By
                                                  Delma Luben

Every New Year, after the bells ring out excitement, anticipation, hope... after the celebrating, serious writers return to their solitude--and usually, reminscing regrets, resolve to become better writers. Jogged by the media, and tradition, (unless we've recently made a big sale) our conscience insists on this review of old errors.

Before making one mark on the new year's blank page, do you trot out all your past mistakes, miscalculations, blunders ... and berate yourself for every miniscule failure?

Recognize this common practice as a procrastination ruse that accents the negative, leading to depression. And don't make it a habit. Rehashing the past before facing the future is advantageous; we learn from it. But give the chore as little time as possible. Like mulling over rejections, and imagining the reasons (which you're rarely given) it saps your strength, as does worrying over possible consequences.

After a cursory review of the lessons you learned from last year's slip-ups, try to blot them out of your memory. Allow no recall inhibitions to color your present, or litter your road to a successful future. Let all past errors die, and you'll be one-up on the worriers.

Each new-year page of life arrives unmarked; but written all over it in invisible ink are possibilities and second chances that no past year has offered. Take full advantage. Clear all those mental road blocks from your highway ahead. Then follow the example of nature. Spring worries not about the skeletal frame of winter, but gets busy growing again.

In every career, and especially in literary endeavors, the prelude to triumph is a long struggle left behind. Novelist, poet, member of "The Fourth Estate" ... we all reach maximum potential by working hard and looking forward.

Next year when the bells ring out, may I remember... May every New Year find me a better writer.
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Excerpted from THE WRITING WORLD Living The Literary Life.

Author's advocate Delma Luben is internationally published in both prose and poetry.