If you’ve read any of my prior posts, you won’t be surprised to know my relationship with writing has been a challenge, not unlike a turbulent romance, an on-again off-again affair, an excruciating part-time obsession.  That being said, as I brainstormed this week’s topic, my mind focused on the painful truths and absurdities aspiring writers contend with on a daily basis.  There is a commonality with one’s descent into misery, especially amongst like-minded individuals who share a familiar goal. In an ever shrinking global village, our similarities, our passions and dreams often mimic one another.  Like a legion of misfit doppelgangers, identical in spirit, we are connected by a common thread of hope, dreams and aspirations.

In the pretext of empathy, and in the context of shared misery, I came up with the compilation below.  I realize there’s a high probability a similar post exists on the Web (doppelgangers – remember)…

What if I tell you that India has the world’s largest youth population? What if I also tell you that less than half of our students in class 8^th can solve a class four division problem and barely 47% of children in grade 5 can read a grade 2 level text? Our students have been caught in the clutches of our government’s ignorance. Someone once rightly said that most ignorance is “vincible ignorance”. We don’t know because we don’t want to know and people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed. To secure India’s future, providing a better education to India’s youth is imperative.

I believe only education fundamentally can change our current scenario. It can help make people independent because all the wealth in the world cannot help our people unless they are not taught to help themselves. All they need is moral and…

If you are an author what is your greatest wish? It must be the same as mine.

There is a ring at the doorbell, you open it and there stands Steven Spielberg holding a copy of your book. He begs you to allow him to make it into a major motion picture and thrusts the contract into your hand together with a cheque for an obscene amount.

If you are a reader, what could be better than telling all your friends that the writer of the latest blockbuster that’s breaking all box office records is your friend on Facebook and you knew them when they were just a poor little indie screaming ‘buy my free book.’

We can all dream.

I’ve mentioned before that when the dinosaurs roamed the earth I wrote for radio and television. This gave me the weird idea that I could write. Once I started with…

by Lauren Sapala

I’ve worked with a lot of writers over the past eight years and I can honestly say that there really is one thing that separates the writers who are going to make it from the writers who are not. I know, I know—there are many different variables at play. Believing in yourself, joining a supportive community, finding your audience. I’m not disputing that those factors influence a writer’s success. But the thing I’m talking about is way more basic than anything else.

Unless you are on a diet or workout regimen, you cannot shrink to greatness. Yet, that is precisely the path America is on under the leadership of a man who announces his intent to make the country great again. Instead, he is pursuing a path of making America alone.

Jim Melville, the US ambassador to Estonia announced his resignation last week. Ambassador Melville, a 33 year state department veteran who has served under six Presidents, four of them Republucan, cited his reasons on Facebook. He said he could not support a President who has belittled NATO comparing it to NAFTA and saying it was formed to tap the American piggy bank. He also noted the President’s attack on the European Union as shameful.

Melville is not a lone voice. Other long service ambassadors have departed under this regime and there are a scary number of open diplomat positions. I have…