Celebrate Everything

About halfway through a little book I like (Click here for more on this book: THE POCKET MUSE), I found the story about the bottle of wine.

How they'd saved a really great bottle of wine for something worth celebrating. And it ends with the advice, pretty much Don't Save the Wine-

Celebrate everything immediately.

Celebrate a rejection that includes a personal note. 
Celebrate finishing something hard. 

And when publication finally comes, celebrate everything.
The initial acceptance.
The galleys coming in.
The editor calling to tell you the publication date.
The day you get the final copies.

Everything.

For me, this has been a year of celebration.

I love what fellow debut author Caroline Starr Rose says she's learned in her first year of publication. (She even created a poster on the topic, free for the asking! CLICK HERE TO GO THERE.)

I'm pondering GLORY BE's first year, in anticipation of traveling to Houston's TWEEN READS Festival where I'll be on a panel along with these other debutantes...

Panel 5:  Dare to Debut
Lynne Kelly
W.H. Beck
Deron Hicks
Augusta Scattergood


 (Can a guy be a debutante?)

Any other debut authors out there with sage advice? Are you celebrating even the small successes? Thoughts on your own first book's publication? Or anticipation of it?

What do you think kids- "tweens"- would like to know about our first books?
Comment away!

POCKET MUSE #2

I've spent the morning with my new book: THE POCKET MUSE: Endless Inspiration, by Monica Wood. I wrote about these books last week on my group blog, A Good Blog is Hard to Find. I called that post Write Like a Hummingbird

because-- well, click on over there and find out why.

Check out all the places I've marked already. And I'm only about a third of the way through.

A few sample quotes, from the author (there are also quotes from famous writers, though perhaps not as many as in Book #1. Then again, that's not what these little books are all about):

In a writing life, things are always about to happen. 

If you keep your hat in the ring, sooner or later somebody's going to need a hat.

There's also one of the best pieces of advice about choosing titles I've ever read-- on p. 97. Perhaps more to come on that topic later. 

Or you could just buy the book. It's really a bargain. The perfect size for travelers. 

And if you aren't a writer? I'd recommend it just for thinkers.