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Your New Best Friend:
The Deadline Calendar

GO ON, TRY my interactive calendar of emotional high holy days, regular-version high holy days and more. It’s probably my number one memoir writing tip, since writing on deadline, or to a deadline, is one of the single best ways to learn how to write memoir.

Hover your cursor over a cinnamon-colored date to see what pops up. Use it to start personal essays, radio pieces and op-eds to submit on deadline. How? Look three months out for radio ideas; six to twelve for magazine pieces. Pluck something from the calendar and start now to submit the very best work you can produce.

Here is how to stop using writing prompts and writing exercises, those time-wasting devices leave you merely practicing writing. You want to write with intent, and you want to succeed. So start today and do so.

Write with intent: Pick a date, write to it, submit the piece. Read and react. You’re a writer. That’s what writers do. So write on.

December 2024

Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat	Sun
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16	17	18	19	20	21 December, 21 2024 The Winter Solstice Today is the winter solstice, on which the Earth’s axial tilt is farthest away from the sun, making this the onset of winter up north. And while you can’t really see the axis and its tilt from where you are, what you will see is that this is the shortest day of the year, or the longest night, depending on which way you choose to view it. How to personalize something that happens to us all? Look for universal themes.	22
23	24	25	26	27	28	29 December, 29 2024 Owls Mating Now You read that right. And if you’ve heard some hooting, that’s why. The Great Horned Owl and the Great Gray Owl are starting a brood. Owls don’t migrate, allowing them to breed now and into the early months of the year, while most other bird species don’t mate until spring. Owls have distinctly different calls. The hoot owl hoots; the short-eared owl has a sneezy bark; the barn owl, a shrill snore, all in the name of love. Humor is serious business. Maybe this will inspire you.
30 December, 30 2024 Birds Do it, Bees Do it. Great Horned Owls and the Great Gray Owls are starting a brood. Owls don’t migrate, which allows them to breed in the early months of the year, while most other bird species don’t mate until spring. It’s mating time when you hear a hooting, but what I love is that the hoots, owl-to-owl are quite different. The short-eared owl, has what the guide refers to as an emphatic sneezy bark; the barn owl has a shrill rasp or snore, long eareds give us two longs hoots, great horned are known for their 5 or 6 resonant hoots, spotted owls give us three, barred in groups of four, grey is a deep single whooo hoo hoo or a single shoooo, while the snowy is mostly silent, and, get this, the flammulated owl of the west and southwest is what my bird guide calls ventriloquial, as in a ventriloquist.	31