by Debra Hewitt, author of The Celebration Journal

For some of you, goal-setting may be the most challenging part of your planning. You don't fall into that group of people who've already identified projects they need to accomplish in the coming quarter and can easily describe what they hope to achieve. This part of the system leaves you stymied. You stare at the blank space where you're supposed to record your goal and have no idea what to write. Nothing feels big enough to refer to as your goal. Or it feels too big and you hesitate to commit it to the page where it will live to mock you for your failure. You need to get over those feelings. By writing your goal every day you will be giving yourself permission to change your mind, to focus ...

by Rebecca Hewitt-Newson

I've been reflecting on what my hopes are for the new year. With a new baby, it's been hard to make goals like eat healthier, work out more, spend more time with friends. Here's what I've come up with.

My hope this year is to be okay with things as they are: ok with not getting enough sleep, ok with a messier house than I want, ok with not getting to run and workout as much as I want, ok with cooking whatever food I can get on the table for my family, ok when I make parenting mistakes 'cause I'm just too darn tired. 

I want to be content, instead of telling myself I should be able to do everything or, at least, as much as I am used to doing. No more guilting myself and "should"-ing myself. Gonna be free...

by Debra Hewitt

If you get discouraged while CHASING YOUR DREAM, remember to enjoy your small victories along the way. The journey may be long, but every step can be a celebration.

by Debra Hewitt, author of Chasing Your Dream

There are always plenty of voices around us and in our heads telling us why we can't do things, how bad the odds are, what obstacles we'll face. . . . I want to be a different kind of voice--one that empowers and inspires. 

Someone asked me a few weeks ago if I worried that people might read my book, quit their jobs to pursue their dreams, and then sue me when things don't work out. Of course, the answer is no, I don't worry about lawsuits since I'm not really offering financial or career advice. My questions guide people to find their own answers not adopt mine. But I do recognize the possibility that some readers might make reckless decisions. And I still don't think I needed to attach...

by Debra Hewitt, author of Chasing Your Dream

Am I reading too much? Is that a silly question? Can anyone read too much? We can watch too much television, play too many video games, eat too much, talk too much, exercise too much, but reading? That's a super good-for-you activity like learning. Who ever said, "You know, lately, I've been worrying that I'm learning too much?"

But I wonder. I'm constantly tempted by free books from my library or for my Kindle, and I seem to have adopted this attitude of mindless consumption. What's next? Must read.

For a couple of years I set pretty ambitious goals on Goodreads for the number of books I wanted to read, but one year I asked myself, "Am I reading too much . . . and writing too little...

For this month's theme of journal writing, we thought it would be fun to ask some writers to share excerpts from their journals and give us a peek into what writers think about writing. Fun for us. Maybe not so fun for them. One benefit of journal writing is that it puts us in touch with our private thoughts. But sharing them with the world? That can be just a little bit...terrifying! So the following posts will be anonymous (which required much less arm-twisting.) Hope you'll enjoy them anyway.  

On Staying Focused

Oh, the dailiness of work! If only it were possible to create a volume of work once a week. It's so hard for me to get motivated the next day. I wake up feeling like I don't want to do this again. And yesterday was a good day...

by Sharon Rawlette, author of The Feeling of Value

Whether you’re an aspiring or accomplished writer, you’ve likely had moments (or years at a time) when you’ve worried that you just didn’t have what it takes. I certainly have. I’m a very methodical and analytic person, and for a long time, I thought that these personality traits might prevent me from ever producing a compelling piece of creative writing. For a while, I was a professor of philosophy–a pretty good gig and in many ways well suited to my personality–but even as I enjoyed the steady income and impressive healthcare benefits, I worried that the analytical skills I was honing in my academic career were working against me in my literary endeavors....