The Sun Rises on a New Year

"Dates that come around every year help us measure progress in our lives. One annual event, New Year's Day, is a time of reflection and resolution."
                (Joseph B. Wirthlin)

Here we are at the time of year when resolutions figure in many people's conversations. What are your New Year's Resolutions? That's a question you have probably heard this week and perhaps have even asked. Losing weight is generally a favorite of many of us and one I need to make after too much Christmas goodies!! What are some others that you hear? Perhaps to read through the Bible? More time with family? Exercise every day? Be kinder to those you meet? There are so many ways we can resolve to be better.
 
For many years I would write in my personal journal around the first of the year. Most of the resolutions I recorded in my journal were writing related. Perhaps to sell a new book. Or to not give up hope in spite of rejections. To come up with a new idea. To finish whatever book I was writing. 

Tonight while considering what to write here on my blog, I decided to dip back into one of those journals in the hopes of finding something I could just lift out of a New Year's entry to share here. I went back to 1981 and leafed through the journal. While I didn't really find anything I thought would interest anyone but me, it was eye-opening for me to look at myself as a writer thirty plus years ago. 

In 1981, I'd published two books, paperback historical romances in the general market. I was hoping for the third and fourth historical books I'd written that had yet to find a home. As it turned out it took twenty plus more years for those particular stories to find a publisher and make their way out to readers. Meanwhile, as I flipped through the years, I walked through some rejection valleys until finally in 1985 I sold a young adult novel. 

That began several years of writing for the young adult market and the oft expressed worry of whether the stories I came up with were going to be ones the editors I was working with liked. I had one editor who filled my ears with great words of praise but then would send back my books with lots of red edits and suggestions for rewrites. One day with her, I'd feel on top of the world when she said something like she could "pick out one of my sentences anywhere" since I had such a unique style and then I'd get a letter saying I needed to "trim the lard" out of my story. Up and down, but all the time I was learning. Not only how to write, but how to deal with those ups and downs of the writing life. I was so young as a writer then. I had two kids in college, but I was still so young. 

Oh, to look back through the years and remember. And now I feel so blessed to have books published. To have my stories out there for readers. To have the promise of being able to share more stories with readers in the year ahead. 

One of the most interesting things about glancing through several years of my 1980's writing life was that I mentioned stories and characters that I don't remember at all now. Obviously the books didn't sell or I gave up on writing them. One I mentioned trying to write through several years. The character's name was Candra Lynn. I often refer to my books in my journal by this or that character's story rather than a book title. But now I don't remember Candra Lynn at all or her story. Too many characters through the years have pushed her deep into my memory where I can no longer retrieve it without some reminder. The story is probably here somewhere on my rejection shelves. Someday when I don't have a newer, fresher idea to take all my attention, perhaps I'll seek Candra Lynn out and see what story she tried to get me to tell. 

Here's a snippet of a journal entry from January 1987. 
"You wouldn't believe the things I'm doing to keep from beginning work - including writing this. I've even been cleaning my desk drawers, looking through old letters, etc. 
    I'm timid to plug in my typewriter in and begin. I keep worrying the words won't come. I know they will but I also know how hard their coming sometimes is. But this book may be a gift."

That book did turn out to be a gift, one of my very favorite young adult novels, The Discovery at Coyote Point. But when I read through the journal entries while I was writing it, I often spoke of the struggle in the writing. I suppose that's what I need to remember as the sun rises on a new writing year - that the words may come hard, but the story may nevertheless turn out to be a gift. 

Thank you all so much for reading. You are a definitely a gift to me each and every time you come by here to visit. 

Tell me what you are resolving for the coming year. 

Dream Big

The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short but in setting our aim too low and achieving our mark. ~Michelangelo

At this time of the year, everybody talks about making New Years' resolutions. Here are some you might hear or even make yourself. Lose weight. Eat healthier foods. Exercise more. Read through the Bible. Finally write that book you've always wanted to write. Go back to school. Spend more time with your family. Do a kindness every day. So many good things we can resolve. But what about dreaming? What about thinking about what we want to happen in the year ahead? Do we aim too low with our goals? 

Years ago when I was just a kid who didn't know any better, I aimed high. I played on my aunt's old Underwood typewriter and dreamed of being a writer. I had no idea how to go about making that happen. I just knew I wanted to write down stories. I wanted to see those stories in print. And I had the amazing dream that somebody might someday pay me money for my words. Me, a farm girl who had never met the first writer. Me, a girl who had chores like stacking wood on the back porch for our wood stove and feeding the chickens. Me, a girl who only had a very few books she could call her very own. (I love libraries.) What were the odds that girl would ever figure out how to write a story, much less a book? Slim to none. Yet, there's that shelf of books with my name on the fronts under that old typewriter. Having that happen once was a big dream for me. Having it happen over and over again was a very big dream. 

 Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world. ~Harriet Tubman



In October I went to a writers' retreat where we were all encouraged to dream big. What did I want to accomplish in my writing life in the year to come? What did I want to do in my personal or spiritual life in the months ahead? Was I afraid to challenge myself with big dreams? What big dreams could I dream? I think I had a hard time coming up with what the leaders of the retreat considered "big" dreams because my published books were already big dreams coming true for me. But I could dream more books. I could dream more readers. I could dream about bestseller lists or award ceremonies or maybe movies made from my books. Those could be my big dreams, and I do dream about some of those things. I do want more people to read my books because I love sharing my stories. But at the end of the day, I can't get away from the truth that I'm already living my big dream of writing stories and having them out there for readers, and that somebody is paying for my words. Simply, without a doubt, amazing! 

I'll keep challenging myself to keep dreaming. I'll challenge myself to make each new book better in some way than the last! I'll dream of tomorrow's book and aim high. And I'll try never to forget how blessed I am to be living that long ago dream.



 God's gifts put man's best dreams to shame. ~Elizabeth Barrett Browning

How about you? Are you dreaming big for 2013? I hope so. Thanks so much for reading, and don't forget - you are in my dreams!

A Blank Book

Happy New Year, everybody! Hope 2009 is treating you fine so far and that it will be a year packed full of good things and great joy.

We are four days into the year. Have you broken any of your New Year's resolutions yet? I sent out my occasional newsletter yesterday. (If you'd like to be on my list to get my five or six newsletters a year, you can sign up by clicking on Ann's newsletter on the homepage of my website.) Anyway, in the newsletter I say I like coming up with goals at the beginning of a year, but I don't do the resolution thing as well. Perhaps because I've always broken most of the resolutions I've made way before I should. A resolution makes me think "You can't do this anymore" like eat yummy desserts or play a computer game of solitaire when I should be writing. On the other hand, a goal makes me think "You can do this." I can write a better book. I can have it finished by deadline time. I can laugh at least once a day. I can read more books.

That's one of my goals this year - to read more. As I said in my newsletter, a writer needs to read. Reading feeds a writer's writing engine. Trouble is, a writer who wants to set her characters back in a historical time needs to do a lot of research. I like reading history, but I also want to read more books solely for pleasure, to stir up my own creative juices by reading others' words. Sometimes I wish I could somehow just absorb the historical information I need. Actually that’s sort of what has to happen so I can realistically write about a historical event. I have to put myself in the history with my characters and feel the wind and hear the thunder of the storms they are experiencing. That’s why I like reading diaries and letters of people who lived in whatever time period I’m researching. The letter writers might not have every fact of history right, but they know how the wind feels on their faces.

Many of my goals have to do with my writing. Most of my writing life I haven’t written to deadlines other than the ones I’ve set for myself. To get this or that story done by some arbitrary time I have decided on. It always helped to keep me focused on working to the end of my story even though I rarely finished my story as quickly as I hoped I would. Then last year I had a real deadline for a contracted book and learned I could keep my nose to the grindstone and force out so many pages each and every time I sat down at the computer. I love to write but at the same time it’s often very difficult to make my fingers start poking the keyboard and pulling the words out of my head. It’s easier to research one more fact, sharpen a dozen pencils, answer a few e-mails, steep another cup of tea, anything except digging out a new scene. I have another deadline not all that many months away, so I’m going to have to set some new goals and be disciplined at my work again.

I hope you are busy setting goals for the coming year. I think it helps to write them down, but of course, I'm a journal writer and that's what journal writers do. Set things down on paper. Dreams and goals. Good times and bad. In case you are in the goal setting or resolution making mode, here are some quotations you might enjoy.

• You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream. - Les Brown
• Man is a goal seeking animal. His life only has meaning if he is reaching out and striving for his goals. - Aristotle
• May all your troubles last as long as your New Year's resolutions! - Joey Adams (It appears Mr. Adams has my opinion of resolutions.)
• Making resolutions is a cleansing ritual of self assessment and repentance that demands personal honesty and, ultimately, reinforces humility. Breaking them is part of the cycle. -Eric Zorn
• We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year's Day.- Edith Lovejoy Pierce

That last one is my favorite. A blank book. Now all I have to do is fill up the pages and take advantage of the opportunities that await me.

A couple of opportunites are coming up next week as I'm going to be talking to two bookclubs. One in New York and the other in Kentucky. I love bookclubs. Anybody who enjoys reading enough to join a club to talk about books has to be my kind of person.

Hope all of you set goals that will make your life better and that with the Lord's help you move toward those goals. As Paul says in Philippians 3:14 (Br. Fred preached on this passage today) "I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." May we all press toward the mark.