HAPPY NEW YEAR! THE DIFFERENCE IS HOPE

For me, with the Inauguration of President Barack Obama, today is the true beginning of the New Year. He has turned our faces toward the light at the end of the tunnel using the single most important force in the human battery: hope.

Hope is not a plan, of course. But plans succeed only when they are fueled by hope. A writer who lives without hope will never see his screenplay produced or his book published.

Wake up every day with hope. Add determination and enthusiasm. Add time, action, and shake it up! Remember that these are all decisions, and you are fully capable of making them.

Hope that your work will be sold, that you will receive good financial reward, that you will receive critical recognition.

Those are the hopes you have little or no control over.

Hope that every day you will find more time for your writing. That every day you will learn something about your craft that you didn’t know before. That every day you will feel satisfied with that day’s work and look forward to tomorrow’s.

Those are the hopes you control. And they are the hopes that lead to true happiness as a writer. By them you can measure your success as Thomas Carlyle defined it: “Steady progress toward a worthy goal.”

May be this year’s work be your best ever!