Birthdays: Soren Kierkegaard (1813), Karl Marx (1818), Henryk Sienkiewicz (1846), Nellie Bly (1864), James Beard (1903),  Leo Lionni (1910), Michael Palin (1943), Linda Fairstein (1947), Deborah Wiles (1953), Kaye Gibbons (1960), Scott Westerfeld (1963), Tom Reiss (1964), Catherynne M. Valente (1979), Robyn Schneider (1986)

Henryk Sienkiewicz won the 1905 Pulitzer in Literature.

Quote: “Sometimes tossing out vast quantities of words is better than letting a whole book bleed slowly to death. Don’t give up, just start over.” – Scott Westerfeld

Tip: Disconnect from the internet when you’re working. No looking more than once an hour, less is better

Jumpstart: What is one thing from your character’s life that would completely embarrass him/her in the eyes of his/her friends and/or family? What was it? Why is it an embarrassment? Does s/he keep it a secret? Who else knows?

In 1888 Nellie Bly suggested to her editor at the New York World that she take a trip around the world, attempting to turn the fictional “Around the World in Eighty Days” into fact. A year later, at 9:40 a.m. on November 14, 1889, and with two days’ notice, she boarded a ship and began her journey.

She took with her the dress she was wearing, a sturdy overcoat, several changes of underwear, and a small travel bag carrying her toiletry essentials. She carried most of her money in a bag tied around her neck.

The “Cosmopolitan” sponsored its own reporter, Elizabeth Bisland, to beat the time of both Phileas Fogg and Bly. Bisland would travel the opposite way around the world, starting on the same day as Bly took off. Bly, however, did not learn of Bisland’s journey until reaching Hong Kong. She dismissed the cheap competition. “I would not race,” she said. “If someone else wants to do the trip in less time, that is their concern.”

To sustain interest in the story, the World organized a “Nellie Bly Guessing Match” in which readers were asked to estimate Bly’s arrival time to the second, with the Grand Prize consisting at first of a free trip to Europe and, later on, spending money for the trip.

During her travels around the world, Bly went through England, France, Brindisi, the Suez Canal, Ceylon, Penang, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan. Bly traveled using steamships and the existing railroad systems, which caused occasional setbacks, particularly on the Asian leg of her race. 

As a result of rough weather on her Pacific crossing, she arrived in San Francisco on January 21, two days behind schedule. However, after the newspaper owner Pulitzer hired a private train to bring her home, she arrived back in New Jersey on January 25, 1890, at 3:51 pm.

Just over seventy-two days after her departure from Hoboken, Bly was back in New York. She had circumnavigated the globe, traveling alone for almost the entire journey. Bisland was, at the time, still crossing the Atlantic, only to arrive in New York four and a half days later.

Happy Star Wars Day!

Birthdays: Thomas Kinsella (1928), Amos Oz (1939), Kim Edwards (1958), Robin Cook (1940), George Will (1941), Don Wood (1945), Graham Swift (1949), David Guterson (1956), Kristin Harmel (1979)

Quote: “Words create conceptions and self-conceptions and ultimately nations. They can start and stop wars. They can wound and heal. Choosing words carefully is a moral responsibility.” – Amos Oz

Tip: Always carry a notebook or have a note app on your phone for those “brilliant idea” moments.

Jumpstart: You’ve been tapped to be the new Grim Reaper. You’re presented with the cape, the scythe, everything. Do you take the job? Why or why not? If you don’t, what happens to you?

Assistant Museum Director Justine Carter is enticed by the opportunity to sift through vintage treasures from a recently deceased actress. When a snowstorm strands her with the woman’s surly son and the much-too-real ghost, she’s drawn into their unresolved emotional tug-of-war. Screenwriter Jackson Maddox is eager to wrap up his mother’s affairs and escape the one-horse town where she grew up. Unloading old clothes takes an unwanted turn when the appealing historian discovers a path to identify the “famous” father his mom protected to her death. With Justine’s beloved museum job in jeopardy, she can’t afford the distractions of a rude / broken / fascinating man or his meddling, ghostly mother. Yet she can’t resist helping to solve the mystery of his paternity, even as an employment prospect beckons her to shake up her life and move to the big city.

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Birthdays: Novalis (1772), Jerome K. Jerome (1859), E.E. Smith (1890), Benjamin Spock (1903), Martha Grimes (1931), Esther Freud (1963),

Dr. Benjamin Spock was best known for his “Baby and Child Care” book

Quote: “It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do. There is no fun in doing nothing when you have nothing to do. Wasting time is merely an occupation then, and a most exhausting one. Idleness, like kisses, to be sweet must be stolen.” ― Jerome K. Jerome

Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do.” ― Benjamin Spock

 “You can’t be blocked if you just keep on writing words. Any words. People who get ‘blocked’ make the mistake of thinking they have to write good words.” – Martha Grimes

Tip: Learn to use “track changes” in your processing program. It’s what most editors and publishers rely on when editing your work.

Jumpstart: Look at a scenic picture. What is happening just out of sight?

Birthdays: Joseph Addison (1672), James Ford Rhodes (1848), Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881), Elizabeth Marie Pope (1917), Joseph Heller (1923), Bobbie Ann Mason (1940), Karen Thompson Walker (1980)

James Ford Rhodes won the 1918 Pulitzer Prize for History for “History of the Civil War, 1861-1865”

Elizabeth Pope received a Newbery Honor for “The Perilous Guard”

Quote: “The enemy is anybody who’s going to get you killed, no matter which side he is on. It doesn’t make a damned bit of difference who wins the war to someone who’s dead.” – Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“Words, when well chosen, have so great a force in them, that a description often gives us more lively ideas than the sight of things themselves.” – Joseph Addison

Tip: Don’t use fancy fonts, weird characters, or unusual symbols in your manuscript unless absolutely necessary.

Jumpstart: You’re at a conference and sit at a table with seven strangers whom you hit it off with, although the talk seems a bit odd to you at times. You shrug it off as you are having the best time you’ve had yet. Then you realize you’re at the wrong banquet. What do you do?