I found this quote via Mark Goodyear who has a great-looking new blog at goodwordediting.com. The quote comes from Annie Dillard's book, The Writing Life:
Who will teach me to write? a reader wanted to know.
The page, the page, that eternal blankness, the blankness of eternity which you cover slowly, affirming time’s scrawl as a right and your daring as necessity; the page, which you cover woodenly, ruining it, but asserting your freedom and power to act, acknowledging that you ruin everything you touch but touching it nevertheless, because acting is better than being here in mere opacity; the page, which you cover slowly with the crabbed thread of your gut; the page in the purity of its possibilities; the page of your death, against which you pit such flawed excellences as you can muster with all your life’s strength: that page will teach you to write.
Mark uses this quote to refer the new year as a blank page. How will we fill it? For me, my writer's resolution is to simply fill more pages. Inspiration comes in the doing, not the preparing, and I spend far too much time thinking about and preparing to write stuff than I should. Like a pianist, I need to exercise my fingers more. And I need to give God more opportunities to slip me a few aha! moments.