---

Today I promise that I won't procrastinate: i.e., dawdle, delay, habitually put off doing something that should be done. Instead I will create: i.e., to bring into being; cause to exist; make, produce. What I mean is that I will write.
I won't clean out my purse-- even though it's full of old gum wrappers, slips of scribbled notes, shopping lists, and old make-up I never use because I'm always home in front of my computer.

Wild weather lashed Sydney and Keating puts heat on Labor and everyone is enjoying the Sydney Film Festival. In NSW I served the English Queen, but the film about serving the King is hugely enjoyable story whose first hour is engrossing to the point of ridiculousness. Obsluhoval jsem Anglickeho Krale; The first of the books about Alexander Litvinenko, DEATH OF A DISSIDENT BY Alex Goldfarb and Marina Litvinenko, lands Litvinenko Tried to Come to US

Writing It Real: Creating Poems from Life Experience.

It was not my original intent to spend so much time drinking at the Iceberg bar. In fact, it happened quite by accident.

I was in a state of flux... After my divorce, I found myself floundering around a bit. (Kind of like those whales that try to commit suicide on the beach. And everyone tries to push them back in the water, but they keep swimming back up on the sand.)

In my divorced state of mind, I began reading romance novels. The kind with words like “thrusting,” “bulging,” and “engorged.” I kept stacks of them piled next to my bed. And sopped up every word like chicken soup. I’m not ashamed of it; I craved romance. To me, raw sex in a dewy meadow was a fairy tale band-aid.

So how does an author end up with a romantic comedy book entitled: The Men’s Guide to the Women’s Bathroom? It seems like a trite twist of fate and although it’s taken me awhile to adjust, I’ve swallowed my pill. I know now that I’m not meant to have Fabio pose for my cover.

I’m not meant to stand among the Titans of bodice ripping fiction. I’m not meant to have Dave Eggers ringing me at all hours of the night to say, “I wrote A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius,” to which I’d reply, “Well, I wrote The Greatest Love Story of all Time.” To which he’d reply, “Yes, I’ve heard about you. I want you to join a club for American Novelists. We meet at Starbuck’s on Wednesday nights. Tom Wolfe will be there, so get there early, because he eats all the poppy seed muffins.”

No. My fate lies not in The Greatest Love Story of all Time, but among my fellow sisters-in-arms. In a place we all know and love. The inner sanctum. The Women’s Bathroom. It’s been said by people smarter than me, the first rule of thumb is to “Write What You Know.” Thus, many novelists write stories based on their own lives. They create characters similar to themselves with each bittersweet detail revealing the complex fabric of their American experience. I have to admit that the fabric of my American experience was somewhat, well, plain. I’d grown up in Texas and gone to public school. (Could I pen a tearjerker about Budweiser keg parties and cheese Doritos?)
If only I’d climbed Mount Everest…won the Tour de France after beating cancer… fished the waters off Gloucester, Massachusetts in a tiny boat during a perfect storm.
If only I was Hillary Clinton…

'If' by rrdayud kipilng
If you can keep yuor haed wehn all aobut you
Are lnsiog thiers and bianmlg it on you,
If you can turst yusrleof wehn all men dbout you,
But mkae alanowlce for tehir duontbig too;
If you can wiat and not be tierd by wntiaig,
Or bineg leid auobt, don't dael in leis,
Or benig htead, don't gvie way to hiatng,
And yet don't look too good, nor tlak too wsie:
If you can darem - and not mkae dmaers yuor msater,
If you can tihnk - and not mkae ttghhous yuor aim;
If you can meet wtih Tpumirh and Dtseasir
And traet thsoe two iortmspos jsut the smae;
If you can baer to haer the trtuh you've spoekn
Tesiwtd by kevnas to mkae a tarp for floos,
Or wtcah the tinhgs you gvae yuor lfie to, breokn,
And sotop and bluid 'em up wtih wron-out tolos:
If you can mkae one haep of all yuor wininngs
And rsik it all on one trun of ptich-and-tsos,
And lsoe, and sratt aiagn at yuor bniiggnens
And nveer baerth a wrod aoubt yuor lsos;
If you can froce yuor hraet and nrvee and sniew
To svree yuor trun lnog afetr tehy are gnoe,
And so hlod on wehn trehe is nhontig in you
Epxcet the Wlil whcih syas to tehm: "Hlod on!"
If you can tlak wtih crdwos and keep yuor vturie,
Or wlak wtih kngis - nor lsoe the cmmoon tcuoh,
If nheeitr feos nor liovng fdriens can hrut you,
If all men cunot wtih you, but nnoe too mcuh;
If you can flil the uigrnonvfig mnuite
Wtih stxiy snceods' wotrh of dinstace run,
Yuros is the Etrah and envyeirthg taht's in it,
And - whcih is mroe - you'll be a Man, my son!
Rrdayud Kipilng