Monday Motivation: What You Can Control

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.
-Reinhold Niebuhr

If there’s a remedy when trouble strikes,
What reason is there for dejection?
And if there is no help for it,
What use is there in being glum?

-Shantideva

I used both those familiar quotes to open a blog post several months ago. Monday on this blog will typically feature one or more motivational quotes for writers. These two fit, as writers are often dealing with things they cannot control (whether their work is accepted, whether they get good reviews) and need to try to move past stressing about those things and focus on the things they can control (writing more, writing better).

Getting frustrated can make it hard to feel like writing, though. Having a daily writing routine to provide a structure for your writing efforts can help you push through those rough patches. And it also helps with the "writing more" portion of the things you can control.

Speaking of things you can't control...

I had hoped that today's blog post would focus on the rollout of "Write Every Day." Alas, even though I uploaded it in the very early hours of Sunday morning and even though Amazon sent me an email claiming that it was available for purchase, it is not available yet in many parts of the world. (Edited to add: As of mid-morning Monday in the Eastern US, it was available on amazon.com as well as the other Amazon sites. Hooray!)

It is available on amazon.co.uk and other European sites. So, if you are a Kindle user from that part of the world, you may well be in luck. I'll post an update here as soon as the book is available for the rest of the world.

Thanks for your interest and your patience.