Relaxing amidst chaos is one of my “revising” goals for this year.  As you might guess, chilling can be hard for me. When something’s important enough, and the war is difficult enough that I can only see the day-to-day battles rather than the finish line, things can get a little sticky.

Finding the solution to every problem was a given when I was in school. Easing off on the overracting was simpler then.  And all I had to do was study and work hard and trust that I’d get to the core of every challenge. As long as I didn’t get so frustrated that I self-destructed, as long as I was patient, I’d eventually graduate to a new world where I could finally start my life. Wouldn’t it be nice if the battles we fought beyond school were that straight forward?

Well, exactly who said they weren’t?

• My son was four when we tackled the daunting task of handling ADHD in pre-K. Just ten years later, we’re preparing him for a magnet math and science highschool for scary gifted kids. The challenges and sacrifices that went on endlessly in between? Every one of them was necessary to prepare us for this moment. I’m proud of it all. Even the failures. Why was I so scared so much of the time back then? He’s a happy, successful teenager and has always had this amazing future to look forward to. We just needed 10 years to get us here.

• I was thirty-one when I gave up the security of my corporate career to pursue writing fiction. Just ten years later (yes, do the math), I’m thriving in the last career I’ll ever have. The panic and disappointments and second-guessing along the way could have stopped this new chance in its tracks. Almost did, more than once. I’m finally on the threshold of having security in my dream job. What was I thinking, each time I considered quitting to go back to a more stable life? That I didn’t deserve to work hard and succeed at something I loved this much, so failure was inevitable and I should get out while I was ahead? Craziness.

In each case, I had to become my own teacher. I had to put my faith in an uncertain future instead of my difficult reality. And THEN I had to wait, work hard, and believe. I had to accept chaos as the status quo, stop panicking, and fight as hard as I could for what I wanted to become. Not so hard that I burned out or gave up before graduation. Just hard enough to stay on the path of learning what would take me to my even newer life.

So, let’s recap…

Life is school. We are our own teachers. We can’t conceive of how every battle fits into the winning of our current war. All we can do is fight with faith and expectation and patience. THEN and NOW are the same as they alwasy where–they’re the beginning and the end of a race that becomes the beginning of the next race, once we’re finished. Fear and anxiety are our enemies as we learn, not life itself. They’re how we defeat ourselves into believing we can’t, while school keeps moving on, with our without us.

We teach ourselves to succeed or fail. We trust, we live, or we confine our reality to the world we knew then, instead of facing the next challenge and the next life we’re meant to have.

Ten years later, I can’t believe how far things have come here. Where will I be ten years from now? It boggles the mind, but I’m up for the ride. Life’s chaos is still whispering to me every day. It’s time to start paying attention in class. What better way to learn AND understand the ride at the same time ;o)

Join me and fab. author Holly Jacobs as we talk about how romance novels help readers stay positive in difficult times like these, and how writers keep writing, even when life does its best to get in the way. Her leatest jewel of a novel is on shelves now from Superromance!

This is the first in my new Book Addict series  where authors share their secrets to staying positive while they turn out the exciting, inspiring stories we love.  Just one more part of my “Revising a Year” mission ;o)

Hope you enjoy!

If you’re following me on Facebook and Twitter, you’ll see a good bit of food come and go in my updates and tweets. I’m married to an Italian. And while we’re busy as all get out, sitting down to family dinner as many nights a week as possible is our goal. It’s important. It matters. And not just because in traditional Italian households, food is love. But because cooking is a relaxing, creative outlet for us, and so is watching our son fall in love with lots of different foods and a variety of recipes that don’t include chicken nuggets, hot dogs and mac & cheese (staples until just a few years ago). We’re watching him grow into the adult he’s going to be, and I wouldn’t miss that for the world.

Saturdays matter around here, too… Saturdays are about more creative relaxing (because none of us do sitting still well for long). More time together and leaving room for feeling lucky and grateful and inspired by what everyone’s accomplished during the week and what’s coming next. And for too long lately, I haven’t been taking part in the down time. It’s been almost more than I could manage to keep my head above water, let alone revel in the moment or the day or the wonder of a 13-year-old becoming a 14-year-old who will all too soon be 15. And I’ve missed that.

And not because some self-helper on TV said family time was important or because of patterns and routine’s my husband and I learned from our parents as kids that we think we HAVE to follow now or because that’s what the other families around us in our Stepfordville swim tennis community do. I’m not the gardening all day, lounge at the pool drinking all day, wash your car and then your driveway and then your gutters twice a month so everything looks like Pleasantville kind of suburban housewife. The picture of what we are to the outside world isn’t what matters to me. It’s the feel of what’s inside that I don’t want to miss out on. The strength of one moment leading to the next and showing me what’s good and real and solid around me, that’s what my Saturdays have been in the past and what I’m wanting from them again as I revise 2010 to be everything I need it to be.

For now, making Sartuday matter takes a bit more effort. That comes with chaos and loss and anxiety and demanding schedules, I guess.  And even if all that wasn’t going on, I’m a writer and by nature we tend to be solitary, neurotic souls. It’s not so easy for folks like us to believe the effort it takes to relax will pay off. It doesn’t seem fair that we should have to work so hard at “normal” stuff.

But I am working hard, and I’m learning. Today, got to the gym early for a 4 mile run, watched my son’s tennis lesson, and I’m settling in with a cat in my lap to write my page count quota while the husband and the boy pick up some clay court matches at the club.

Then I’m going to finger paint with a new pasta recepie that looks amazing and leave it in the oven on warm for the teenager, so my husband and I can get out to the date night we cancelled last week because I had the flu.

A busy day that I had to drag myself out of bed to kick start… But it’s already feeling good, three destinations into my “spontaneous” Saturday. I have cool stuff to look forward to, once I shut the computer down in an hour or so and don’t let myself obsess about this story any more until tomorrow. I’m balancing instead of worrying about and postponing and regretting things I didn’t do or didn’t do well enough. And that matters…

This weekend my Saturday is like me–filled to brimming with many things that are important mostly to no one else but my family. Essential, small things that build me and the people I love up and encourage me to want more times when the current moment is more important than the next, and to make the people I share the time with the reason I’m there, not merely whatever we’re doing. At least that’s the me I want to be this year.

And that’s worth the effort it’s taking to make Saturdays like today happen.  Days and weeks and months to build on, until 2010 is done. Time I won’t get back and refuse to miss out on. Experiences i need to share now and remember down the road. Stuff that doesn’t happen on its own so easily for me in this place and time. But I’ll do whatever it takes to show up and be present and relax, the way so many other people seem to be able to so effortlessly every Saturday. Because I want more of the good things that happen when me make the time to just be with each other. I want every Saturday like that, that I can get my hands on. And I want each one to matter.

 Dorchester’s pushing for a Nov. release for Secret Legacy, even though I had to take two months off from writing for health reasons and extended my draft deadline. Which meant that my editor needed an early version of the first act or so of the story to begin working with (they’re saying something about a special promotion for the release, which sounds really exciting, but I have no details so, no sure what that means). Which meant, I had to stop forward momentum crafting the second half of the story to go back and revise the beginning. And revise. And revise… And since my blog for the  moment is “Revising a Year,” let me just say again that revision in life and in story is about searching for meaning.

I’ve learned a lot from writing and living over the last few years, but never more than I have the last month or so. Challenge and adversity and unending kindness and generosity, encapsulated and showered on you when you least expect it and need it most, will do that to you. So, I wake up the morning after our second snow storm in less than a month (very unusual for north Georgia) feeling March like it is January.

The new beginning I’ve been expecting is finally here, maybe because I’m back to a place where I can see forward (and backwards) and not just survive through this minute and the next. It’s almost spring, and I don’t really remember much of the coldest part of the winter. It was too difficult a time. Too much of a survive or fade away time. And I’m finally well enough for that not to be enough…

And I find my greatest wish for my reboot to be that if I could revise my year to be anything I wanted, I’d first want every day to still be my focus while the future is unfolding. I want my meaning to be my love for my current story, my excitement for future projects, my obsession with my family and my gratitude for friends and family that are always there for me–that’s what every day will be filled with. Of course there will be new difficulties (my system seems a bit challenged by the thought of a simple head cold, so it chose instead to indulge in a virus I’m still sick with when I should have been over it days ago). But those aren’t worth my full focus. They aren’t who I am–not who I want to be, at least. The difficulties will not be my meaning. My purpose here is to be so much more.

There are many things still competing for my time and attention, but the everyday things I want my every day to be about will get first dibs as the birds chirp like spring outside my window. Even though the temps are still hovering just above freezing, it will be near 70 for my son’s tennis match Sunday. It’s March but it feels like January but I have cute kitties cuddling beside me that haven’t left my side in months, just to make sure I’m extra warm.

It’s going to be a good year…

It’s dry reading, unless you’re a closet tech writer like me, and then you’ll love all the science and find yourself lost for hours that should be going toward working your way back into a WIP you haven’t written on in a while… Where was I? Oh, yeah, it’s dry reading, so I’m bulleting some high points below for those who love dreams as much as I do. But the thing I’m finding startling is how close some of this is to what I’ve already crafted into Dark Legacy and now Secret Legacy, based on my own dream experiences and the world my characters have helped me build.

The intuitive, creative mind is an amazing thing. Which is kind of the point of the dream study I chose to base my first Legacy family’s gifts in. Good affirmation, but also a bit of a goose bump moment. Another in a long series of boo!experiences that have convinced me there are worlds playing out around us, just beyond our understanding. It couldn’t be cooler to have a job where researching into what intrigues me most is part of my day-to-day.

For those of you who love this kind of thing, too, enjoy some of this study’s intereting tidbits:

• “…most people are consistent over years or decades in what they dream about, and that the most frequent characters, social interactions, and activities in their dreams are continuous with their waking interests and emotional concerns (Domhoff, 2003).”

• Uncovering the mysteries of dreams themselves is complicated by the fact that the dreamer can’t report details of the dream while it’s happening–which, of course, isn’t a problem for my psychic twins and their mad scientists, bwahahahaha! Good to know I’m on track emphasising the uniqueness of this kind of dream study set up.

• Dream banks have allowed the study of a single subjects’ dreams across major life spans–a very cool concept that I touched on in Dark Legacy, when the twins were dreaming “back” to their childhood, and thus dipping into images and symbols they dreamed about as children. I’m already using this again in Secret Legacy, as Sarah searches for a lost child she’s shares a dream link with, and finding that their joined dreams mirror disturbing visions from her childhood that haven’t made sense until now.

• The study talks about dream reports, sets and studies. I like the clean terminology. Making a note to borrow or use something similar for my own science in Secret Legacy. Readers must be intrigued but not confused to distraction ;o)

Great stuff for me. Was it good for you???

I love this quote, even though it’s been a little while since I’ve tasted my life nearly as much as I’ve survived it. And tasting… Well, there’s something that sounds like thriving in the word. Something that’s gotten me thinking.

 There’s a lot of fight or flight in my work-in-progress. (Well, at least Secret Legacy was my WIP before December happened. ETA to getting back to Sarah Temple and the dreams that will either save or destroy her–Feb. 1st. . so stay tuned for upcoming dream theory posts.) A lot of fighting adversity and challenging limits and refusing to give up–this is a paranormal thriller series, right? But now that the Legacy world is built and it’s dream theory other-worldliness is grounded in its altered realty, I’m finding as I reread what’s already out of my brain and down on paper that there’s space for more in Book 2. More richness. More character. More…flavor.

My heroine in Dark Legacy spent the entire book running from danger and surviving a world of revelation crashing down on top of her. Her sister in Secret Legacy, I’ve known from the start will be running toward something instead of away.The twins’  conflict needs to ramp to the next level. They need the truth. Their legacy needs to become a future to fight for, not just a past to struggle against. But how to show that? How to make the reader feel the shift in the series??? Over the weekend, as I reflected on the last month and the next 11 to come and the revision I wanted in my own life, my good friend Anais reached out to me with the above quote.

Surviving, even conquering, a difficult time or a challenging, work schedule is a thrill. And thrills are part of what we live for. But things have slowed for me enough these days to remind me how good tasting feels, too. Not doing, just savoring. No agenda, just soaking in as much as you can and letting it soothe you. Letting things beyond your immediate focus soak in, embracing them, accepting them as friend not foe. No fight. No flight. Just be…

Of course, that sort of centered introspection would terrify Sarah Temple, as it would many of us who move fast and furious as we chase the next thrill and the next deadline and the next sale and the next reader event, and… Oh. Um… Well, I’ve always said there;s a bit of me in my characters, haven’t I?

Suffice it to say, I’ve found a new level to revise into Sarah Temple’s character AND into my year. A new underlying goal (and conflict, because any change, no matter how positive, brings it’s own challenges). It’s time to survive AND thrive. You know, while Sarah fights against and then with her “Raven” as she battles her band of secret, government dream researchers. And while I write and pitch and promote books and teach and talk with others who do/want to do the same… Hey, I don’t have Sarah Temple’s crazed, psychotic fantasies hounding me, so how insteresting could my life sound in comparison, right? Still there’s a lot to savor there that I’ve let roll past unnoticed the last few years. In ‘10, I’m digging in for the full ride!

FYI–all you who are saying this quote isn’t really for you, because you’re not a writer… Trust me, you’re a story teller. We all are in our own way. You take life in and shine it back out for others to see in a way they couldn’t without you. Your view matters to others. Your view changes, the more you can be in the world around you, instead of always fighting to move to the next place. Stop and taste life twice, as often as you can…

I’ve often discussed with my agent how much easier it is for me to “plug in” to a non-fiction project on the fly, especially during those times when my heart and soul can’t beat in time with whatever make believe fictional world I’m painting.  It’s been good for me the last five years to have a balance, between teaching and writing to teach and even some ghost writing gigs, and my fiction work. The last couple of years have been crazy. Both halves of my writing “business” have taken off like gang busters, sometimes too quickly at entirely the wrong times, but I was in no position to complain and never did (except sometimes to my friends, when I was sure no one else was listening). This is the third and, hopefully, last career change I’ll make in my life, and I’m a girl who embraces being thankful and grateful and working her butt off while opportunity’s striking.

So, now, here I am, writing for two fiction publishers, expanding two different series of my own creation, travelling when asked to speak to groups who think I have something to teach them about writing, even getting paid for the privilege more often than not now, and pitching my first non-fiction writing project to an interested publisher. A great start to this new chapter in my life, five years out from my first publishing “call.” Time to settle into a quick and productive routine that both the creative and analytical sides of my brain clearly thrive on, right?

Except… Isn’t it interesting, that it’s often when we expect to feel most settled and productive, that life decides to shake things up, just to make sure we’re paying attention. To show us that quick isn’t always the way, even when we’ve finally proven to ourselves that we’re more than capable of excelling at meeting even the toughest deadlines. And to remind us that productive means so much more than mastering whatever routine we’re so sure defines all that we can be. Sometimes, it just comes down t how you’re feeling…

As I take a closer look at what “Revising a Year” will mean for me, I accept that quick will always be essential. That’s the publishing business. But I’m seeing that time is more of a relative term now.  A matter of priority. I’ve been forced to adjust expectations for what will get my immediate attention lately, and what will achieve a better result if I give it more time, not less. And going for that best result is what’s feeling right now, not getting something new out the door as fast as I can–something that is very close to the best I could do, but not quite there, because there just wasn’t enough hours in the few days I gave myself to get it done.

And productive will always be what I want others to see when they look at my work. They’ll see me working hard and being true to my commitments and being the dependable and honest person they already know, still striving for the best quality I can deliver in whatever I’m doing . But this year more than the last five, it’s the quality I’ll be putting before the rest, when it’s time to commit to appearances and dates and deadlines and so forth. Not how much I can do how fast, but rather how to get the best of me where it needs to be at the right time for the projects I’m working on and the amazing people I’m working for. That’s what my career will mean this year. And going forward, I suspect.

If you’ve been following along, you know some of these “revising” decisions, about my schedule at least, were taken out of my hands last month. When a doctor tells you there’s a significant chance your next year will be about multiple surgeries and procedures that might make you sicker before they cure the diagnosis you may or may not have, it’s a pivotal moment. On the other side of that, and the surgery I had to agree to in order to rule out the scary diagnosis (which I found out yesterday they have–YAY!!!), I view the year before me very much changed, nonetheless. You can learn a lot in a month about how very important it is it check in with your feelings, before you give away every hour of your day to something else.

For a month now, I’ve had to make hard decisions and see what matters most in my life through a zoom lens that exposed every area that demanded my attention, and every minute I was spending on things that had to wait or fall away. Let’s face it–every professional writer, fiction or nonfiction, faces this moment in every book, when it’s time to rewrite and hone a draft so the reader will get the full effect of all the hard work you’ve put into it. And every person ultimately faces this moment in life, sooner or later–maybe I’ve just been lucky enough to stumble across it sooner than some.

My family and my writing–they’ll get my all, because they’re my heart. My readers and fans and fellow writers and students will continue to be my focus whenever my first priorities are well cared for and thriving on their own. Because my creative heart belongs to you as well. You and my writing and my family are the things that make all of this worth it.

But, where will the specifics of day-to-day living and working and feeling fall in the midst of this epiphany??? What will get done, and what will wait, and how will things change? That’s where the revision will come this year. We’ll work it out. I’ll work it out. And this I know for sure–it’ll be the best work of my life, because the focus and the feelings will be in sync, like no other moment I’ve experienced.

Come share the momet with me. We’ll do the revising together…

There are always reruns of our favorite obscure TV series.There’s always TVo and On Demand and DVD collections with directors cuts and bonus features. You don’t have to buy the album, because every song, in every variation, is just an iTunes click away. You can order up your next book, or every book you want, in any format under the sun without ever stepping foot in a bookstore–all you need is an electronic reader and the 3G connection available at most fast food joints now.

There are quicker ways every day to lose weight, or work out easier and smarter.Drive faster, freed from the drag of having to figure out where you’re going before you get going, because there’s an app that will get you door to door with no effort at all. You can meet the mate of your dreams without having to look, just answer a few questions and wait for your dream come true to scroll onto your computer screen. You can be who you’ve always wanted to be, just follow ten simple steps. The world’s at our fingertips. All now. All the time. And we haven’t even touched on self help mantras and financial must-jump-on schemes, like melt down your old gold and buy your neighbor’s foreclosed dream home while the  markets tapped out.

But is that really now? Or more to the point, is it really what we want to be tomorrow?

In some ancient civilizations, there was little concept of immediate time. There was before, there was a distant sense of future, but the rest wasn’t about faster and easier and cramming more into every second that a person either used or lost forever.Their “now” was about living. Doing. Being. It was a rhythm and a sense of accomplishment and belonging as one day led to the next, and those you loved were there with you and for you and being taken care of by you in whatever way you alone could provide, however much you could get done.

My next week’s going to be a time different from anything I’ve ever known. My last few weeks have been different, too, to be honest. The world’s narrowed to a place in which where I am and who I’m with and what we share together hasn’t been interrupted by anything from before. And for the first time in a long time, my now isn’t being shadowed by what might come later, because that’s just not a place we’re choosing to look to yet. We’re just “here,” the people I love. It’s just now. 

And it’s been good, even though tomorrow will be tough. It’s been quiet in some  ways, and crazy in others. But it’s been real. It’s been living. It’s been my heart feeling it’s way through every day, without distractions and deadlines and must-dos and catching up so I don’t fall behind. It’s been breathing. Only three weeks or so, but it’s felt eternal.

I’ll be off for a while, but I’ll be thinking of my online friends.Find your eternal now and wallow in it while I’m gone. Then share your “living it up!” with me in the comments. A girl about to be on pain meds needs something to look forward to, right ;o)

TTFN!

Strange, that I’m writing a book about water while all this is going on. Both fire and water are essential, timeless elements that can symbolize change and revelation and renewal. Both can symbolize life. Fire, too, can mean torment (as in, can’t decide on the next turn in your life), while with water one can feel as if she’s drowning in a decision not yet made. So, they can go hand in hand. For me, as I write about ocean visions, it’s interesting that my own dreams have centered on fire’s illumination and possible destruction. Or, maybe not so far off the mark, as it turns out.

I’d said a few blogs back that this would be a year of revisions for me. Not all together of my choosing. I have a lot on my plate, but the plate’s suddenly been taken away from me, forcing me to slow a bit and just live while I wait for my “get back to normal” chance. Not that I’m not still loving writing Secret Legacy. Not that it’s not 2/3rds through (though this is 2/3rds of the draft that no one else sees, not even my editor, because it’s the ugly draft that needs TONS of TLC before it’s ready for others to drool over). But, the work’s slowed since mid-December, and it will be slower still for a while, and I’m not handling the downshift with a lot of grace. Just ask my husband. And my fire dreams.

They’re both telling me to let the guilt for not writing full-speed ahead go. Let the time I can’t write fill with other things I need. Let myself see other things right now–like the threat heading straight for me. Or is it a chance to shift my view, more than a threat? Is it a time to review and re-evaluate and revise, so I’m even more ready to write again, when Secret Legacy once more becomes my primary focus?

In dreams, fire can be a painful journey taken to leave past truths behind and achieve new growth. It can symbolize untamed growth and energy you have to let rage, rather than trying to control. It can be an omen, that fighting to stay where you are will lead to even more pain. It can be a chance to set your mind free, or to trap it forever.

As a writer, feeling trapped in a story, or in an impossible moment, is a horrible feeling. Writers have to see the fire their imigantions become as an escape, rather than a threat. A new beginning, as all stories begin first in a blaze of creativity and fear and uncontrollable combustion that only the most delicate, sensitive mind can embrace. And as a human being, I now have a new beginning to revise. My own. My 2010. It will be like none other. It will begin with the rush of fire, then it will catch into something new and amazing and untamed, then it will become a journey I never expected. All I have to do is open the door and know I’m ready to embrace the flames, no matter how dangerous my dreams make them seem.

I’m having surgery next week, and there may be more to come after that.

I have a book to finish, and there are worlds and journies beyond even that to tell, once I can get my mind to re-focus on the worlds my dreams bring me.

I have a life to revise, while I wait for the former to happen, so I can get back to the latter, and it’s my choice which, if either, will be consumed by the flames my dreams are showing me. The fear. The doubt. The insecurity. It’s my year to do with whatever I choose.

Anyway, that’s what I’ll be blogging about for a while. The dreams and the journey and the writing (an Atlanta Heroes out in April and Secret Legacy out later this year). And the revising.

Joine me, and we’ll see where the fire takes us…

Actually, this post is about seeing your dreams. Seeing them all around you. Never losing touch with them.

A perfect new topic for a new blog year.

My year’s going to start out rocky. I knew that about mid-way through December, and began the next several weeks in a bit of a haze that felt at first like dread. So much so, I couldn’t write or do much of anything. But it was the holidays. Not a good time to check out. Not a good time at all, for me or my family. Not how I wanted my 2010 to begin.

So I did what I’ve done since I was a child when I needed to stay grounded in my everyday life but was stumbling about in the shadows instead–I started to read about other worlds. Obsessively. Kind like I pulled out all my favorite books that I’d hidden away in a closet and began to re-read like a maniac. Bing reading. Need-a-support-group-to-recover reading. I hadn’t done that in years. Because I’ve been too slammed with writing, instead, I guess. Not that I haven’t read books every month of every one of those years. But there’s a difference when you read solely for pleasure. Around the clock, every chance I got when I wasn’t involved with the “normal” people in my life. Because I had to escape and believe there were other realities out there besides the one I was afraid I was slipping into. Because I needed to fill my creative well, more than I needed to write. The obsession to write couldn’t sustain me for the first time.

I couldn’t write, but I could read. Only reading. A lot of reading, which, not surprisingly, turned into a lot of dreaming. Day dreaming and sleep dreaming. And a slow relaxing that I hadn’t felt in over five years. Since before the publishing race began to rule my waking world (14 books in 5 years is it’s own kind of obsession). Of course my dream life has been vivid and active the whole time I’ve published, but those dreams have been shadowed in no small part by the books I’ve been writing. The worlds and lives I’ve been creating on the page. That’s not the same thing as my dreams coming just from what I’m feeling and reading and relaxing into, because if I don’t relax I’m going to explode. Slowly, over the last two weeks, I’ve realized that reading in the absence of the non-stop writing I’ve been doing for so long has been changing my dreams. Or, more to the point, returning my dreams to something I haven’t had in a long time. Something I hadn’t realized I’d missed so much. Something I haven’t slowed down enough to see for too long. Me. That’s what I’d been missing. What I needed to plug back into to face the first of ’10’s challenges. I had to put the rest away and just see me and what I needed for a while. Different. Not what I’ve been doing for 5 years. But essential. And it only took me two weeks of falling into my favorite novels to get there ;o)

Of course I’ll write obsessively again. That’s who I am. And my dreams will once more become about the other realities floating around in my mind. Soon, I hope. But for now, they’re about what I want this day to be. This week. This year. My family and my friends and the NEXT five years. My hopes and dreams, which need to thrive again. What makes me stretch and relax and believe that all will be well, regardless. My friends and the life they challenge me to live. My love and the power it has to hope and heal and thrive and conquer. These are the parts of me that reading and dreaming have always inspired. These are the emotions that dreams touch in all of us. And aren’t stories simply another way of dreaming? Don’t they help us see ourselves, as much as the subconscious worlds that go on in our sleeping fantasies? Don’t they teach writes and readers alike what’s most important and worth fighting for?

So where does that leave me/us?

1. I’d have to say to my writer friends, read for pleasure, as a way to feed the soul you need to create.
2. To my reader followers, recognize your role in breathing life into the stories you read and the dreams they inspire, because you’re part of all of this, and it’s a HUGE part of you.
3. To me, understand that slowing down is a new chance to grow and learn what you need to learn next.
4. Whoever you are, see your dreams, in every way they come to you.  However they come to you. Whatever you have to do to stay in tune with them.

Sounds simple, right???

Anyone else have a light-bulb beginning to their new year???