Tag: New Year

New Year, New Banner

by Stephanie Grossman, posted in On Publishing, On Reading, On Writing
stephblog_400x400_v2
Credit: Brian Chin

Thanks to the talents of Madison Square Garden graphic designer and up-and-coming musician Brian Chin (who is also my good friend and former roommate), I now have a new banner for my website! He literally sent it to me yesterday, just in time for the beginning of 2017.

The new banner combines everything I love—the printed word, the handwritten word, sketches, and water color. If you look closely, you’ll see that Brian hand-drew the font and sketched not only books, but also a laptop, a spiral notebook, a coffee cup, and even a pencil. And that text in the background? Yeah it’s the first chapter of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, one of my all-time favorite books.

You’ll also see a new image on the right side of this page that lets you sign up for my newsletter. As one of my goals in 2017, I’m going to start using MailChimp to update my subscribers whenever I have a new post on my site or any news to report (which means you’ll get an email maybe once a month, tops, since I’m pretty lazy). If you’re interested, please sign up for my mailing list by clicking that shiny new image! (Or just click here.)

And as is customary for a new year’s blog post, I suppose I should comment on 2016. I have a lot of friends who had the worst year of their lives. I have a lot of friends who had the best year of their lives. And I have a lot of friends who, despite their shock at what has become of the U.S. political scene, their sorrow over the loss of so many childhood heroes, and their horror at the many calamities happening around the world, still somehow managed to have a pretty good year both personally and professionally. This gives me hope that there’s always a spectrum, that a year can’t necessarily be summed up by one feeling or one event.

I was among those who had a pretty good year both personally and professionally. The biggest things, of course, involved getting back on the horse and saying “giddy up” to my writing productivity. I’m still working on sticking with good habits, but luckily I’m at the point where if I go for more than two weeks without doing any form of writing I start getting really uncomfortable and existential, and I start to berate myself. That’s healthy, right?

In summary, here is my 2016 year in review by the numbers:

  • 60 submissions to literary and mainstream magazines and contests, which resulted in:
  • 1 story told at a Moth StorySLAM
  • 9 books read (though since three were over 600 pages long, including George R.R. Martin’s A Clash of Kings and A Storm of Swords, total pages read = 3,240)
  • 3 years with my boyfriend David
    • 1 move to a new apartment together
      • 5 rooms / 20 walls painted
  • 1 brother engaged  🙂
  • 1 political party changed (I am now officially a registered Democrat)
  • 8 vacations / new travel destinations
    • Palo Alto, California
    • Asheville, North Carolina
    • Chicago, Illinois
    • Richmond, Virginia
    • Chicago again
    • Camping in Staatsburg, New York
    • Dublin, Ireland
    • Boston, Massachusetts
  • 1 Harry Potter-themed LARP attended
  • 150 work out sessions (roughly 3 per week)
  • Countless (decaf) coffees drank
  • Countless moments of meditation and gratitude
  • Countless dreams to work toward in the new year

Happy New Year everyone!

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What’s Your Biggest Regret?

by Stephanie Grossman, posted in Advice, Not on Reading. Not on Writing. BLASPHEMY!, On Writing
Photo Credit: aplus.com
Photo Credit: A Plus

I want to share the below video with you—a video I found extremely touching and motivating.

In New York City, A Plus asked people to write their biggest regret on a chalkboard. Some of the regrets written were the type that couldn’t be changed—regrets like not spending time with a family member before they died. However, if you watch the video, you’ll see that so many of the answers were things that each person could have the chance to pursue or change now. Regrets like “not getting my MBA,” “not saying I love you,” and “not following my artistic passions,” can be reversed if you have enough motivation.

There have been a couple of studies done on deathbed regrets, and it’s striking how many people regret things they had the power to change when they were younger. The very regrets that the presumably young and healthy people in the video wrote on the chalkboard are the same types of regrets that people at the end of their lives share.

So what does this mean?

Well, it could mean that it’s just human nature to feel that way—to feel like we haven’t done enough even when we’ve tried our best. And while that’s definitely true, I also think that contemplating our regrets periodically can show us what we really need to make time for in our hectic 21st century lives.

And that brings me to 2016. What better time to focus on reversing our regrets than the onset of a new year?

I’ll share my biggest regret thus far: I regret not taking the opportunity to study abroad for a full semester while I was in college. I may not be able to change that one entirely, but I am going to try and make damn sure my next regret won’t ever be “not pursuing my writing and creative dreams.”

What’s your biggest regret?

TABula Rasa in the New Year

by Stephanie Grossman, posted in On Reading
"Along Came Pocket."
Along Came Pocket

There comes a time in every person’s life when we experience something so great that we just need to shout about it from the rooftops. We want everyone we meet to know just how lucky we are. And we hope that one day they too will experience it.

That’s how I feel about Pocket.

Seriously though, with the new year upon us, I’ve decided to tell the world about an amazing app that I believe will help anyone who wants to clean up their internet tab situation and begin 2016 with a blank slate: a tabula rasa, you might say.

My Tab Problem

I’m a lifelong learner, a consumer of informative writing, interesting articles, well-crafted fiction, self-improvement pieces, personal essays, and ground-breaking journalism. However, the amount of reading material out there is overwhelming. The internet provides us with an amazing buffet of mostly free writing (whether I agree that it all should be free is a different story). It all sounds so good that I often don’t know where to start. So I open tabs in my browser. Lots of tabs.

I’ve been guilty of having at least 20 tabs open at a time on both my personal laptop and on my work computer (though I’m sure other people have hoarded more than that). I’m always coming across new articles, and my Facebook news feed is constantly flooded with enticing links. So I’d open more tabs. And because no one can possibly read all those articles in one sitting, I’d just leave them up and never turn off my computer. That system update that requires me to restart my computer? I’d been clicking “Remind me in 4 hours” for almost a year.

This vast array of tabs slowed my browser down so much that it was painful to navigate any webpage I was actually using. I’d also have a heart attack whenever my computer randomly shut down (my battery is terrible). Each time that happened, I’d lose everything I was “planning” to read over the next ten years!

Sometimes I tried emailing myself the articles. Sometimes I’d post them on my Facebook wall to read later. Sometimes I bookmarked them. It could have worked in theory, but I often forgot about them the next day, and came across new articles on Facebook. And opened more tabs. Sound familiar?

How Pocket Helped Me

Despite how it sounds, I love being organized. My tab addiction was also my biggest pet peeve. I just wanted a simple way to keep track of my growing reading list without breaking my computer. Then, along came Pocket.

I don’t remember how I came across it (hopefully not by opening yet another tab), but I took to the app instantly. I saved all my pending reading material in my Pocket account, and finally, finally, turned off my computer.

Pocket is an app that allows users to “read it later.” It can be integrated into all browsers and accessed from all devices at pretty much any time—even without the internet. When you access Pocket, the program shows you a running list of all of the articles you’ve saved to it, presented in a clean and organized way. It allows you to create tags as well. For example, my most useful tags are “writing advice,” “about blogging,” and “for Dave” (these are articles I plan to read with my boyfriend). It also lets you archive articles once you’re done reading them so they’re removed from your reading list, but not lost forever.

Here’s how I did it:

  • I downloaded Pocket for free.
  • I added the Pocket extension to my Chrome browser (it’s located at the top right of the browser, next to my Pinterest and Evernote extensions).
  • I also downloaded the Pocket app on my phone and synced my account.
  • Whenever I come across an article I want to read later, I click the Pocket extension button in my browser and it automatically saves the article to my list. Then I close out (yes, actually close out) of the article.
  • If I’m on my phone, I copy the article URL and then open up my Pocket app. It asks me right away if I want to save the copied URL to my list. Of course, I click yes.
  • Over the past few months, I’ve begun tackling my list, article by article. If I have a free moment on my commute, I open up Pocket and read. I’m trying to read about one article per day. When I’m done with one, I just archive it and move on to the next article in my list (though you can read them in any order).
  • At this point my list has grown to include over 100 articles to read. I haven’t been perfect about it, but at least those aren’t all open at once on my computer.
  • Pocket also has a “Recommended” section that suggests articles to read based on the articles saved to your list. Yay knowledge!

I also want to mention that Pocket didn’t ask me to endorse their product. I just love it and had to share it with you. Pocket has helped make my quest for knowledge much more manageable, organized, and convenient. As an aspiring writer myself, I hope that one day something I’ve written ends up saved in a few Pocket accounts. That would mean I’m really starting to make it.

Now, go get Pocket and start closing those tabs. Happy New Year!

Ten Quotes for 2015

by Stephanie Grossman, posted in On Writing
Credit: Walker Art Center
Credit: Walker Art Center

Hi all! I know I haven’t gotten the chance to blog here in the last few months. It’s been quite a busy and crazy time for me, which I’m sure I’ll write about at some point. In the meantime, I really wanted to keep the tradition going where I lay out some quotes I want to live by in the new year.

Just as a recap, I began my New Year’s ritual last year. At the beginning of every year now, I plan to take a look at the quotes I have collected over the previous 12 months–not only to be reminded of the words that have touched me in the last year, but to also use these words as inspiration for my life in the new year.

Here are my ten favorite quotes I came across in 2014 that will serve as inspiration for my life in 2015:

1. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

2. “What makes night within us may leave stars.” – Victor Hugo

3. “Bran thought about it. ‘Can a man still be brave if he’s afraid?’
‘That is the only time a man can be brave,’ his father told him.” – George R. R. Martin (from A Game of Thrones)

4. “I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes…you’re Doing Something.” – Neil Gaiman

5. “All art is autobiographical; the pearl is the oyster’s autobiography.” – Federico Fellini

6. “I’m not afraid of storms, for I’m learning how to sail my ship.” – Louisa May Alcott

7. “I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.” – Douglas Adams

8. “You couldn’t relive your life, skipping the awful parts, without losing what made it worthwhile. You had to accept it as a whole–like the world, or the person you loved.” – Stewart O’Nan

9. “Solitude is certainly a fine thing; but there is pleasure in having someone who can answer, from time to time, that it is a fine thing.” – Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac

10. “Accept who you are. Unless you’re a serial killer.” – Ellen DeGeneres

Happy New Year!

15 Quotes for 2014

by Stephanie Grossman, posted in On Writing
Credit: www.my-so-called-luck.de
Credit: http://www.my-so-called-luck.de

I’ve become quite the quote collector.

I always keep an eye out for beautiful and true sentences in the writing I read or the films I watch. I also receive a Goodreads “Quote of the Day” daily quote email in my inbox. Any quotes that resonate with me get added into a “Quotes” file—but then, since I know the quotes are safely documented and saved, I usually end up forgetting about them.

This year, I decided not to let those quotes stay hidden in their file and instead review them as a new cathartic New Year’s ritual. At the beginning of every year now, I plan to take a look at the quotes I will have collected over the last 12 months—not only to be reminded of the words that touched me in the previous year, but to also use these words as inspiration for my life in the new year.

So instead of sharing a New Year’s resolution, I’d like to share 15 of my favorite quotes I found in 2013 that will influence how I live in 2014:

1. “Remember: the time you feel lonely is the time you most need to be by yourself. Life’s cruelest irony.” – Douglas Coupland

2. “Be careful, you are not in Wonderland. I’ve heard the strange madness long growing in your soul. But you are fortunate in your ignorance, in your isolation. You who have suffered, find where love hides. Give, share, lose—lest we die, unbloomed.” – From the film Kill Your Darlings

3. “I decided it is better to scream. Silence is the real crime against humanity.” – Nadezha Mandelstam

4. “The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.” — Charles Bukowski

5. “Ghosts don’t haunt us. That’s not how it works. They’re present among us because we won’t let go of them.” – Sue Grafton

6. “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard, are sweeter.” – John Keats

7. “The bravest people are the ones who don’t mind looking like cowards.” – T.H. White

8. “Art and love are the same thing: It’s the process of seeing yourself in things that are not you.” – Chuck Klosterman

9. “You will hear thunder and remember, and think: she wanted storms.” – Anna Akhmatova

10. “None of us really changes over time. We only become more fully what we are.” – Anne Rice

11. “You don’t write about the horrors of war. No. You write about a kid’s burnt socks lying in the road.” – Richard Price

12. “The past is always tense, the future perfect.” – Zadie Smith

13. “Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success.” – Dale Carnegie

14. “Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stranded, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from its life’s quest of delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment in order to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result—eventually, astoundingly, and all to briefly—in you.” – Bill Bryson

15. “It’s only those who do nothing that make no mistakes, I suppose.” – Joseph Conrad

(P.S. Hope you are liking the new blog look. I think this blog will continue to evolve, so don’t be surprised if it has another new look or format soon).