Glory Glory!
Topic: WC - Daily Practice
Friday 9:46pm 5Jan07

There's an affirmation that I know I have written somewhere but can't find it right now. But basically it alludes to us being in the right place right now. Whatever situations we are in are perfect for what we need to do, for the dreams we plan to realize, for the lessons we need to learn.

I'm really feeling that this evening. It's Friday and normally I'd be in bed by now after a week of work I'm normally wiped. The whole thing of being around so many people and being on all the time usually wears me out by Friday. Like an old girl I'm conked out before 10pm.

I've been focusing on three things as of late. I've been working towards writing 21 hours a week. I've been getting up everyday as close to 4am as much as possible (it's been more around 4:30am which isn't too shabby in the grand scheme of goals) and I've been working on pushing my daily walking from 10,000 steps a day to 15,000 steps. I'm hitting about 14,000 steps most days and more on others.

The results this week have been taking form. Moving me in the forward direction. I've been writing at least 1.5 hours a day with a couple days hitting 2.5 hours (I'm still trying to get to 3 hours a day). I've been getting up at 4:30am basically because I don't always hear my alarm at 4am but always hear my stereo at 4:30am. And with the walking, I've been either leaving a half hour earlier before work or walking longer after work before I come home.

My 4:30am rise does such a great thing for my state of mind. I'm focusing on my goals first and foremost. Making my dreams a priority before I set out for a day of work (realizing other peoples goals) keeps me in good stead to make it through the inevitable frustrations of the day. Pushing myself to write every single day helps me to prove to myself that I'm serious about realizing my goals.

It's funny, I've only told a couple people about my writing goal and one person made a comment, "Wow, That's an ambitious goal," in that tone of voice. Yeah Skippy, it's an ambitious goal and I'm not getting younger as the years pass by. Oh and neither are you, or hadn't you noticed? And the walking is to give my lazy ass the energy to work on that 'ambitious goal' combined with making it through each work day.

Back to that comment about being in the right place right now and all that... I've been thinking about the men (boys?) that were in my life that I had to wipe completely out of my life. Their confusion causing behaviours were too time consuming for one and I discovered that there is a reason for me being single right now. I need all the time I can fit in to the work on my goals and a confusing man just takes my focus away from that.

If a man can't just show his interest without a lot of game playing and strange bullshit, he's not interested enough and at no time will that relationship change, it will only get worse. You can justify anyone's bad behaviour but you'll still keep getting bad behaviour. Bottom line. They were cute, but they weren't Gods. 6'5" built like a brick shit house, now that's a God! If I'm going to have my time consumed, let it be with a God! Here here!

I'm 42 years old soon to be 43. I don't know if I'm going to live for another year or if I'll live into my 80's or if I'll make it to a hundred with all my mental faculties in tact (touch wood). I've really hit my wall of mortality and there are things I want to do with my life before I die. And I'm not interested in sharing that time with people who only want to talk about themselves or tell me about their projects but have no genuine interest in mine except to find an opportunity to criticize me. Or ask me how I am and in the midst of telling them they cut me off because they are reminded about some more information about themselves. My ears are closed to you. I've got bigger and better things on the front and back burners.

I've been the go to girl for my whole life and all it's done was to let my life slip by while others ran off and lived theirs only to come running back when in crisis. If you're in crisis, go see a therapist. They're paid to listen. They're professionals. They do it during business hours. IT IS NOT MY JOB TO HEAL THE FUCKING WORLD! It's not my job.

I'm finally getting it. I've finally realized how much better I feel by putting myself first in my life. If I have anything healing to say, it's to tell you to go and put yourself first in your life.

And for my little friend who hasn't found a new job yet, but will soon, and reads me daily (have I told you I love you?) just remember that you too are in the right place right now, we all are. What do you need to do while you're in this place, if there is a purpose for you being here? I ask only because I want you to feel better in your moment of feeling stuck.

EY

Zo Zo Sleeps
Topic: WC - Daily Practice
Thursday 5:23am 4Jan07

Moving a little slow this morning but I can't expect to be speedy Gonzales every morning although I wish I could be. I woke up to the song, "I Believe I can Fly," which was like a good morning from my Mom.

I dreamed that I was given or won hundreds of dollars in gift certificates and I was trying to do my best to spend them all. I met up with these Irish boys at a pub and sat and chatted with them and drank a beer or two. Then I rode on some strange elevator with my cousin Christopher to get to his car in a weird underground parking lot that had subway trains and cars passing by at the same time. It's weird but all forms of transportation are always strange in my dreams. They are never a proper representation. Either they are futuristic looking or if I'm on the subway I have to jump from the train to get on the platform or I have to walk across the tracks to catch my train. I'll have to think about that more. Find some interpretation for my transportation issues.

Boy, I could climb right back into bed especially when I watch Zo Zo the Zeldooch having another snooze. Even Picasso is eying her like, "hmm you've got a good idea there kid."

I made it to 2.5 hours of writing yesterday. It really is a challenge trying to juggle all the things I want to do, like writing, working out, cleaning the apartment. etc etc. I did manage to mop the floors last night. In my kitchen, I have those kind of tile floors that never really look clean, much to my chagrin. I don't love cleaning and when the floor doesn't really look clean. sigh! That's a real motivator. I probably just need new tiles, I have been living here for a mighty long time. If this were a house I'd have changed them ages ago.

No romantic encounters yesterday. Plus I managed to stay out of the lesbian octopus' radar. Thank God for small wonders.

Not too much to say this morning.
Today's your Friday Grinny Lolo, can you be more excited? And yes dammit, I will miss you tomorrow!

EY

Seeing it in Action
Topic: Newsletters
I've always read about article writing and trying to sell your articles to as many markets as possible and gearing the article to a specific market. So what a pleasure to get another newsletter in my inbox yesterday only to see the same article written by Michael Masterson that I'd posted yesterday and geared towards copywriters (which the newsletter caters to).
For any writers that are interested in comparing how the two articles, I post that here too...



IN THIS ISSUE:

* What can you do each day this year?
By Michael Masterson

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

ACCOMPLISH THE UNTHINKABLE:
WRITE WELL EVERY DAY THIS YEAR
By Michael Masterson

Yesterday marked the beginning of 2007. Like me, you may
have been thinking about what you can accomplish this
year.

You are a writer. A writer with goals. Unless I have you
mixed up with someone less ambitious, you want to
improve your writing skills and make more money. Both
are respectable, doable objectives for 2007.

In fact, let's make this a breakthrough year for you.

Let's talk about how you can do that.

I was inspired this morning by a piece I'd clipped from
The New York Times a few weeks ago. The article is about
Suzan-Lori Parks, a pretty, dreadlocked, 43-three-year-
old Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright who, in 2002,
decided she would write a play a day for a year.

Think about that. A play a day for a year.

When it comes to goals (setting and accomplishing them),
I consider myself to be a strong player. Before my 40th
birthday, I met and surpassed all my business and
financial goals. Since then, I've been knocking off
other lifelong goals at a pretty steady pace - and many
of them involve writing.

To me, writing a short story a month is a very ambitious
goal. And although that's been one of my goals for at
least the last five years, I've never quite accomplished
it.

How is it possible to even imagine that you could write
a play a day for 365 days in a row? And even if it were
possible to imagine, how could it be done?

The New York Times article doesn't tell me that. It
talks about how, after Parks finished the project, the
manuscripts sat in her drawer for three years until she
and a theater friend hatched a plan to produce all 365
plays. (The plan is very complicated, opening them a day
at a time in 14 cities, using a network of hubs and
satellite theaters.) And the article tells me her
subject matter ranges from "deities to soldiers to what
Ms. Parks saw out of her plane window."

But how did she do it?

Did she wake up early every morning and get to it and
not stop until she was done? Did she work on other
projects first (she is also a screenwriter and novelist)
and then get to her plays at night?

And how much did she write? According to the article,
some of the plays were "only a few pages long" - but
that's still an amazing accomplishment. She gave herself
an almost unthinkable goal ... and went ahead and
accomplished it.

But she did it smart. She didn't put a minimum length on
each play. She let each one take its own length. That's
a clever way to approach doing something great.

Perhaps you can do something similar in 2007. Set some
unthinkably big task for yourself that, when completed
at the end of the year, will have made you a much
stronger and more highly compensated writer.

Let's think about some specific writing objective that
would be similar to writing a play a day for a year.
What could that be?

The obvious answer is to write a promotion a day - to
complete, by the end of the year, 365 new direct-
response packages. That would be an amazing
accomplishment, don't you think? When you consider that
even the most prolific copywriters write fewer than 59
packages a year, 365 seems impossible.

But it can be done by doing what Parks did: by narrowing
the scope of the goal and focusing on quality rather
than size.

In Parks' case, she defined writing a play as writing an
effective dramatic presentation - even if that
presentation was a single act that lasted no more than
five or 10 minutes. In your case, you could define your
copywriting objective as writing one effective mini-
advertisement per day.

Here's how you can do it in a way that might also
dramatically increase your income:

1. Get on the mailing lists (snail mail and Internet) of
six or eight direct-marketing businesses you'd like to
work for. (Long-term AWAI members should have already
done this.)

2. Build a "swipe file" (that is, a borrower's library)
of ads that these companies are currently using.

3. Every day, before you do any other work, take out one
of the ads from your swipe file and study it. Spend 15
to 30 minutes figuring out what the copywriter is
attempting to do, evaluating how well he's doing it, and
identifying other approaches that might work equally
well or even better.

4. Pick one of those alternate approaches and make that
your daily assignment.

5. Spend the next 30 to 45 minutes writing and editing a
little ad based on the theme you've chosen.

6. When you are done, file the completed mini-ad in a
large envelope addressed to the CEO or marketing
director of the company it applies to.

7. Once a month, send out all those envelopes (each of
which will contain one or several samples of your work).
Include a letter that briefly explains who you are and
why you are sending them this free copy. The letter
should be some version of: "I admire your business and
hoped that, if you saw what I could do, you might have a
spot for me on your freelance rotation."

Don't spend any more than 60 minutes a day completing
this task.

In the beginning, you will find that you will be able to
write only a limited number of words. But as the weeks
pass, you will see your speed improve dramatically.

You'll almost certainly double the speed at which you
write. You may quadruple or quintuple it. And you'll
also see that the quality of your writing will improve --
which may surprise you, considering how much faster you
are getting. You will have sharper, more tangible ideas.
Your language will be crisper and cleaner.

The trick is to focus on quality, not quantity. So your
daily objective will be to come up with just one good
marketing idea - and then, when you have it, to write it
as simply and powerfully as possible.

If you don't want to do this every single day of the
year, make it a workday goal ... which would mean you'd
be writing about 250 little ads this year and sending
them out to potential clients. That goal is plenty big.
And it allows you two days a week to do something else
first thing in the morning.

I am thinking about setting a goal like this to improve
my skills this year. I'd like to challenge myself to
write one good story every day. The story won't have to
be long. In fact, the first 100 or so of them will
probably be very short - but that's okay.

In addition to my "write one ad a day in 2007" idea,
here are some other "unthinkably" big goals to consider:

* Learn a marketing secret a day.
* Scan an educational book a day.
* Contact a potential client a day.
* Recite a poem a day.
* Call/write a friend a day.
* Practice a self-promotional speech a day.
* Sing a song a day.

If you would like more goal setting ideas, as well as a
step-by-step action plan to make 2007 your wealthiest,
healthiest, and most successful year yet, click here:
http://www.isecureonline.com/Reports/700SACP1/E700GCX5/

[Ed. Note: When you set your "unthinkable" goal for
2007, we'd like to hear about it. Please send it to
thegoldenthread@awaionline.com and we may publish it in
The Golden Thread as inspiration for your fellow AWAI
members.]

Just blabbing
Topic: WC - Daily Practice
Wednesday 4:52am 3Jan06

I seem to wake up at 3:34 each morning. I never get up though. I call the cats and say, "We have less than a half hour girls" and promptly fall back asleep. I love sleeping. It really is hard to believe that I get up before the crack of dawn.

I did my hour long write when I got home last night and because I didn't have much to rant about (not complaining) I tried to guide it toward something useful. So I ended up with about a page of stuff for Rachel in White Wishes which has fallen off again. I realize that I need to get myself back to a head space where I'm thinking about it all the time. Some form of having it in the back of my mind while I do other things. I'm going to have to read through my notes and decide on a character to focus on and keep that person in my mind and listen to her. Watch her react.

I also have come to understand that I have two stages of freeflow writing. I have the stream of consciousness writing where I write nonstop and my mind is out of it. I can write and only know the word I'm writing. I don't know what I've written nor what I'm going to write. It's almost meditative or channeled. Then there is the plain nonstop writing where I write fast and I know what I've written and I'm thinking about what I'm going to write next.

I'm only recently starting to understand that I have the two types. In the past if I couldn't maintain the SOC writing, I'd often stop, thinking that I was failing at doing it. Of course the SOC writing feels better so it feels like the right way but like a deep meditation, I'm setting myself up for failure if I'm expecting to have that all the time. The plain old aware non stop writing serves a bigger purpose. I can guide it. I can start to pick at what I need to work on.

It's a full moon today. I predicted that Travisimo's wife will go into labour today. Let's see how psychic I am. ha! My horoscope for January says that today (tonight rather) will bring me a romantic encounter. So as I question how this could possibly happen, not that I believe it will but as the writer the first thing I ask is what if?... I have a dime and a nickel to rub together so I'm not going out. I've dropped all interest, contact & thought of the men that were in my life so it couldn't possibly be one of them. No cute guys to speak of in my apartment building. And then a little part of my mind flits off on a tangent and says, "I bet you the Lesbian hits on you!" I cringe.

Just because I said I'd do Selma Hayek doesn't mean I'd do, well, her! I had a lengthy conversation with my gay male friend recently about it because I hadn't told him the whole story of the octopus armed lesbian that would not go away and then acted like a spurned lover when I finally slapped her down. I admitted that I actually questioned whether I was homophobic because I was so uncomfortable with what was going on ( I know how to get rid of a man that's harassing me, I don't know how to get rid of a woman that's harassing me). But he reminded me that there are a lot of gay men that insist that all straight men are really gay in disguise and that there are lesbians that believe that if they have one night with you they'll make you gay. sigh!

How come it's never the attractive lesbians? I'm just asking!

But seriously with every thing a gay person goes through to come out and find their place and the ridicule and not being able to be married and just plain being born gay why the fuck couldn't I be born heterosexual or anyone else for that matter? There's no coercing or insisting or harassing that will change the fact that I love men. It's like Donald Trump saying that he's got a great guy for Rosie O'Donnell's wife.

Come on! No means no!

EY

Pushing Ourselves Harder
Topic: Newsletters
I got this article from the Early to Rise Newsletter in my email yesterday.

"Crystallize your goals. Make a plan for achieving them and set yourself a deadline. Then, with supreme confidence, determination, and disregard for obstacles and other people's criticisms, carry out your plan."

- Paul J. Meyer

Kicking Off the New Year With ETR: Prepare to Accomplish the Unthinkable

By Michael Masterson

I was inspired to ante-up the challenges I'm setting for myself this year by a piece I clipped from The New York Times a few weeks ago. The article is about Suzan-Lori Parks, a pretty, dreadlocked, 43-year-old Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright who, in 2002, decided she would write a play a day for a year.

Think about that. A play a day for a year.

When it comes to goals (setting and accomplishing them), I consider myself to be a strong player. Before my 40th birthday, I met and surpassed all my business and financial objectives. Since then, I've been knocking off other lifelong goals at a pretty steady pace - and many of them involved writing.

To me, writing a short story a month is a very ambitious goal. And although that's been one of mine for at least the last five years, I've never quite accomplished it.

How is it possible to even imagine that you could write a play a day for 365 days in a row? And even if it were possible to imagine, how could it be done?

The NYT article doesn't tell me that. It talks about how, after finishing the project, the huge manuscript sat in Parks' drawer for three years until she and a theater friend hatched a plan to produce all 365 of her plays. (The plan is very complicated, opening them a day at a time in 14 different cities, using a network of hubs and satellite theaters.) And it tells me her subject matter ranges from "deities to soldiers to what Ms. Parks saw out of her plane window."

But how did she do it?

Did she wake up early every morning and get to it and not stop until she was done? Did she work on other projects first (she is also a screenwriter and novelist) and then get to her plays at night? And how much did she write? According to the NYT, some of the plays were "only a few pages long" - but that doesn't detract from her achievement. She gave herself an almost unthinkable goal and went ahead and accomplished it.

And she did it smart: She didn't put a minimum length on each play. She let each one take its own length. That's a clever way to do something great.

That's something to think about for 2007. What sort of incredible personal goal could you set for yourself? And how would it transform your life?

I've been asking myself those questions, because I'd like to accomplish something unthinkable myself. And I'm hoping you'll join me in making this one of your goals for the coming year. If you're not sure what to shoot for ... here are some ideas:

Learn a marketing secret a day.
Read/scan an educational book a day.
Write a story a day.
Study a promotion a day.
Analyze a stock a day.
Make a sale a day.
Contact a potential customer a day.
Recite a poem a day.
Call/write a friend a day.
Practice a speech a day.
Sing a song a day.
Practice a musical piece a day.
Exercise intensely each day.
During the next two weeks, we'll be offering many suggestions in ETR for how you can prepare to make this year your wealthiest, healthiest, and most successful yet.

To get started, you need to identify one significant goal in each of the four most important areas of your life:

Your health (without which most of the others don't matter)
Your wealth (which is undeniably important - so treat it as such)
Your personal self (your hobbies and interests)
Your social self (your friends, family, and community)
Each of these goals should be not only significant but also specific. That means you'll probably have to break each one into several smaller objectives. For example, you might want to resolve to become stronger, leaner, and more flexible. To make this fitness goal more specific, you could resolve to add three pounds of muscle to your body, lose four pounds of fat, and learn how to do a proper Sun Salutation in yoga.

Today, since you're not (and shouldn't be) working, your job is to set these four big goals for yourself - and to make one of them unthinkably great. Then, once you set them, commit to them.

You can use the ETR goal-setting system to convert each of your four major goals into monthly, weekly, and, eventually, daily objectives. By taking the time now to write down your goals and think about what it will take to accomplish them, the likelihood that you will accomplish them will increase dramatically.

Studies show it: People who make formal goals and write them down accomplish more. If you follow the ETR goal-setting system and stick to it, I am 100 percent sure that 2007 will be the most successful year of your life.

While you are picking one unthinkably great goal for yourself this year, why not allow me to suggest a second.

I'd like you to consider making a commitment to spend at least five minutes every morning skimming through ETR for ideas, tips, techniques, and strategies that can improve your life. You don't have to promise to spend any more than five minutes - unless you find something that is especially good and you want to slow down and study it.

I recognize that there are times when you don't feel you have a spare second to read another e-mail message. And I know, too, that not all of our articles will be particularly helpful to you.

But every day, Suzanne Richardson, Judith Strauss, Charlie Byrne, and I review all the many good submissions we get from the dozens of smart and successful people who regularly write for ETR - and we do our best to include the best possible information in every daily message:

1. to help you build your wealth

2. to make you healthier

3. to make you wiser

We won't always hit the bull's eye - but if you read ETR conscientiously and with an open mind, I'm sure you'll find plenty there to learn from. I know I do.

Five minutes a day. It is a small investment that will pay you back many times over.

[Ed. Note: When you set your "unthinkable" goal, we'd like to hear about it. Please send an e-mail to ReaderFeedback@gmail.com. Include your full name and hometown, and we may publish it in ETR.]