Let’s face it. There are a few people in the world who internally drive themselves toward their desired goals. The rest of us just aren’t wired that way. If we don’t have a deadline, chances are we won’t finish the project. Repeat after me: Deadlines are my friends. They will keep you with your patooty in the seat and your fingers on the keyboard. You have so many distractions in today’s world, without deadlines, you’ll never get where you want to be. Think about it. Your rent or mortgage payment is due on the 1st. Because you know that, your purchases throughout the month are made with that in mind. You can’t afford to not have a roof over your head so you are diligent with your finances. The same […]
Read the RestArchive | December, 2011
Taking Stock of 2011
Time to belly up… how’d your writing goals fair in 2011? Did you set goals? Did you keep track? Did you succeed? Even a little bit? I bet you did. Come on now, if you wrote one page toward your writing goal of completing a novel, you’ve succeeded a little bit. A very little bit, but you did something. We have a tendency to stick our heads in the sand when we think we’ve failed at our goals. At attempting our dreams. Why confirm that silent but deep down fear: “I’m a failure.” By taking stock of our goals, our success and failures, enables us to move forward with a better grasp of where we are and why. Often when reviewing a goal, we find we didn’t fail as much […]
Read the RestMake 2012 Count, Part Two: On the Chopping Block
I’m sure that in the last seven days, you set several goals. Some of those you feel confident you can achieve. Others appear to be quite a stretch. It’s like trying to run a marathon on hot coals with no shoes. No way in blazes you’ll finish that race. Don’t worry. There is hope, so keep reading. Now comes the fun part. You get to throw each of those goals on the chopping block and whack away. The intent is not to destroy those goals you worked so hard last week to set, but rather to chop them up into manageable pieces. You wouldn’t think of putting an entire tree trunk in the fireplace all at once. Neither should you think of doing that with your goals. You have to […]
Read the RestFabulous Friday Fiction: Reverse Santa Clause
What if….what if Santa really did give out coal? Or worse…what if he took things away? I remember one Christmas, back in my rebellious teenage years, when my parents, furious at me, took my presents away for a day after Christmas, just to teach me to be grateful. True Story. I deserved it, I promise. They had the guts to teach me about gratitude and it sunk in. I’m extremely grateful for the many, many gifts God has blessed me with over the years, especially the MBT Voices, and those who read this blog and my novels. I’m also very blessed to help aspiring novelists develop their stories as a writing coach. Often, I will endorse these books when they are published. Sometimes I even review them on my blog. And sometimes, […]
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