This is the first day of a new year. What are your goals for the new year? Not resolutions, but goals? A goal has specific steps. A resolution might be: I want to get published. Unless you’re self-publishing, you have no control over that. A goal, though, might be: I want to finish a novel (or whatever you’re writing) and submit it to XYZ publishing by June 1st. In order to do this, I have to write (#) words each day. Be S.M.A.R.T. with your goals. (If you don’t know what this is, Google it). A S.M.A.R.T. goal is specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely. This is a new year. Be “smart” and set your goals. Now, let’s all get out there and write!

Authors Born Today: E.M. Forster (1879), J.D. Salinger (1919), Mary Norton (1903), Ouida (1839), JamesFrazer (1854), Audrey Wurdemann (1911), Ernest Tidyman (1928), Olivia Goldsmith (1949), James Richardson (1960), Catherine Drinker Bowen (1897), Claudia Rankine (1963), Mary Ann Shaffer (1934), Gina Berriault (1926)

Audrey Wurdemann at 24 was the youngest winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for her collection “Bright Ambush”

Catherine Bowen won the National Book Award for her nonfiction like “The Most Dangerous Man in America: Scenes from the Life of Benjamin Franklin”

Claudia Rankine won the NAACP Image Award for poetry in 2015 for “Citizen: An American Lyric”.

Gina Berriault won multiple awards for her short stories including the O’Henry

Quote: “I think the first idea—or first feeling—of The Borrowers came through my being shortsighted: when others saw the far hills, the distant woods, the soaring pheasant, I, as a child, would turn sideways to the close bank, the tree roots, and the tangled grasses.” – Mary Norton (author of “The Borrowers”)

“The king died and then the queen died. That is a story. The king died and the queen died of grief. That is a plot.” – E.M. Forster