Sources: U.S. drone strike kills important Taliban commander

WANA, Pakistan (Reuters) - A U.S. drone strike killed a key Taliban commander, his deputy and eight others in northwest Pakistan, intelligence sources and tribal leaders said Thursday, deaths that could substantially alter the power balance in the Taliban heartland of Waziristan.

Maulvi Nazir Wazir, also known as Mullah Nazir, was killed on Wednesday night when missiles struck a mud house in South Waziristan, near the Afghan border, intelligence sources and residents said.

He had survived at least one previous drone attack and was wounded weeks earlier in a bomb attack believed to have been launched by Taliban rivals.

His key commanders and his deputy, Ratta Khan, were also killed in the attack at Angoor Adda, near the provincial capital of Wana, sources said.

Nazir had expelled foreign militants from his area, favored attacking American forces in Afghanistan and had signed non-aggression pacts with the Pakistani military in 2007 in 2009. That put him at odds with some other Pakistan Taliban commanders, but earned him a reputation as a "good" Taliban among some in the Pakistan military.

Nazir's successor was announced in front of a crowd of thousands at his funeral, a witness said. People will be watching closely to see if fellow Wazir tribesman Salahud Din Ayubi continues with Nazir's policies.

The military has a large base in Wana, where Nazir and his men were based. Nazir presided over an uneasy peace between the militants and the army there, but the truce was endangered by the military's alliance with the United States and drone strikes, a military officer said recently.

"The (drone) program is making things very difficult for us. Nazir is the sole remaining major militant leader willing to be an ally," he said.

"If he decides to side with (Pakistan Taliban leader) Hakimullah, thousands of fighters will come to the frontlines against the Pakistani military. It is in our interest to keep him neutral, if not on our side, because then we can direct our resources against anti-state militants with much greater efficiency."

PRAYERS FOR "OUR HERO"

Militants have launched a string of attacks in Pakistan in recent months, including shooting dead 16 aid workers and an attack by multiple suicide bombers on the airport in the northern city of Peshawar.

Residents said the main market in Wana shut down on Thursday to mark Nazir's death. The were calls over loudspeakers for prayers for his soul.

"The tribesmen are very grieved at his death as he was our hero. He had expelled all the foreign militants from our villages and towns and given real freedom to our people," a local shopkeeper in Wana bazaar, Siraj Noor Wazir, said.

Foreign militants, particularly Uzbeks, are disliked in some parts of the Pakistani tribal areas because of their perceived brutality towards civilians.

Nazir was wounded in the market in a bombing in November, widely believed to be a result of his rivalries with other Taliban commanders. Six others were killed in the same attack.

Both the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban draw support from ethnic Pashtuns, who live on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border. Rivalry between militant factions often reflects old rivalries between Pashtun tribes.

Shortly after the bombing, Nazir's Wazir tribe told the Mehsud tribe, related to Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud, to leave the area. Hakimullah Mehsud's men frequently target the Pakistani army.

The army has clawed back territory from the Taliban since launching a military offensive in 2009. North Waziristan, along the Afghan border, is now the key Pakistan Taliban stronghold.

Pakistan's ally the United States is eager for it to push further forward into North Waziristan before NATO troops begin drawing down in Afghanistan in 2014 but the military says it needs to consolidate its gains.

Senior U.S. officials have frequently charged that some elements within Pakistan's security services retain ties to some Taliban commanders because they wish to use the Taliban to counter the influence of archrival India.

Four men in a car were killed in North Waziristan in a separate drone strike, local residents said. Their identity was not immediately known.

Intensified U.S. drone strikes have killed many senior Taliban leaders, including the former leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud, in 2009.

The strikes dramatically increased when U.S. President Barack Obama took office. There were only five drone strikes in 2007. The number of strikes peaked at 117 in 2010 before declining to 46 last year.

Data collected by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism say that between 2,600-3,404 Pakistanis have been killed by drones, of which 473-889 were reported to be civilians.

Rights groups say that some residents are so afraid of the strikes they don't want to leave their homes.

"People of Wazir tribe are mourning Nazir's death but they are reluctant to attend his funeral because of fears of another drone attack," one resident said.

Civilian casualties are difficult to verify. Foreign journalists must have permission from the military to visit the tribal areas along the Afghan border.

Taliban fighters also often seal off the sites of drone strikes immediately so Pakistani journalists cannot see the victims.

Some Pakistanis say the drone strikes are an infringement of sovereignty and have called for a halt. Others, including some residents of the tribal areas, say they are killing Taliban commanders who have terrorized the local population.

The insecurity will be a key issue in elections scheduled for this spring. The nuclear-armed nation of 180 million has a history of military coups, but these polls should mark the first time one elected civilian government hands power to another.

(Additional reporting by Saud Mehsud in Dera Ismail Khan, Jibran Ahmad in Peshawar, and Mehreen Zahra-Malik and Katharine Houreld in Islamabad; Writing by Katharine Houreld; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/u-drone-strike-kills-important-taliban-commander-sources-052339677.html

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Kicked off Facebook, boy creates social network

Grom Social Inc.

Eleven-year-old Grom creator Zachary Marks says on the site that he looked for a "kid's social network that was safe and cool. I did not find any that looked interesting to me. They were all childish."

By Ben Weitzenkorn, TechNewsDaily

If you can't join it, create your own.

That's the attitude one Florida preteen ran with after his parents banned him from using Facebook. Instead of begging or slamming doors when his account was deactivated, the 11-year-old launched his own social network tailored specifically to children.

Grom Social founder Zachary Marks had a Facebook account for roughly a week despite being two years too young to join the site, having lied about his age to create an account. And when his parents discovered that he may have been engaging in risky online activities, they pulled the plug.

"I spent all my time on the computer chatting with friends. Then, I made mistakes," Marks explained on the Grom Social About page. "One of my adult friends cursed and posted something inappropriate, and I cursed back. Also, I friend-requested grownups who I did not know. About a day later, my dad found out. He was really mad. I had to deactivate my account."

Marks said he wasn't interested in any existing, kid-friendly, social networks ? "They were all childish," he said ? so he set out to create one for "Groms," a slang term for young surfers that he repurposed to mean something close to "precocious kid."

In order to keep kid members safe, only parents and parent-approved adults can join Grom Social. Parents of kid members are kept up to date on their youngster's online activities via email. The site also has a built-in language filter to keep the expletives from flying straight into kids' virgin eyes.

Grom Social is also compliant with COPPA, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, a controversial law aimed at keeping kids safe online that some argue is ineffective and unconstitutionally limits children's First Amendment rights.

Under COPPA, websites, apps and plug-ins are not allowed to collect information from children less than 13 years old without their parent's express consent. The burden of verification, however, simply isn't worth it to most mainstream social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Foursquare, so they ban members under 13.

To date, Grom Social has almost 7,000 members and is open to users under 15 in the United States and Canada.

From Instagram to Twitter, we all found new ways to stay connected this year. But what will be big on the Web in 2013? Buzzfeed's Matt Stopera shares his picks, including celebrity comebacks on Twitter, Facebook's new Poke app, and Cinemagram.

Copyright 2013 TechNewsDaily, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://digitallife.today.com/_news/2013/01/02/16307382-kicked-off-facebook-pre-teen-creates-his-own-social-network?lite

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MFA Nugget: The Writing Teacher as Student | The Artist's Road

MONTPELIER, VERMONT ? It can be a bit trite when we hear instructors say they love to teach because they learn so much from their students. If you?re learning from us, we students can say, why are we paying you? But as someone who has also been an instructor, I know this can be true should the instructor permit it to happen. And it can lead to a greater educational experience for teacher and student.

A Master of Fine Arts degree is, in the field of creative writing instruction, what is known as a ?terminal degree?; in other words, it is a credential that certifies you to teach at the university level. It is hardly all that is needed, of course; many students here in the MFA in Writing program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts would love to be university instructors someday, and our instructors are quick to point out that you also need teaching experience and extensive publishing credits before that dream can possibly be fulfilled.

But it was no surprise that a graduating student lecture here on teaching writing, followed by a faculty discussion on the topic, was well attended, despite the fact that we had to be in our seats at 9:15 am on New Year?s Day morning. I won?t speculate as to how many of those attending the lecture were a wee bit hungover.

The volume of information conveyed over that two-hour period is too extensive to include here, but a recurring theme related to instructor-student interaction was concern among attendees?many of whom are teaching writing in various capacities outside of a university setting?that they won?t have all of the answers. I have certainly harbored that concern.

One of our VCFA instructors?I will not include his name here because his comment was made in the intimacy of a classroom discussion?shared how insecure he was when he began teaching many years ago. He would qualify his statements, he said, always suggesting that he might not have all of the answers, driven in part by his dislike of pompous instructors who seemed to believe they knew everything. ?My mistake was to bring my insecurities into the classroom,? he said. ?The key was to find the right balance between arrogant asshole and apologetic weenie.? Let me say, as someone who has experienced his pedagogical style, he has found that balance.

One thing that struck me was another instructor saying how she gravitates toward teaching classes where the students were hungry to learn, as opposed to attending because of a requirement. The graduating student lecture had focused on teaching English Composition to college freshmen; at many schools such a course is a first-semester requirement for many or all students.

I found myself reflecting on my own experience as a teacher. In every setting in which I have taught, I realized, it has been to adults who had chosen to be there, often at significant expense and/or inconvenience. An enthusiastic and worldly collection of students makes teaching easy and inspiring. It makes it easy to learn from the students, if I can return to the observation at the opening of this post. I understand why that instructor would choose such courses, but I found myself wondering how I might handle that freshman composition class, facing a collection of faces bearing the resentment of lost time they?d prefer to spend in other ways.

I know many readers of The Artist?s Road are teachers in various ways, from universities to individual instruction, and of course all of us have been students.? I?d welcome your thoughts on this interconnection between instructor and student.

Source: http://artistsroad.wordpress.com/2013/01/02/mfa-nugget-the-writing-teacher-as-student/

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10 Things to Know for Today

Please check the URL for proper spelling and capitalization. If you're having trouble locating a destination on Yahoo!, try visiting the Yahoo! homepage or look through a list of Yahoo!'s online services.

Please try Yahoo Help Central if you need more assistance.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/10-things-know-today-101340019.html

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Facebook security glitch exposes users' New Year's Eve messages

17 hrs.

Rosa Golijan , NBC News

Whew! Facebook saved countless users from?New Year's Eve humiliation ... after initially exposing their private messages.

Facebook's Midnight Delivery app allows users to schedule private messages to wish friends a happy new year exactly when the clock strikes twelve. This is fantastic for those who intend on having a glass of Champagne or five as 2013 approaches, as it will let them schedule a polite message along the lines of?"Happy New Year, my beloved friends!" instead of drunk texting everyone ?something like?"I'm sooooo wasted right nowljskf and happy NEW YeAr! 2013 FTW! YOLO!" when the ball in Times Square drops.

Now great as Facebook's little app sounds, there was?just one problem: A security glitch temporarily exposed users' scheduled?messages to the general public.

The Next Web's?Robin Wauters reports that?when a user scheduled a Midnight Deliveries?message, he or she was presented with a confirmation page. Unfortunately, that confirmation page could be viewed by anyone who happens to guess its URL. "You couldn?t see who sent the messages," Wauters explains, "but you could see all the intended recipients, and the message itself, if you tweaked the URL the right way."

Those toying around with URLs could also see images which were attached to those scheduled massages. And to add insult to injury, they could also delete the correspondences.

"We are working on a fix for this issue now," a Facebook spokesperson told NBC News via email. "[A]nd in the interim we have disabled this app on the Facebook Stories site to ensure that no messages can be accessed."

Perhaps the more prudent approach, for the time being, is to just plain type out a "Happy New Year!!!!1!!!" text message and send it to everyone in your contacts at midnight.

Want more tech news?or interesting?links? You'll get plenty of both if you keep up with Rosa Golijan, the writer of this post, by following her on?Twitter, subscribing to her?Facebook?posts,?or circling her?on?Google+.

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/technolog/facebook-security-glitch-exposes-users-new-years-eve-messages-1C7755878

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PR Predictions for 2013 ? Communiqu? PR Blog

12.31.2012 | Holly Zuluaga

It is a new year and a time to look at what the future holds. Public Relations is constantly changing and evolving and this upcoming year is no different.

At Communiqu? PR we are constantly monitoring and keeping on top of the latest trends and predictions. While looking at PR predictions for 2013, I came across two interesting articles that suggest what is in store for the new year. A Ragan.com article written by Sandra Fathi outlines ?6 PR and Social Media Predictions for 2013,? and another post from Business News Daily looks at, ?25 Big Ideas, Trends, and Predictions for 2013.? Both articles offer some insightful predictions and I?ve selected some of my favorites below:

• LinkedIn is the new Facebook. In 2013 more companies, particularly B2B, will leverage LinkedIn to connect with current and potential customers and influencers in their particular space. We helped one of our clients, Attachmate, leverage LinkedIn and have seen great results and a steady number of followers. We?ve noticed that particularly for B2B, this is one of the fastest growing social media outlets. It is a ripe platform for businesses to connect and share information. The new features that allow people to ?endorse? is great for businesses and employees. Fathi says that ?As adoption and activity on LinkedIn surge, journalists will spend more time using the platform for research, identifying sources and breaking stories.?
• Social media spreads to government. Social media is not just for consumers and businesses. More and more government agencies are leveraging social media platforms to communicate messages and connect with citizens. Fathi uses the example of the Israel Defense Force and Hamas military using Twitter to communicate to international government officials and the general public about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Additionally, the 2012 United States presidential election set records for Twitter activity. Twitter is already seen as a news source for citizens searching for information from media, but in 2013 government will have an increased voice.
• Traditional journalists are restored. Journalism has seen a dramatic change with the birth of blogging and social media. The public demands information that is fast and easy to access. Traditional journalists have been fighting this battle and trying to adapt ever since.? However, with the amount of factually inaccurate information circulating through social media and blogs in an attempt to be speedy, viewers are eager to revert back to a reliable news source. When Twitter first became hot, I was working as a reporter and always frightened to provide too many details on Twitter or Facebook until I?d confirmed. Now, it is not uncommon for news organizations to report scanner traffic via social media or report information and note it has not been confirmed. This can lead to rumors.
• PR goes mobile. More and more consumers and journalists are using their phones as their primary news source and primary means of communications. In 2013 PR professionals not only need to craft pitches that are concise and easily readable via social media or on a mobile device, PR pros also need to think about news content that is mobile-friendly.
• Pictures are a must. We?ve written in the past about how powerful infographics are, but in 2013, PR pros will continue to see the importance of images to tell a story. Fathi writes, ?All Things D reported that in August, smartphone users spent more time on Instagram than on Twitter for the first time since Instagram launched in 2010.? This is another indicator that pictures are taking over. When you are developing content, keep in mind what visual content you have to help tell the story.
• Brands will become publishers. Many organizations have already realized the benefits of having a blog, but in 2013, more brands will create additional content to help build thought leadership and credibility. Tips and how-to guides will start to crop up in company newsletters, blogs, etc. This also helps organizations with search.

Here at Communiqu? PR we are looking forward to this new year and everything that 2013 will bring. What are you predictions for 2013? We?d love to hear from you!

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Source: http://www.communiquepr.com/blog/?p=4870

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25 Writer Resolutions For 2013 (And Beyond) ? terribleminds: chuck ...

?

Tis that time of the year when the year?s just born ? pushed from its temporal womb, squalling and wriggling. That means it?s?also time to put forward a list of upgraded attitudes and mission statements for the year ahead. Some of these are for me. Maybe some of them are for you.

I don?t buy that we should rely on a single day to cleave to shame and fix mistakes ? but I think the first of the year is a nice temporal marker to push ourselves to re-examine, to evolve, and to keep asserting our ability to kick as much ass as we are able and allowed.

With that said, let?s get to it.

1. Level Up, Ding

Up your game. Always. With every paragraph, every chapter, every script scene and blog post, we should be looking to level up our work and ourselves. ?We level up, we gain new weapons in our fight against Shitty Writing (?I HAVE THE ANCIENT SWORD OF THE HAIKU MASTERS, IT IS +1 AGAINST RUN-ON-SENTENCES?) and we face new challenges in the road ahead (?NOW I MUST DEFEAT THE LITERARY AGENT IN BATTLE USING NOTHING BUT A QUERY LETTER AND SOME BAD-ASS DANCE MOVES?). We must never sit on our hands. We must pull our boots out of the mud. We must move forward and improve ourselves and our work.?We must better our shit.

2. Let Art And Entertainment Have A Little Creative Love Baby

Once upon a time I thought,?my goal as a writer is first to entertain. And that remains true, to a point ? but the more I think about it, the more I realize ?entertainment? is a lowest common denominator. If my only true goal was?to entertain, I could achieve that by uploading a series of YouTube videos where various things hit me in the dick (Frisbee! Coconut! Bowling ball! Charging goat! A goat driving a lawnmower!). A good story connects beyond mere amusement; its tendrils sink into deeper earth, winding around the human heart. Let?s aspire to do more than merely entertain. Let us reach for meaning, for connection, let us present stories with purpose and power. (Or, at the very least, we could write porn. HEY PORN COUNTS SHUT UP.)

3. Cleave To The Human Condition

It?s oh-so-easy to get lost in all the fiddly bits of storytelling. All the plotty twists, all the crafty and conjurous worldbuilding, all the clever turns of phrase, all the wonderful ways to describe a?person?s naughty bits (dangle rod love canal wizard?s wand swamp grotto turgid shillelagh lusty sex-pond). Thing is, we write stories for one reason: to talk about people. And we?read stories because we want to?read about people. Every story is a Rosetta Stone attempting to translate the human condition to the humans gazing upon it with knitted-brow and quizzical sneer. When we as writers drift away from that, we lose what?s powerful about stories: we lose the character. Stories are written by people, for people, about people. I mean, at least until the day comes when they?re written by robots, for robots, about murdering all the meatbags.

4. Face The Fear, Best The Beast

(Man, if those aren?t some of the lyrics to You?re The Best Around, then the 1980s has failed me.) Let every tale be a cage match between you and something that scares you. Death, life, rats, clowns, disease, lost love, parasites, credit ratings, God, Satan, the apocalypse, being awake during surgery, Kentucky, the dark, wizards, tiny children with straight razors in their jam-smeared hands, otters ? find a thing that frightens you and write about it. Mine that struggle. Writing with that measure of genuine of?emotion behind it creates a palpable effect: the prose grows stronger, the story becomes richer. Think of it as upgrading the story?s?megapixels. Every page contains so much more when you write with passion and authenticity.

5. Have A Fucking Point

Every story is an argument. Have the argument on the page. Give it to the audience. Make the case for why love conquers all ??or why love can suck a big quivering tube of elf dick. It?s not about being preachy; it?s about threading your fiction with theme and meaning.

6. Embrace The Unanswerable

On the other hand, just as sometimes we go into fiction with an answer already in mind, other times we approach the page with an unanswered question hanging over our heads like a reaper?s sickle.?The ending of the tale, uncertain ? its conclusion both in terms of?event and?theme existing as a Schroedinger?s Cat inside the narrative box, the outcome ever in flux. Can love save the day? What is love? Will human monstrousness win out over selflessness? How do I remove this skin tag? Do bears?really shit in the woods or do they share a series of secret bear toilets?

7. Stop Letting Passion Ferment Into Poison

Passion can be a paintbrush ? or it can be a gun. It can be a warm cup of go-go juice or an icy syringe jacked up with blowfish toxin. Passion is a horse that either carries you racing across the sunlit plains or stomps you bloody into the mud. Creators are passionate people; they have to be. Passion drives us to do what we do. But that passion easily goes septic and next thing you know, instead of pointing it toward our work and our desires, we?re instead letting it fuel some bullshit argument or be the rope that binds us into some crass emotional tangle. Writing the next great story from the deep of your heart is so much more valuable than EGADS SOMEONE IS WRONG ON THE INTERTUBES I WILL EXPEND MY CREATIVE ENERGON CUBES ASSERTING MY SUPERIORITY.

8. Lock The Bastards In A Box

We will forever meet those who don?t believe in us, whose apparent goal is to hold our heads underwater rather than teach us to swim. Those are our?bastards, and fuck every last one of those human speedbumps. Don?t engage. Shut them out. Close the door and lock it. Let this be the year we populate our lives with people who challenge us and help us be better, not punch us in the balls (or lady-parts) and leave us groaning and gasping in a pile of?canine excrement.

9. Read Widely

Our reading habits are creatures of comfort: we know what we like (urban fantasy novels where bad-ass were-dolphin girls wage war against a parliament of sexy demon-priests) and so we hew to those books we know will please us. But again, look beyond the boundaries of entertainment. As we challenge ourselves with our writing, so too should we seek similar challenge in our reading. Read that which you would not normally read. Seek new input. Don?t let your mind grow indolent and complacent, a sluggy psychic blob covered in mental Dorito dust.

10. Know More Shit, You Clod-Headed Ignorasaurus

If we are to assume that?write what you know has any value at all (it does, in a sense, and more on that in a moment), then we can also assume that it is our mission as?official penmonkeys to?know more shit. Your mission: learn more, read more, do more.

11. Dig Into The Dirt Of Your Own Experience

Let?s talk a little about that last one: ?do more.? When we write, we tend to write more effectively when we milk the udders of our own experience rather than come to the page cold and unaware. That?s not to say we must?literally write what we know ? otherwise, every story would be a biographical transcript. Rather, our experiences are filtered through the various?sieves and?strainers of fiction: we translate and teleport the events of our lives, finding those sensory moments, those essential elements (or elemental essentials), those core authentic ?truths.? What that means is: strive to bring yourself to the page. And further, it means to?do more. Have more experiences. Travel. Eat new foods. Try new things. Apply it to your fiction. (?Hey, honey, I went to a gangbang last night with a bunch of strangers. Don?t worry, it?s just me bringing?authenticity to my novel. Yes, I smell like lube: a detail for my fictions.?)

12. Find Comfort In Discomfort

Fuck safety. Jump, then stitch the parachute on the way down. Comfort is the enemy of good fiction. As an author, seek some measure of discomfort ? put it into your work, try new things, challenge yourself to take the difficult path because?that is the path that will yield greater reward. Hell, break a drinking glass and pepper your office chair with the shards so that you?re?experiencing constant enlightening buttock pain. *receives note from the official terribleminds lawyer* Oh, umm, wait, yeah, don?t do that last part. Just do the other things.

13. Find Opportunity In Change

The winds have shifted. The earth trembles beneath our feet. Genres warp and mash together. Age ranges for reading spawn hydra heads (Middle Grade! Young Adult! New Adult! Adult Zero! Pre-Adult! Post-Toddler! Geriatric Erotica!). The shift to digital is a change. The fact that big publishers are glomming onto big publishers and creating some kind of?drug-resistant super-mecha publisher-kaiju is a change. The rise of self-publishing is ? drum roll please ??a big-ass change. And more unseen changes are surely on the way in the coming year. Each change is bad for those who cannot adapt, and great for those who can. So, adapt. Find opportunity and challenge instead of difficulty and misery. Surf the turning tide.

14. Find Signal In Noise

We can either fill our lives with meaning, or bog it down with distraction. The latter is easier, frankly: it?s so much simpler to lose ourselves to the Internet or video games or stupid arguments or Russian elk porn. But a life of writing requires focus. It demands that we tune out the noise and zero in on the signal. Signal will save us. Noise will drown us.

15. Stop Pooping In The Temple

They say the body is a temple; mine is probably a back alley pawn shop. (?Want to buy a cassette player and an off-brand Samurai sword??) Just the same, I shouldn?t be savaging the architecture of my flesh with gross indolence and needless diet. The mind and the body are inextricably linked ? it?s time to stop dragging down the mind with the negligence of the body.

16. Stop Defining Yourself By What Other People Think

Everybody wants you to be something. Some people want you to be nothing. None of that matters. The tiger in the cage doesn?t think, ?The zookeeper wants me to wear this jaunty hat.? He just eats the zookeeper and then pees on that hat. Be the Most Awesomest You-Version that you want to be, and let everyone fall in line behind your ideals. Don?t fall in line behind theirs.

17. Love What You Write, Write What You Love

The thing about writing is, it?s easy to get caught up in work that isn?t ?for? us ? rocking out some freelance word count, or maybe in a pitch meeting you pitched something on a lark and under pressure (?Uhh, something-something astronaut family sitcom in a future world owned by robots who have not yet learned to love?) and you really don?t like the thing you pitched but now, here you are, writing it for money. You find it miserable and that misery translates.?It always translates. The miserable threads wind around each word like a choking vine or a pubic hair caught in your teeth. Here?s how to fix this: first, make sure to save projects Just For You. Write projects that speak to you. But you can also reverse that: you can bring your love to the project at hand even if that project is not one you enjoy. There?s always a way ?in.? Always an angle. Always a way forward that you don?t hate. Find that path through. You?ll feel better for it.

18. Be Inspired By All The Crazy Penmonkey Motherfuckers Out There

Jealousy is an ugly thing: it?s bitey like a plague monkey, empty like a mummy?s scrotum. The way we see other writers is sometimes through lenses smeared with the greasy unguent of envy, or worse, we think, ?They did it, but I can?t, and now I?m just going to lay down and take a thousand-year-nap on this pillow soggy with my tears.? ?Going forward, let your proper response to other writers be awe. Let it be?inspiration. Let the collective efforts of a thousand penmonkeys be the fist of wind that punches your sails.

19. Forge Partnerships In The Raw Metals Of Awesome

Time to get shut of the notion that we do this thing alone. The author is always the tip of the iceberg: beneath the hoarfrost waters is forever an unseen pyramid of supporters. Editors! Agents! Book designers! Artists! Other writers! This year, go out. Find one other person in your creative ecosystem. Press your two magic artist rings together ? bwing! ? and form a partnership. Use that creative energy ? and yes, sometimes, creative agitation ? to?be the fist of wind that? what? I already used that metaphor? Fine. Use that energy to?get shit done.

20. Create Before You Consume

We often gain our desire to tell stories from consuming the stories told by others. This often becomes our default mode: we read! We watch! We play! The problem is when it remains our default mode and we never switch tracks from?consumer to?creator. That?s not to say we shouldn?t still hungrily stuff our mind-mouths with the narrative meals cooked by others ? but there comes a time to give our own work that priority. Both in terms of time and in terms of regurgitating staid, tired tale-telling. Your story comes first. All other tales trail after.

21. Write Fiction Red In Tooth And Claw

Punch. Kick. Grab.?Bite. Fuck passivity. We don?t get to be paid penmonkeys and crackerjack creators by lying on the ocean floor like a bloated sea cucumber letting food glom onto his turd-blob body. You?re not a morbidly obese shut-in who can order opportunity?and?creativity from Amazon (delivered with Prime Shipping to your double-wide trailer!). You are shark. You are wolf. You are?shark-wolf hybrid with machete-flippers and fire-eyes and a deep and unabiding creative hunger. Creators must take aim at their goals. They must sniff out opportunity and stab it with their steely knives. You want that pound of flesh? You want your novel on shelves, your script on a screen? Move, motherfucker. Or get out the way.

22. Realize: Yesterday?s Gone And Tomorrow?s Too Late

Today is what you have, so use it. Don?t even?think about what you didn?t do yesterday. And fuck putting aside things for tomorrow. It?s today. It?s Right Goddamn Now ? a sharp dagger stuck in the pages and maps of this very moment. Grab the knife. Start cutting words off the block. Start arranging them into sentences, and start shoving those sentences together to make a story. Don?t look back. Don?t wait. Now is the only time you are promised. Now is the time to create.

23. Just Keep Swimming

Regret is for assholes. Hell, regret?is?an asshole ? a giant flappy asshole that works opposite as it should, vacuuming up instead of purging out, suctioning up optimism and motivation and light and also, the cat. (Poor cat.) It?s easy to get caught in this mode, to have the thought running laps in your head that says,?I fucked up, I did something wrong, that thing will haunt me. A query letter with a typo, some pissing match with another author, a book that nobody bought, a self-published tale with a cover so ugly it should be on trial for war crimes. Forget regret. Aim?to?repair. Seek?to?reclaim. (And other re- words!) Very little you do will mark you as a Permanent Dickhole or Forever Dumbshit provided you are earnest about moving forward and upping your game. Stop getting caught on the carousel of remorse. Stop turning in circles.

24. Fuck Good. Go Great.

Perfection is the enemy of the good. But does that mean we shouldn?t aspire to be better? Hell no. It doesn?t mean we can?t push ourselves and reach a little further. It damn sure doesn?t mean that we cannot seek to elevate that thing we do beyond the realm of merely ?good? and ? one hopes ? into the stratosphere of ?great.? (?THIS MONKEY NEEDS A PROPELLOR. THIS ICE CREAM NEEDS BACON! THIS BACON NEEDS CHOCOLATE! THIS TOASTER NEEDS A PINK FLOYD LASER LIGHT SHOW AND A BELT PUNCH AND THE INTERNET.?) I don?t know what makes something great. More of this? Less of that? A stronger flourish? A simpler elegance? Nobody knows. But that?s no reason not to try, is it?

25. Know Thyself

The biggest and bestest resolution going forward? Know who you are as a writer. This is, I find, the curse-iest curse that plagues us ? and it doesn?t just plague us at the beginning of our journey. Oh, if only. It?s a nettling, nibbling, nattering imp riding on our shoulders years into the great egress from our old, uncreative lives. Find your process. Uncover what works for you. Find your voice. Find what you like. Discover why you tell stories. Discover your desires. Find your frailties. Find yourself in your fiction and find your fiction in you. The faster we can start to figure out who we are, how we work, and what we want, the faster we can move forward telling the kinds of stories we want to tell ? and the more confident we become in doing it. So ring in the new year by? if not?answering these questions then at least?asking them, having them staple-gunned to the front of your cerebral cortex. Let your work and career be less of a question mark, and more of an exclamation point. And now for?

26. Shh, The Not-So-Secret Secret Resolution

Write till your fingers bleed.

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REVENGE OF THE PENMONKEY:

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Source: http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2012/12/31/25-writer-resolutions-for-2013/

hillary rosen j.k. rowling j.k. rowling axl rose google earnings pat burrell hilary rosen