The Fabulist Flash

Issue 64

2006 Wall Calendar

In This Issue:

1. This Week
2. Are You Making it Across the Pool?
3. Harness the Power of Words in Your Life
4. Achieving Your Writing Goals
5. About The Fabulist Flash

1. This Week

We're coming to the end of another year. Where has the time gone? Has 2005 been productive for you? Have you achieved all your goals? Has the year exceeded your expectations?

Whatever answers come to mind for these questions, it's that time of year again for The Fabulist Flash to help you explore your goals. For the next few issues, the articles and ideas presented here will be dedicated to goal setting.

The end of a year and the beginning of the next is symbolic. It's cathartic to reflect on our past year, to take advantage of all the holiday celebrations to celebrate our accomplishments and to mourn the hardships and defeats. With this personal reflection comes a better understanding of ourselves and our motivations. Through celebrating the good and mourning the bad we clear some space in our crowded heads and this allows room to make plans for the New Year that's just around the corner.

For me, 2005 has been a whirlwind. All the goal setting and visualization I did at the end of 2004 created many new realities. The biggest is that my first book is written, published, and now out in the world. I'm doing radio, television, and print interviews almost everyday now. I'm booking speaking and signing events for 2006 and trying to figure out how to keep writing through all this activity.

What have you accomplished in 2005 that you're proud of? What's your greatest disappointment from the past year? Which have you spent more time on, celebrating the great or morning the bad? How will you spend your time in 2006?

To kick off this series on goal setting, Joanne Seiff shares her reflections on becoming a full-time freelancer in Jumping in the Deep End and Swimming Across the Pool, Barbara White explains how to Harness the Power of Words in Your Life, and Shery Ma Belle Arrieta-Russ offers 3 Tips to Achieve Your Writing Goals

Tomorrow Friday, December 2, 2005, is the official release party of 50 Fabulous Gay-Friendly Places to Live at Las Vegas Paper Doll (The Holsum Lofts Building, 231 W. Charleston Blvd. #130, Las Vegas, NV) between 6-10 PM. This First Friday-Las Vegas event will include food, Champaign, special gifts, and more. Hope to meet you there.

Until next week,

Gregory
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Gregory A. Kompes is a writer, photographer, professional speaker and author of 50 Fabulous Gay-Friendly Places to Live. Learn more about Gregory and his work at www.kompes.com

2. Are You Making it Across the Pool?

Jumping in the Deep End and Swimming Across the Pool
by Joanne Seiff

The first time I told someone that I wanted to be a writer, I was embarrassed—because I thought writers were flakey. Then, I realized I had two sets of goals. There were my conscious goals, and then there were these other, secret goals. On the surface, I'd never admitted to this goal of becoming a writer. Inside, there was a writer waiting to jump into the writing world.

First, I had to admit that those secret goals were OK and accept them as realistic desires, even if they weren’t practical at the time. Once I accepted those goals, I had to act on them. Phew! That was the hard part.

For a while, my freelance writing was a nice bonus, I was proud of it, but never expected it to take over my life. Then, I ended up in a situation where the writing came first. I moved to a small college town when my husband took a job as a professor. I couldn't find full-time work that looked like it would be fulfilling. I focused on the writing. I became a freelancer.

Over a year, I wrote for a foodservice newsprint, a hospice newsletter, and a regional magazine. I sold essays to fiber arts magazines and wrote a feature with recipes about making jam. I did living history education at a museum and promotional writing for the university biology department. I sent out book proposal and agent queries. It all got to be too much. I was a writer and an educator. I’d published things. I achieved my original goal, but why did I feel so harried and unsatisfied?

Establishing goals feels like what your parents did to you as a kid in the swimming pool. You're just learning to swim, and your parent says, "Just swim to here. Just swim a little farther…" At the same time, Mom or Dad steps backward so you swim farther and farther. The goals move just as your parent moved all the way to the pool's edge. Making goals forces me to push myself, to evaluate what I want to write and why. Do I see myself writing greeting cards? Educational materials? Gas fireplace manuals? Knitting designs?

I can't pretend that I have the answers. The "goal posts" move as I evaluate the success of each experience. I think about the business issues with each freelance job. Did I earn enough money? Did they pay promptly? Was it a pleasant, collegial experience? How was my work edited? Did I enjoy the research and the topic itself? Do I like writing about this topic? Was it challenging? Interesting? Bizarre? I decide whether I want to take this job again, if it's offered to me. Even with my careful evaluation, sometimes the financial reasons to take a job win out over my personal enjoyment.

As a freelancer, no one sets goals for me. I don't have a quarterly review with a manager. I have to decide where and when to submit materials, and whether to continue working with a particular editor or not. This can be a burden, or it can be a blessing in disguise. I burden myself with more work than any boss would give me. Yet, I'm blessed with being able to control everything myself -my work space, my holiday schedule and my family life.

Facing a long-term goal (like becoming a full-time writer) on your own can be like being thrown into the pool's deep end on a cold day. Yet, when you review your goals and accomplishments later, you are like that kid who's learned to swim. You struggle, swallow a little water, but with hard work, you make it all the way across the pool.

About the Author
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Joanne Seiff is a writer, knitwear designer and educator. Her work can be found in knitting magazines, conservation and organic farming publications and in art galleries. The Kentucky Foundation for Women awarded Joanne a grant to work on a book, Knitting is Good for You, about knitting as it affects intellectual growth and health. You can find links to Joanne Seiff’s writing, knitwear designs, and handspun yarn on her website, www.joanneseiff.com.

3. Harness the Power of Words in Your Life

An important key to success in life is to understand the power of words
by Barbara White

Thousands of words pour out of our mouths each day as our thoughts, opinions, judgments and beliefs are freely expressed. Often, however, we are oblivious to the positive or negative effect these words have on ourselves and the people around us.

Words have tremendous power. Words give out energy and a message which creates a reaction in others. Everything you say produces an effect in the world. Whatever you say to someone else will produce some kind of an effect in that person. We are constantly creating something, either positive or negative with our words.

Reaction to our words often returns to us often in a multiplied form. For example if I speak words of judgment to a person they will judge me back, probably with more intensity as their judgment has the pain or anger caused by my words attached to it Words of kindness and acceptance will generate a warm and appreciative reaction in a person. That person’s response to the words will be stronger because it will have the emotion created by the words attached to it. The power of words has a ripple effect in our life and those around us.

Recently I came across the work of Dr Emoto, and his studies on water crystals. He took samples of water, froze them and took photographs of the water crystals. He then wrote words on vials of water taken from the same source. The crystals formed in the vials which had positive words, such as love and gratitude, were beautiful. However the crystals in the vials with negative words such as hate and evil were very different, and the water didn’t even form crystals in some instances. Experiments were done using words from different languages, and also by the scientists having no knowledge of what the words meant. The results were similar. More information can be found at http://www.whatthebleep.com/crystals or by watching the movie "What The Bleep Do We Know". Although I find the concepts of quantum physics difficult to grasp, the findings of this study on water crystals has had a profound impact on me. The human body is known to be composed of up to ninety percent water. If words had such a significant impact on water crystals, then what is the impact of positive and negative words to our bodies?

An important key to success in life is to understand the power of words. A word is a thought eternalized. Our thoughts do have a great effect on us even though they are internal. What we think effects the way we live our life, it effects our emotions, our attitudes and our behavior. A thought spoken, however, has even more power. It can never be taken back; it is out of our mouth and will have an effect. Our words have even more power than our thoughts because they not only affect ourselves, but the people and the world around us.

Successful people take control of their words, rather than letting their words control them. They are more conscious of their thoughts and words and the power they unleash. Successful people understand that they need to speak positively rather than negatively in order to see success. Successful people are characterized by the words that they speak. They know the importance of speaking words that will build self-esteem and confidence, build relationships and build possibilities. They speak words of affirmation, encouragement, love, acceptance and appreciation.

To see more personal success, the words that we speak need to be in alignment with what we want to see being produced in our life -- our vision and our dreams. Your words can determine your destiny. Even more importantly, your words can make a positive difference on the people you interact with every day. Before you speak ask yourself: Is what I am about to say going to uplift the hearer? Will it inspire, motivate, and create forward momentum for them? Will it dissolve fear and create safety and trust? Will I create a positive or negative ripple effect by speaking out these words? Let‘s be determined to unleash the power of words for positive change.

About the Author
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Barbara White is a speaker and motivational trainer. Visit her site: Living Beyond Better

4. Achieving Your Writing Goals

3 Tips to Achieve Your Writing Goals
by Shery Ma Belle Arrieta-Russ

1. Make your goals achievable.

By achievable, we mean realistic and attainable. You might unconsciously have set a goal even others will have a hard time achieving, even if they had the means and the time to do so.

Here's what you can do: break down your goals into small, realistic goals set against reasonable time frames. Oftentimes, you'll achieve your bigger goals if you work on achieving the smaller goals leading to those. The important thing is making your goals as realistic and as achievable as you can.

2. Devise a feasible plan.

You know what you want, but do you know how to get what you want? Do you need technical or artistic training to achieve your goals? Or perhaps further studies? Do you have a set plan of action that will lead to the achievement of your goals? What things, both tangible and intangible, do you need to aid you in reaching your goals?

Take a moment to sit down and list the things you need and make your action plan. This is a good time to break them down into small, realistic goals and then tackle them one day at a time!

3. Resist spreading yourself too thinly.

Sometimes, it's better to work on one goal at a time, rather than doing and shooting for so many all at the same time. Work on so many goals at one given time and you'll find out you're nowhere near achieving even one goal. You won't be able to focus your full energy on one goal.

Prioritize your goals and start with either your top priority or your most realistic goal. You'll discover you're able to do more and achieve more using this approach.

About the Author
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Shery is the creator of WriteSparks! - a software that generates over 10 *million* Story Sparkers for Writers. Download WriteSparks! Lite for free - http://writesparks.com.

5. About The Fabulist Flash

ISSN: 1554-0804

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The Fabulist Flash
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Make plans now to attend the 2006 Las Vegas Writer's Conference March 30-April 2, 2006, in Las Vegas, Nevada.