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New Year's Revolution

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I wanted to write some pearls of wisdom for the coming New Year. I wanted to list some resolutions that would propel me and my career into 2006. Every year in the past, I have sat down after Christmas, reviewed goals of the previous years, and listed new goals for the coming year. Usually, I could review the list with some satisfaction, putting a line through tough goals, and creating the new list combining incomplete goals with ambitious new ones. This year for what ever reason, it has become more difficult than prior years. The words and goals are not as evident. The "things" I want out of life have so drastically changed, that a list seems almost superfluous. If you seek to be a professional writer, author Joe Konrath has an excellent list on his December 17th post at Newbies Guide to Publishing . As for me, I hope to have a few short stories published, find an agent, complete the novel and non-fiction book, and seek a publisher. That is what I am working towards. If you ...
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If............Rudyard Kipling

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If If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you; If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies, Or, being hated, don't give way to hating, And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise; If you can dream - and not make dreams your master; If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with triumph and disaster And treat those two imposters just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to broken, And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools; If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breath a word about your loss; If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn...
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In My Underwear (or not)

So here I sit, in my tattered robe, slippers, and underwear mid-afternoon on a cold Wednesday in the midwest. A foot of snow on the ground. Grown men are suppose to be working, making a living . . . sweat of the brow and all that. I feel like the character in that Steven King movie. The one about the writer, played by Johnny Depp. Well, I've found that writing is as exhausting as physical labor, in some ways, more so. No, not the back pain, bone deep type of exhaustion but the mentally draining type that - suck the life out of you - exhaustion. Some days I can't write a word. Don't want to. Others I can write 5000 words and want to write more...even if its 3 am. Some good, some bad. Throw away most of it or find stuff that I can't believe I wrote. The writer's life. This is a strange profession. A whole lot of work with not much up side -but God I love it. John D. McDonald once said he wrote about a million words before he truly understood what he was doing. I shoul...
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