START OVER EVERY MORNING

If you are looking back over your successes during this year, you might feel a bit down. Did you reach all of your goals, half of them, a few, none? Whatever the answer is to this question, don't let it slow you down. Or if the accomplishments are high, don't let them placate you. Next year, is a chance to begin all over again. In fact, we writers can start over every morning.

I have not accomplished many of the goals I set this past year. For a day or two after looking at the list on my whiteboard, I grieved. I blamed myself for too much going on other than my writing, for allowing life to take over this love to create, and for just being a procrastinator. Then I once again looked at that list: there were items there I had accomplished.

I had promoted my books quite often, sold more than I had thought I would. I gave three lectures to receptive audiences. With my help, several of my students became published authors for the first time. I had several articles, poetry and personal essays published. And I completed the first draft of a novella.

I also had rejections. I learned a lesson about rejections long ago: not to take them as a rejection of you as a writer. There is always something to be learned when your work is not accepted. Send it out again and again; if it comes back three times and, I feel I have targeted the right markets, I take a close look at it, maybe even do a complete rewrite. I do not allow rejections to paralyze me, to set me off on a path of "non-writing."

Remember, there is nothing to offer anyone unless we writers sit down with pen and pad, or at the keyboard, and create it. No one can string words together the way we can at any given date. We can be published in this New Year, complete that novel we've worked on forever it seems, and help our fellow writers along the path to success.We can find the time to chase our dreams.

And, we have the ability to start over every morning.