Welcome, 2011!!!!!!!

Well, it's New Year's Day. I've decided to reflect my writing.
I've started more stories this year than any other year. I didn't really finish too many of them. But I do think my writing has improved quiet a bit. The stories I was working on that were pure drivel, I've learned to recognize. I've learned to plot more. My general writing has improved, I think. At the beginning of the year, I was working on quite a few stories that just weren't working, but I didn't realize that. Now I do. I've learned that plotting might not be a bad thing. I've learned more about genre. I've started to keep a notebook. I've also started to type stories instead of write them freehand, then type. Saves a lot of time, actually. I've learned a bit about characters, how I can't just make them do and say anything I want them to. I've started giving them personalities. Mind you, one of my characters, Tempest, doesn't care what I tell her she should act like. She goes off and does exactly the opposite of what I wanted her to do. I think her actions suit her better than what I wanted her to do anyway. I've started to keep a writing notebook, and to read and write a lot more fantasy.(Some people say I shouldn't read or write it so much, but that's just what I write.) I've learned a little about publishing and query letters. All in all, I'd say it was a pretty good year of writing. Now, here are some writing quotes to start off the new year!

F Scott Fitzgerald- You don't write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.
J.K. Rowling (when asked what she'd say to her protaganist, Harry Potter, if she could meet him)- I'd tell him I'm sorry for all the things I've put him through.
Walter Bagehot- The reason so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything.
C.S. Lewis- Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.
Rod Serling- Every writer is a frusterated actor who recites his lines inside the hidden auditorium of his skull.
John Irving- Half my life is an act of revision.

If you've never heard of some of those writers, I'm with you.
Happy New Year!