Here on the last day of April 2011, I want to share with you that at least once a week I study other published writers to see how they do what they do. I hope to learn more about the art of book writing. 
   Some of what I read is just a publisher's propaganda. That's OK. Someday I'll have one of those spin doctors too. 
   Some of what I read is truly inspiring. That's usually what I'm looking for. 
   Most of it, however, reveals traits about other writers that I do not have. This month I discovered that the writers who create a new book every year have a copy machine with a remote. All I get with my remote is The Shopping Channel and Fox News. 
   I must call the local Social Welfare office next month. I am technically underprivileged and I need to get on some government program.

"Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life."
           -Ancient Chinese Slogan Confucius

    "To be yourself in a world that is
     constantly trying to make you 
              something else is
     the greatest accomplishment."
                                -EmersonEmerson

"It is the nature of man to rise to greatness if greatness is expected of him."
                                                         – John Steinbeck

About John Steinbeck

American author John Steinbeck is famous for his portrayals of workers struggling during the Great Depression in books such as the Dust Bowl novel The Grapes of Wrath and the novella Of Mice and Men. He was born in 1902 in California, the setting for many of his novels. Fascinated with marine biology, he joined an expedition in the Gulf of California, which led to the book The Sea of Cortez and an understanding, shown in his work, of the interdependence of living organisms. He died in 1968.

"To live is the rarest thing in the world.
Most people exist, that is all."
Oscar Wilde

"Inspiration follows aspiration."
                                         – Rabindranath Tagore

About Rabindranath Tagore

Indian poet and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore, a contemporary of Mahatma Gandhi, was the first Asian to garner a Nobel Prize, which he won in 1913 for literature. He was born in India in 1861, the youngest of 13 children. He wrote poetry, stories, travelogues, dramas, essays, and songs. In the West, he was seen as a mystical figure and his fame faded with time, but his legacy lives on in India, where his work has become part of the fabric of the culture. He died in 1941.

"If you must begin then go all the way, because if you begin and quit, the unfinished business you have left behind begins to haunt you all the time."
– Chögyam Trungpa

About Chögyam Trungpa

Tibetan Buddhist leader Chögyam Trungpa was instrumental in bringing Buddhism to the West. He was born in 1939 in Tibet and was recognized as the reincarnation of a Rinpoche (enlightened teacher) at 13 months old. After moving to England, he abandoned his monk garb: He wanted his Western students to perceive the Buddhist teachings without becoming distracted by exotic trappings. He founded Naropa University in Colorado and wrote several books. He died in 1987.

"Everything you want is just
outside your comfort zone."

"You can't stay in your corner of the Forest
waiting for others to come to you.
You have to go to them sometimes."
                         - Winnie The Pooh

"I am always doing that which I can not do,
in order that I may learn how to do it." 
-- Pablo Picasso

 

   
  

I think the purpose of life is to be useful, to be responsible, to be honorable, to be compassionate. It is, after all, to matter: to count, to stand for something, to have made some difference that you lived at all."
                                                           – Leo Rosten

About Leo Rosten

Leo Rosten, the Polish-American academic and author, is best known for his seminal The Joys of Yiddish, an amusing look at Yiddish words that have entered the American vernacular. Born in Lodz, Poland, in 1908, he immigrated to Chicago as a child. He wrote dozens of books, including a set of extremely popular humorous stories about Hyman Kaplan, a night-school student struggling with English. Under the pseudonym Leonard Q. Ross, he wrote mysteries and film noir screenplays. He died in 1997.