Tina Haapala, Excuse Editor

You're not getting any younger! As the sun poked through my bedroom this morning, I was reminded that today was the beginning of another year for me. Now, that has been true every other morning, as well, but since today is my birthday, I get my own personal ball-dropping dose of reality. I've been hanging around this planet for a whole 38 years, and I'm still not finished with my first novel! Or my second! And what about all of those magazine articles I was supposed to write? I'm not going to beat myself up about it: It's my birthday, after all, and I have a strict no-self-flagellation policy on such occasions. I am, however, going to use the opportunity to reflect and celebrate. Would you like to come along? "May the fourth be with you, too!"

www.freedigitalphotos.net I started keeping a diary very young, but became more inspired to tell the story of my life to those lucky people who would discover my work when I was gone after reading The Diary of Anne Frank. Of course, I was not nearly as precocious, nor did I have the devastating story of Ms. Frank. As a kid, the thing that struck me most about Anne Frank's diary was her ability to share her feelings, safely, in a world that was beyond safe. (I didn't realize more of the true relevance of her words until I was older.) While I felt safe as a child, I sure understood feeling insecure, and I thought if I had a place I could write that and leave it all to the page, I would be stronger once I closed it's previously blank pages. That's how strongly I felt about my diary writing back then. Because I had felt something powerful in those pages from history, I felt writing my history would somehow create serious thought when read later. I followed Anne's le...

Image: Pixomar / FreeDigitalPhotos.net   We are a week into 2011! How is it going with your resolutions, goals, targets--whatever you call the things tied to the beginning of a New Year that keep you motivated? Of course, I am hoping that your word counts are rich and full--an early springtime of Creativity! But what about those other, non-writing goals? Like staying healthy? Keeping our butts in the chairs, while crucial to our writing, can be detrimental to our "bottom lines." But don't use your love of writing as an excuse to stay unhealthy.* This past holiday season, my husband and I took part in a local contest to see how much weight we could LOSE between December 1 and January 12. I plan to write more about it later in my personal blog , but one thing I've learned is that seemingly impossible obstacles can be overcome if your mindset can change. How else can I explain how my husband (a lover of all things chocolate) has spent the season of cookies and ...

In honor of the season of things that go bump in the night, I thought I would share this video. The guy is promoting his production company, but in the meantime, he's asking the question--Is this a time traveler? The video was shot in the 1920's, but he's sure that there's someone who gets caught in the shot-- talking on a cell phone! The fact that this video has almost a quarter million views after just 5 days proves that we are all hungry for a story. What kind of story does this inspire for you? Time Travel? Hoax? A commentary on the prevalence of cell phones in modern society (would viewing this footage 20 years ago had even caused a second glance?) That's the great thing about writing. You can take a mystery on and try and to solve it. You can take a common day and turn it into an adventure on the page. And, like the guy who posted this video, you can take something that has been overlooked for years and turn it into a main attraction. Besides a fun...

If you are a writer searching for material, you are a sponge to everything going on around you. You become the ultimate observer, using the world around you as inspiration for your next written creation. You start to look at nature, news, and relationships through a writer's lens. NATURE Last summer, my husband and I took up trip to the top of Pike's Peak in Colorado. The views were breathtaking, as was the summit at 14,000 feet. Our tour guide told us the story of Katharine Lee Bates, a Massachusetts English professor who traveled up Pikes peak by wagon in 1893. She was so inspired by nature's beauty she wrote "America, the Beautiful". Nature's beauty and its wrath have been the inspiration for countless poems, songs, and stories. A multi-colored sunset may inspire a metaphor of "a delicious sherbet sky" you may use in a poem about summertime. A threat of a tornado may call you to write a short story about survival in the days before emergency...