You can give yourself your own one day writing workshop. Pick a day which you can spend on your writing, without interruptions. Unplug the phone, don't check email and don't think of it as the daily grind. It's a special day, just as if you had traveled to some other town for a workshop or writer's convention. Give yourself a break from your writing routine. If you invite other writers, know this is not a social occasion, it's a work-shop for a reason.

As you plan the day make sure you have no family or job commitments that will conflict with your workshop. Let everyone know about the workshop. If you have to, let them think you won't even be home all day. After all, you aren't home, you're at a writing workshop.

Create and stick to a time table, don't think to dilly dally over your morning coffee. Gather your supplies before the day arrives. You can't abandon the workshop to pick up more coffee cream or one more book for your research. If you can't get the space and quiet you need at home book a hotel room for the day. You can also try the local library, just don't get tempted to browse..

Plan what you need for a snack and lunch, just as if you were taking a break at a fancy hotel at a convention. Give yourself a treat. But, when you do take your break, stop working. Think of the day as a day away from home, even if you are home. Eat at a table without making space for a keyboard or paper and pens.

Start your workshop by visualizing yourself at a workshop, writing. Write a statement of purpose for your workshop. Know what you want to accomplish before you throw yourself into it. Divide the day into morning and afternoon sessions. When you come back for the afternoon reread your morning's work. Decide which direction you want to go in next. Are you ready to edit your writing or keep going with the flow of writing it? Are you headed in the right direction, ready to move to a new chapter or change the tide? What new ideas did you get during the lunch break?

Put fresh, revamped energy into your projects. Use the day to finish something, get a new idea started or just plug on with what you've been doing. Don't let yourself get sidetracked or wind up finding new ways to procrastinate. This is your day, your own personal writing workshop.

"If you want to write, you can. Fear stops most people from writing, not lack of talent, whatever that is. Who am I? What right have I to speak? Who will listen to me if I do? You are a human being with a unique story to tell, and you have every right." - Richard Rhodes.

"Love your material. Nothing frightens the inner critic more than the writer who loves her work. The writer who is enamored of her material forgets all about censoring herself. She doesn't stop to wonder if her book is any good, or who will publish it, or what people will think." - Allegra Goodman.

Before I get started with the regular blabberings I'd like to say thanks to all the subscribers to this newsletter. It's really an honour (and amazes me each time) to be writing to so many other writers. I hope I come up with something useful for each of you at least now and then. I do try. Anyway, thanks for your support as subscribers.

One thing we may not consider very often are our goals as writers.

Of course, one goal is to be paid for our work, unless it's a personal journal you write and keep to yourself. Another goal is fame of some variety. Not everyone wants to be the next Stephen King or Stephen Leacock but we do want to be read and know we are read. Another goal is to spread information. From advertising copywriters to horror fiction writers we all have some message to send to the world at large or some part of the world at large.

Are there other goals? Quite likely. Those are the three I came up with myself. If you think of others let me know. It's interesting to see why people write and what they hope to gain from it.

A goal isn't the same as a reward. Goals are something to achieve whereas rewards are something special for after the success of the achievement. Are the goals more important than the rewards, I think so. It's probably more challenging and fulfilling to aspire and achieve your goals than the reward after the fact.

Anyway, I wrote about goals before, setting reasonable goals and so on. But, I didn't really think too much about what goals we have, as writers.

Would you write out those three goals and keep them where you can peek up at them as you work? Maybe you feel silly about doing so. Or maybe you think those goals are too bold to put on display. But, I think they are reasonable goals. If you put yourself into your writing you should have large, strong, important goals in mind. You're worth it.

Happy Writing.

Lovely, luscious readers, tonight I have three, count them, three great, sensational, momentus ideas for you! Can you tell I'm kind of enthusiastic tonight? !! Too much coffee I fear. But it was GOOD coffee!

Anyway, idea number one. Next time you need to write a short bio for yourself pick up a magazine. Have you ever read the bios they print for the contributing writers. Well, you don't know what you've been missing. Of course, not all of them are as magnificent as your own will be. But, they give you a great vantage point to start your own. You can even collect the best of the best contributers bios in a file and use them to keep yours even better by comparison.

OK, now you're revved up for idea number two. Who can blame you. I'm so revved up a this point I may never need to sleep at all tonight. Wouldn't that be nice. Think of all I could get DONE.

You will be thanking me for sharing these words of wisdom with you for many moons to come. Basically, use the space/ line for 'subject' in your emails. Use it, use it wisely, cautiously and smartly. Don't be a knob and type in 'hi'. What do you think happens to any email which looks like spam? Right! It gets the quick flush. Your email will not be read if you leave an ambiguous subject line or, worse, if you completely forget to add one at all. Don't be an email loser, make good use of the subject line and warn others to do the same. That way people won't be asking you why you never read their email. Unless of course, they only send those forwarded joke emails that you never actually do read. Who can blame you?!! For yourself you will now heed this grand advice and never again darken your email subject line with useless, unclear drivel. Instead, go forth and type in clear, concise and clever subject lines to alert your readers just who you are and why they should not randomly delete your very important email as spam.

Thirdly, well, the third idea is not so important and useful to anyone but me really. I have become pretty slack with HerCorner, my site for writers with the HerPlanet network. You may not have noticed, especially if you never knew about HerCorner. Anyway, HerPlanet is being sold to a bigger company and things will be percolating there. We may even get paid for the sites we run through the network. So, if you are a freelance type writer and want to make a site about your favourite hobby, fetish, art form, craftiness, etc. Consider HerPlanet and send an email to Dottie if you want to find out about the network. Visit http://www.herplanet.com for all the necessary contact information and to have a look around the network, of course.

So that's it for tonight. I suggest you all drink coffee and stay up with me. We can write about the moon, scribble odes to the moon or plan your great contribution to the Scribble Fest currently going on at BackWash. Did you read my own fictional story? It was fun to write but I think I messed it up a bit by going back over it and changing some things which I had written in the first burst of inspiration. Sometimes those brilliant bursts of greatness should not be messed with.

Take care and have great burst of brilliance yourself. Write on.

Last night I went on a spending spree at Chapters, the mega bookstore in this area. I went in for The Writers magazine and came out many dollars lighter. (Debit cards are a blessing and a curse). I bought a new thesaurus which I already love and A Writer's Book of Days which I'm building up into love for. Judy Reeves wrote it and I'll look her up online later.

Anyway, there is so much encouragement, inspiration and creativity in this book for writers. I highly recommend you find it at your local bookstore.

I've paraphrased and added my thoughts to one of her articles. This is one of her essays which caused me to buy the book.

Honour Yourself as a Writer

Name yourself a writer. Give your writing preference over your day job, affirm the place it holds in your life. Tell them you're a freelance writer when someone asks what you do. Let yourself be proud to be a writer, whether you're raking in the bucks from writing or not. Don't put your writing in second place, like a hobby you might mention if someone asks. Honour yourself as a writer, just like Judy Reeves says!

Make a place for your writing, furnish it with materials that support you and your writing. Keep the space sacred and go there joyfully. I especially like this idea from her book. Make yourself a writing alter, take notes from the Pagans on making an alter. But, whatever you do make the space where you write special, meaningful, uniquely you.

Get the equipment and accoutrements you need. Do you really let yourself spend a enough on what you need to write? Don't over spend but let yourself have what you need to write well. Don't give it hobby status if you don't want to keep writing as a hobby.

Make time for studying and practicing your craft: attend writing groups, workshops, writer's conferences, classes and lectures. If you're too busy to go far try a few writing email lists. See which one works for you and then become a regular (don't just lurk).

Schedule time with other writers. Find someone else who writes and plan time together to talk about writing and have some fun. Don't let yourself become too isolated from others who write and think about writing.

Read your writing to others. Say it aloud to those who can appreciate it. Read it at writing meetings, family gatherings and no occasion at all.

Transfer your writing from your notebook to the computer and print it out. Everything looks more professional in print. Save your writing in printed format and keep it all organized in files. There is no reason you can't even make up a zine yourself. Just add a little desktop publishing and you can create your own literary publication, starring you.

Submit material for publication. In spite of yourself and your fears respect your work in producing the writing and the writing itself and submit it for publications. Give yourself a chance, it only costs a stamp, some paper and the time to research your markets.

Celebrate when you've completed a work or hit a significant marker. Take a road trip, make a fancy coffee, get a manicure, soak in the tub, call a friend, buy that new thesaurus you wanted, whatever makes a celebration to you. You deserve it.

Accept compliments gracefully. Don't become your own worst critic when someone says your writing touched them, was a great read or made them think. Instead say thanks and give them more to read, point them to your website, the latest publication to buy your work, whatever you have to offer. Instead of denying your work, promote it.

"At a moment of heightened awareness there is a confrontation of image and idea. Words come together in a flow, seeking out their own order, their own rhythm; lines measure themselves into a given form; words you didn't think you knew or had long forgotten suddenly cojoin to tell you what you are feeling, seeking out insight and revelation. In that first flow, all you know is that you are in mid-air between elation and fear. "Keep going, just keep going!" you tell yourself, not knowing where that first line will lead." - Shulamis Yelin.

That's how I start writing. I'm not a planner. I don't have a schedule, a format or any real idea of where I'm going once the idea has germinated from my brain onto the physical plane of my computer screen.

Sometimes the seeds never get past the germination stage. They become part of the cluster of ideas in a folder on my computer. The 'Idea Folder' is full of half planted ideas. Now and then I go back and rescue one, add some root hormone, whatever it takes. But, most of them just get kind of sad and pot bound. I forgive myself for letting them stagnate into infinity. You have to forgive yourself. Each idea is like a little soul and you are the only one who can give it the bloom of life. I do feel guilt for not taking those ideas into fruition.

Enough garden terminology?

I read the above quote in an article about writing poetry. As a writer of any style of wordage you should read about all kinds of writing. How to write or better still 'how I write' articles and books can be really inspirational. Not just for the art of writing but the craft too. The technique in putting a spin on your words. The ideas about the ideas. You can never have too many ideas. Well, except for those really weird ideas we keep in the closet or swept under some rug or other. I won't tell if you don't tell.

"In books lies the soul of the whole past time." - Thomas Carlyle

"A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight." - Robertson Davies