Fear.  It’s something we’ve all experienced, although some of us experience it more often than others.  I’m certainly no stranger to being scared.  In fact, here’s just a few of the things that frighten me:  Driving on icy roads or in an area that I’m not familiar with.  Scary movies.  Snakes.  Heights.  And sometimes, people, in general.  Actually, I could go on forever, so let’s just say that I’m pretty much scared of everything.  Maybe that’s why the cowardly lion was my favorite character in The Wizard of Oz. The good thing is that we can usually avoid a lot of things that we’re afraid of.  I stay off of the…

Back in late December, I started writing a book.  Roughly a month later, the first draft was complete.  I printed the first draft and set it aside to simmer for six weeks (advice I’d gotten from reading Stephen King’s book, On Writing.)  The reason for putting my manuscript aside, and vowing to not read even one paragraph of it, was to separate myself from it long enough so that when I went back to do the first read and edit, I had forgotten most of what I wrote, and could look at it objectively.  That advice turned out to be great advice, as did most of the advice King gives in On…