November 5

Birthdays: Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850), Eugene Debs (1855), Will Durant (1885), John Berger (1926), Christopher Wood (1935), Sam Shepard (1943), Carole Nelson Douglas (1944), Richard Holmes (1945), Joyce Maynard (1953), Andrew Sean Greer (1970), Uzodinma Iweala (1982)

Andrew Greer won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for “Less”

Sam Shepard won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for “Buried Child”

Quote: “When you hit a wall – of your own imagined limitations – just kick it in.” – Sam Shepard

From Eugene V. Debs: I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence.

I have no country to fight for; my country is the earth, and I am a citizen of the world.

In every age it has been the tyrant, the oppressor and the exploiter who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both to deceive and overawe the People.

Tip: Not everything you create will sell. Every author has those manuscripts they thought were amazing but are gathering dust in a drawer. And that’s okay. Move on and write the next one!

Jumpstart: I got lost. I had my phone, the GPS, and even a paper map. And I got lost. What would I do? What could I do? Not matter what I did, I ended up wrong…