A Novel Creation www.WatersWords.com

New Year Resolutions? Not this year. Oh, sure, I still have goals for 2016. I have a list of new habits I hope to form and old ones I hope to leave behind. Some are personal. Like getting in shape physically. That one always makes the list. I recently read up on the Pareto Principle –sometimes known as the 80/20 Principle. The basic premise is that 20% of our time and resources yields 80% of our reward. Or something like that. It’s about working smarter. It’s about putting effort into what works. I get it. Writing is my business. It’s what I do. If I truly view it that way then I need to examine how to be more productive. Looking at the 80/20 Principle has led me to a new take on forming New Year’s resolutions. I call it my “To-Do and Not-To-Do” list. It is based on how I spend my time and what that means in my life. To do, or not to do….that is the question. For example, social media is a great way to connect with friends and family, but it can suck away precious time ...

Joy to the World! I’ve been thinking about the message of hope we seek in what we call the Christmas story. The real story of hope is not that a baby was born in a manger. The real story is that God came to earth so that our relationship to Him—our relationship with Him could be restored. "Peace on earth, good will to men." We read daily of wars and shootings –of evil slinking through our streets and attacking us from all sides. We see our leaders in government making poor decisions to save seats in congress and our judges appointed by presidents making unilateral decisions for us all without our voice. We quiver and cringe. Peace on earth? We shake our heads and sadly whisper, “Not here.” But Peace did come to earth and His name is Jesus. Not the peace perhaps as we would have designed it. Not a peace that blankets the earth like a soft white snow on Christmas. We probably would have made peace look like a Disney movie with singing and birds flitting ...

Our honeymoon was a brief stay on a beach in Florida. Not as spectacular for us as you might think since we lived just across the state. He was nineteen and I was eighteen. We thought we were pretty grown up. We weren’t. We grew together over time, learning about life and love and balancing college and work. Eventually, we learned about parenting and trusting God with our daily lives. But all of that is another story. This Christmas I Spend With You The song was old. I don’t remember where I first heard it. The lyrics were something like, “Mark this holiday; mark it well. Note how perfectly right it fell. All my wishes at last have come true, because this Christmas I spend with you.” I could look up the words if I wanted to, but they may be different than I remember and I don’t want to spoil the mood. We were married one week before Christmas. The pianist couldn’t find the music to that special song, so we had her play “The Twelfth of Never,” and “Bridge Over Troub...

Gear up! Put things in motion! Get in tune with your writing! Those are the “cheerleading words” I say to myself this time of year. The New Year will soon be upon us. In a few weeks many of us will draft a list of resolutions –resolving to change bad habits or create new good ones. The purpose of this post is to help think through appropriate writing goals for 2016. Consistency Trumps Fits and Starts One of the best habits to develop this year is to write on a consistent basis. Some people think they write best “when the mood hits” them. Mood is important, but writing on a regular basis goes a long way to summon the mood. Let me offer an example of what I mean. When I was working on my Masters thesis, I lugged my notebooks and file folders around wherever I went so that I could work on the writing of the manuscript when the chance arose or my mood to “dig in” hit me. I did a lot of lugging and very little writing. One day, I came across an article written by ...