Promises to Go!

Okay I've skipped a couple days - too many irons in the fire - I finished Zip - now renamed Cold Water and submitted it (it's a Young Adult Mystery/Suspense - the kid from Knapsack Secrets, now has his own book.) Had to send it to Wings for rights of first refusal - cause it's linked to the other book -- so we'll see what happens. (Just a query letter so far, we'll see if they even request the manuscript.) So okay

Today Promise yourself to forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the great achievements of the future.

I believe in light of the New Year just breaking ground, this is very good advice. 2009 will never appear again, what can you do to make 2010 The Best Year of Your Life?

If you are looking forward and not backward, if you are living in the now--you already have a good start on great achievements. Remember when you drive at night you can only see as far as the headlights can shine, when you walk upstairs you can only do it one step at a time(unless your a kid taking as many as you can at once), but that is enough - all you need to do is keep doing it again, and again, and again until you REACH your goal.

You do have a goal don't you? (not a resolution, but a goal a target)Short and long term goals - you have to aim at something or you have no direction. If you don't plan your success, "if you fail to plan, you plan to fail". Make it a banner year. I'm looking forward to it.

Promise Yourself!

Today promise yourself that you will be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own.

Sometimes, being the shy violets that we are, as authors, we find it easier to be supportive and congratulatory about someone else's wins - new contracts, promotional coups and other things then we tend to be about our own. Because we were told "brags a good bargain, but hold on is a lot better," or "Let someone else toot your horn." Well, that doesn't work when you have to go the 9 miles to promote your own books and be "out there" where people may criticize or even applaud what you do.

But--and here is the best part, what you give you get. So if you are enthusiastic about other people's success, feel that feeling, know that feeling and then claim some for yourself as well.

When Christopher Paolini first met publishing success with Eragon, I dissed him as-- oh sure his parents are publishers, authors, business people...he has an edge - maybe, but this home schooled little boy (15 when he wrote it) had just gotten his GED and was looking forward to college. Instead of heading off straight to college he decided to write a book.

Tom (hubby) just finished reading the first of the trilogy Eragon, and asked me if I would get the other two for him. He said he found no mistakes in the editing (where he found several in the Harry Potter books he just finished reading) and he said the kid writes a great story.

I must swallow my ill-placed envy or is it jealousy and read the first of his books to see how he made and is still making news. His series is number 3 on the New York Times best seller list, still.

Anyway, be happy for those who've succeeded. Your turn can't be far away, actually good vibrations from you will make it happen sooner.
Try it - it couldn't hurt.
Billie
http://www.billiewilliams.com