assault course just to reach my desk I think the time has come for my annual tidy-up."

2. "Do not lose any more notebooks."

"After a somewhat panicky few weeks I have finally located a missing notebook. As always when I mislay these things, I had been 'remembering,' in its absence, that it contained notes so essential and ideas so imaginative that I would never be able to duplicate them, and the whole of the next book would be impoverished if they were never found," wrote Rowling, who has said she will soon start working on the seventh and final Potter novel, not yet titled.

"Now that I have said notebook beside me on this desk, however, I see that it contains few useful nuggets amid a lot of complete dross."

Rowling also promised to "guard the time allotted to writing as a Hungarian Horntail guards its firstborn egg," to "follow advice from critics on how to be a better writer" and "try and keep children healthy."

"As we leave behind the sickliest winter ever known in this family," wrote Rowling, the mother of three, "I pray that none of my kids develops a runny nose for at least a week, thus enabling me to set about serious writing with at least a few hours' sleep behind me."