YES, PLEASE.  MORE, PLEASE.  THANK YOU.

 

…The lake is still frozen.  It’s ghostly at night because it makes these peculiar and eerie noises, as if it’s alive, like a monster being tortured.  You might think I’m making it up, but you weren’t here to hear it.  It’s supposed to warm up the next few days, not a lot, but some, and then the lake will make entirely different noises when the ice melts—it sounds like bones snapping.  Maybe I’ll try to figure out a way to record it for you, although I’m the least techy person you’ve ever met.

…Like many people, the election results threw me into a pit and left me there to die.  I’m worried I’ll revert to that on inauguration day, something I’ve not missed since age eight, but right now I’m feeling really good about life.  I feel focused for the first time in a while.

In the last year and a half, I have started four different novels, abandoning each one like a heartless parent, sometimes when it was nearing 20,000 words.  I liked all the stories, but they needed work, as all first drafts do.  Wednesday at writer’s group one of my friends who’s advice I always give credence said, “You’ve had over 1,000 stories published.  Most deal with your fucked up childhood.  You write that really well, and it’s an important topic to get out there.  Why not write it as a novel?” 

So that’s what I’ve been working on last week.  It’s fictionalized memoir, but more memoir than fiction.  Wish me luck, and if you do, thank you in advance.

 
…Here are some things I like to start the week, and I hope yours is fantastic:

"I have enjoyed life a lot more by saying ‘yes’ than by saying ‘no’." Richard Branson

"A lot of dreams don't come true in life. If you can make somebody's dream come true, you should." Jameer Nelson

"I think that how one lives is more important than how long one lives. So I don't feel too bad.”  Lim Yoon-taek, a 32 Year old South Korean cancer victim

"Friendship consists in forgetting what one gives, and remembering what one receives." Dumas The Younger

"So let us go forward quietly, each on his own path, forever making for the light." Vincent Van Gogh

  "Dedication is simply reminding yourself what you want. Then paying the price to get it. Every day." John F. Groom

"A man who makes no mistakes makes nothing." Winston Churchill