I have never been one to set writing goals.  In fact, despite the fact that many creative and prolific writers swear by them, there is something about having to write a certain number of pages, or for a certain number of hours every day, that sucks the creative wind right out of me. I prefer the romantic notion of being inspired by the muse over the practicality of sitting down and hammering out a certain number of words a day.  

But, in writing as in life, the practical often trumps the romantic and we are forced to create within the bounds of deadlines and responsibilities.  For me, that means delivering a 60,000 word manuscript to my acquisitions editor by February 15, 2009.  This is not a loose deadline.  I am contractually bound to make it happen.

To get there, I've set a personal goal of writing 1000 words a day, six days a week for six weeks. 

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My friend and former roommate, Susan Isaacs, will be featured at Encounter 09, Art in Action, Feb 26-28.

Susan's first book, Angry Conversations With God, is set to launch in March.

I recently interviewed her for the IAM Podcast, and Part One of our conversation is now available - click here to listen!

Some trivia about Susan: she drinks PG Tips tea while she's writing; she has a cat named Honey; she and her husband, Larry, have been married for just over two years; she is one of the funniest and most sincere people I know.

After more than four years of drafting, bumbling, abandoning projects and starting new ones I am thrilled to share that the Christian imprint of a large publishing house that has agreed to take on my first book. It is a personal narrative called (surprise, surprise) Flirting with Faith: My Journey from Atheism to Agnosticism to a Devoted Life.  

This is a mini-miracle for several reasons.  

• I'm still floored by the fact that I wound up a Christian in the first place, so becoming a Christian author is further evidence that God both has a sense of humor and that He can (and does) do things that are beyond our wildest expectations.
• New and untested voices are risky for publishers and I am about as much of a nobody from nowhere as one can be in this marketplace.  
• While I've had articles published in Christian magazines, I have no big ministry or church or radio/tv show to use as a stepping-off point to promote this book.
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Context. The key to unraveling and anticipating readership is to take context into consideration. A writer should approach their subject matter, professional, fictional, story or research with an idea of how this information will be used and assimilated in the reader’s mind. Questions to ask yourself:

For writers working on personal storytelling:
Who will be reading this?
Are there parts of this story that seem to personal to share?
How can I convey my emotional experiences and responses through my story to my reader?
What are the mundane details that I have left out?
Are these details important to understanding my story?
If publishing, will I remain more true to factual storytelling or to communicating personal perceptions?

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As I was scanning the web for information on the outcome for U.S. Election 2008, I found an interesting headline, featuring an article by Gallup (a noted and reputable source of information obtained by polling and statistical research). The headline read “World Citizens Prefer Obama to McCain by More Than 3-to-1.”
Myself, being one who is ordinarily skeptical of vocabularic misrepresentation, decided to read further. I found the articles actual representation to be slightly more understandable - “among nations representing nearly three-quarters of the world’s population, 24% of citizens say they would personally rather see Obama elected president of the United States, compared with just 7% who say the same about McCain. At the same time, 69% of the world citizens surveyed did not have an opinion.” Sixty nine percent! Now that’s a more likely number in my mind. Beyond this, the article continues to point out that only about a quarter of those polled believe that the outcome of the U.S. Election makes a difference to their country.

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Election Year
By Donald Revell

A jet of mere phantom
Is a brook, as the land around
Turns rocky and hollow.
Those airplane sounds
Are the drowning of bicyclists.
Leaping, a bridesmaid leaps.
You asked for my autobiography.
Imagine the greeny clicking sound
Of hummingbirds in a dry wood,
And there you’d have it. Other birds
Pour over the walls now.
I'd never suspected: every day,
Although the nation is done for,
I find new flowers.

One of the things I have most enjoyed about being a CL blogger is people I've connected with here. Whether you agree with my blog posts or not, I value hearing from you and knowing just who it is who is reading my blog!

So,  if you're reading this, would you take a second to leave a comment? You don't have to write much, just tell me a bit about yourself. I just want to get to know those of you who are taking the time to get to know me by reading "Ferry Dust."

Today's issue of The Curator features an article I wrote on cartoons. Click here to read "Never Underestimate The Power of Cartoons," featuring interviews with cartoonists Matthew Diffee (The New Yorker) and Taylor Jones.

The Curator is an online publication of International Arts Movement, and I contribute every 4-6 weeks.

This past summer, I served a historian’s purpose in San Jose, Costa Rica for a team of volunteers working on a restoration project. I captured the adventure of the excursion through blog and photography. With quick and easy access to the internet, daily blogs made simple, friends and family of the team kept up with the progress and intentions of the trip in real time.

One specialized purpose of writing is to communicate in such a way that allows people to participate vicariously through others. In this way, family, friends and communities can all share in travel and experience. Writing for the purpose of capturing and preserving a story is an essential part of preservation. A culture or people’s history becomes a beacon of revelation for the future. It is important to capture moments of expression, emotional reactions, creative discoveries and more. As society moves, change happens. Writers publish stories. Publications record responses. Creative arts express descriptions of societal development. All create connectivity for human kind through barriers of time and space.

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Mark Doty is one of today's more prolific poets, and he teaches at the University of Houston. I like to think of him crouched in a corner at the gym, scribbling in a notebook, writing this poem.

At the Gym

This salt-stain spot
marks the place where men
lay down their heads,
back to the bench,

and hoist nothing
that need be lifted
but some burden they've chosen
this time: more reps,

more weight, the upward shove
of it leaving, collectively,
this sign of where we've been:
shroud-stain, negative

flashed onto the vinyl
where we push something
unyielding skyward,

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