It is now January 13th, and we are almost two weeks into the new year. I set some goals for myself this year, and am diligently working on realizing them. I have never been more motivated, and it feels great!

First off, I just bought a laptop, and I named her mybaby. I have never owned a laptop before, although I have some experience with working with computers. I must tell you, I am NOT a technical person. Thank goodness that nowadays, I don’t need to be, as computers can do almost everything for me… I love mybaby, she’s great! I also am learning how to do all sorts of things on the internet, like building my own webpage, following people on Twitter, interacting with others on facebook, and basically just trying to build a platform… a buzzword known to some of you but something that is new to me.

Why am I doing all this, you ask? Simple. I am a writer, and I have a lot to say. I am also trying to “break in” to the literary community step by step, and achieve some personal goals. One of these goals is to publish a book that I wrote while attending university. Although it has been about 17 years since I wrote The Life and Love of Canadian Poetry: An Interpretative View, I have finally come to a point in my life where actions speak louder than words. I have something to prove to myself, and to my son as well.

I wrote The Life and Love of Canadian Poetry: An Interpretative View as part of the requirments for a course I took, “Studies In Canadian Poetry”, taught by Professor Cindy Soldan at Lakehead University, in Thunder Bay, Ontario, in 1996. I was given a choice on the first day of class: either plan to do a two-week take-home exam at the end of the course, or use the semester to do a bunch of research and write a book that I would submit at the end of the course to be used as my evaluation. I have always been a writer at heart, and I figured since I was spending thousands and thousands (and thousands and thousands) of dollars on a university education, I might as well LEARN something while doing it! Anyway, I can’t tell you how many hours, days, weeks and months I spent learning the content of this book, but I do know for sure that it was one semester long… and I enjoyed every minute of it! My hard work paid off, too, as I received the highest mark in the entire class, according to Professor Cindy, who also encouraged me to get it published, something that never even occurred to me when I was writing it!

The Life and Love of Canadian Poetry: An Interpretative View is a reference book that will likely be used by college and university students, and is therefore marketable to college and university libraries. I am trying to get it published now…

UPDATE: Since writing this, I have been doing many other things. This book is still sitting on my shelf. Ugh. 🙁