I post a ton of stuff on my Instagram (@mastr_blaq), and while most of it is poetry that I write off and on, I also like to do side "projects" of sorts. I put together a collection over the last several weeks about some of the most valuable writing advice that I've been able to gather since I started sharing my writing with others almost fifteen years ago. Don't be fooled, I'm still in my twenties, but the wisdom I have to share is real.
This post is going to be an expansion of the list that you can find on my Instagram, and even on my Twitter in smaller chunks, but I'm going to give more personal details about how I learned these lessons that I've shared with you so that you know this isn't just preached ideals. These are hard-learned tips that will absolutely help you in your writing journey.
I used to look for prompts and buy books to inspire me when I was struggling to write stuff, but I was trying to tap a source that had run dry. My writing creative tank was empty, so I had to give it time to refill so I started working on my desire to grow as an artist and get back into painting. Since then, I’ve been able to balance creative writing and career writing better than I could have of I didn’t have art to cut through periods where I felt too uninspired to write anything.
I remember starting a fanfiction in 2007 on my then-boyfriend's computer and thinking that nobody would ever want to read my fanfiction. I'd done a writing contest in eighth grade and only made it to the second tier, and even though I have a published poem about grief floating around somewhere, I felt like a failure. Being so young and mentally ill at the time, it gave me a very real and harsh understanding of the publication vetting that one must go through. Publishing fanfiction online? That seemed so easy, and easy things could always go sideways. But, that fanfiction, no matter how rough and poorly written it feels to me now in 2021, that story got over a hundred thousand views. It's one of my top most read stories online. I wrote it when I was fifteen! When I finally started writing fanfiction regularly, getting such positive feedback on the first one, it felt the stories would never stop coming and that the writing would never end. There weren't enough hours in the day!
Until there were. It felt like I could write forever and I would never hit a point where there was just nothing. No ideas, no creative concepts, no passion in any particular storylines; I knew it was writer's block but I thought it was because I peaked or because I was on empty. This is something that I learned I had misunderstood upon joining a fanfiction competition. When you are on a timeline to write stories, you find a way to create something or you turn over nothing. I'm not the type of person to quit something unless it had broken me down so deeply that I'm causing more harm than good to myself. It was during that time that I found the only way to get the brain to do what it was supposed to do was share the love. I got back into sketching; I did handlettering and custom cards for birthdays for my family; and I dove back into poetry. There's a popular phrase - the only way to get past something difficult is to go through it, but the jungle is vast. Going through the jungle doesn't mean powering through this project right now. You can learn just as much taking the scenic route. The goal is to get back to that creative place, right? Let nobody tell you how that looks for you, and don't limit yourself to thinking there's only one way for you to get the creative juices flowing. As you grow, your ways back will change.
I used to measure my success as a writer only by numbers and where I was in the publishing process. I don’t have my novel traditionally published yet, but I’ve got a career writing contract and I’ve had some non-fiction pieces published in a small magazine. I care less about the numbers and more about using my writing to share in the life experience right now; that’s success for me. When I cared only about how my numbers looked compared to other people, I felt expired and irrelevant. It wasn’t helpful and held me back a ton. Now, I can’t believe I ever let that stop me at all!
This is the thing that I still sometimes struggle with, though less intensely than I have in the past. Even just two years ago, I would get extremely upset with myself for not boasting online numbers on my fanfiction as high as my peers. Doing a co-author series really did me in when my friend's one story easily doubled the numbers of my five stories. However, it made me think about why that was happening, and the reality was this: it had nothing to do with me. I was writing stories for fandoms that were "dead." There has to be demand in literature, and we know it even if we don't always love to admit it. That said, specifically: numbers aren't everything.
NaNoWrimo taught me this in the biggest way, which sounds silly since NaNoWriMo is about reaching 50,000 words in 30 days. The whole gig is a numbers challenge. I won the two years I particiapted in and did so before the end of the month, but it wasn't without plenty of stress. I had days where I wrote exactly none words - zero - zilch - nada - nothing. On those days, I hated myself and thought I deserved to lose because I was watching people push 2-3K on those same days. What I found, though, was that I felt better when I did write after taking a day or two of no writing. You can have all the creativity in the world but if you don't have the energy to breathe life into it, then it means nothing.
You are and always will be worth more when you are working on your project in measurable and unmeasurable ways. You must practice self-care in order to meet those daily goals. You must stay healthly to create your stories. You cannot write without a plan or an idea. You cannot publish without editing and revisions to the original concept. When reaching for measurable goals, always remember those unmeasurable foundations that gave that privilege to look at the numbers in the first place.
We are all guilty of being negative about stuff we’ve done, but there is a line between occasionally harsh to your craft and being genuinely deterred by how much you hate it. If you hate it and only see it’s flaws there’s only two ways to resolve it: quit working on it or find what you do like and build it back up around that part. Creatives have been made to think hating your work and suffering to become perfect is the only path to greatness and it is toxic. You have to be able to move past what you don’t like about it and remember it’s not permanent until you make it that way. You can always start over and rework things because you are the mastermind behind it. Once you stop looking for the things you hate, you’ll be able to focus on how awesome what you’re doing is.
I accept that this advice has not always been well-received by me when it was given to me, and recently I delivered (quite indelicately) the same advice wit hthe same lack of reception. It's hard to hear and it's not something that you want to hear when you have self-doubt about what you are doing. It feels like salt in the wound.
I stand by it, though. You cannot sell your story to an agent if you don't believe enough in your story to do so; you cannot get published by a publishing house if you aren't able to convince them that it's good sell. There's business in every corner of the world now and that requires confidence. Confidence in your work starts with you. Society as a whole trains us to be hypercritical and it robs us of our self-esteem. Don't let the world around you convince you that what you're creating isn't valuable. Someone, somewhere, some time will be better of for reading what you've written. I am reminded of this every week when I check my long inactive fanfiction emails where people are liking ancient stories where my writing was passably readable. I get comments on things I forgot I wrote with support from readers. Your time comes when it comes and you'll deserve it. Believe in yourself: it wastes less time.
Trying to write a story to please every individual reader will make your story either too vague and boring or erratic and unpleasant. I have watched people get spiteful when they get feedback from people who don’t even like the content of the story and try to appease them in their edits. They lose themselves to their need to be complimented by a reader than wouldn’t have voluntarily read that type of work on their own. Someone who likes your content is going to be a greater support than someone who doesn’t, and you have to make peace with that. I never hated my writing more than when I tried to make the negative reviewers and hyper critical beta readers happy. It was a turning point for me and now that I’ve moved on, I see so many people struggling with their writing thinking it’s their skill or their creative ability when it’s really a desire to please every reader. It’s like watching someone jump off a bridge with your hands tied behind your back. Know your audience and do what you know they’ll enjoy. Only you can tell this story.
I know people who are in their early twenties thinking that because they aren't published yet that they are failing, or that they're not doing good enough. I know fanfiction authors who are upset because they're getting negative feedback on their stories. I know bloggers who feel like a lack of comments means a lack of loyal readers. The reality is that these writers are wanting to please every single person who passes by. To them, and perhaps to you, I want to remind you of this - how many things do you see online that you enjoy and remember but you didn't like or share or comment on it? A lack of engagement doesn't mean a lack of enjoyment. Sometimes it just means the audience you have isn't one that engages the audience. Perhaps it means that you are writing for the wrong audience, even. It doesn't mean that you have inherently written incorrectly or produed something poorly, it could be something as small as - this is tagged in a way that doesn't draw in readers, the title might not draw people in, or maybe you just told the story well enough that the reader didn't feel the need to say anything in particular because they were at peace.
The best example I've had, though, as proof that being a people pleaser through your writing will sink is when you see someone's writing suffer because of it. I have an aquaintance who writes lengthy pieces because that's what success is in that person's mind, and so everything is a slow building story that is meant to immerse the reader. It's very literary, which, again, is totally find. There's a market for technical fiction - however. The audience that it was marketed to had very different expectation and started to criticize the writer for taking too long to tell the story and moving in weird directions in the character development. When seeking advice, I watched this person turn their nose up at suggestions even though it was incredibly clear that it was causing them distress and they needed the advice. It reminded me of a story where I was writing for my readers and not for the story or for myself. I quit it. I don't think this writer will quit even if it was the best option for them, but it makes a project feel like a chore and writing should never feel that way.
Not every work day will be perfect and you won't always be ready to do what needs to be done, but if you are so stressed about the story that you're questioning your purpose for the story, or you start to question the direction you're doing in for writing, that's not something that brings you joy anymore. The second that you cross into the territory where what your readers are saying matters so much that you would question if you shoudl be doing this, this thing you have wanted to do, then you may need to reconsider why you are writing and make a new plan for how writing fits into your life.
But the truthiest truth is - not everyone is going to love what you write and you're going to have to be okay with that no matter how writing fits into your life plan.
When it comes to traditional publishing and career writing, there are ideals your agency and publisher have for their brand. They expect you to fit into it since you are engaged in a business deal, so there will be things you have to adapt and change, and sometimes you have to cut out a part of the story. It’s all important to you, but the story has to always be moving forward. It’s the highlight reel of the lives of your characters in the way your autobiography would feature the most prominent aspects of your life and success. Your writing will have to reflect the important details of your characters adventure. Edits are done to make the work better and that does mean making tough decisions. With the Internet, you have the ability to share the cut content through blogs, tiered subscription services, and even other book publications. You can share it through other means so the book itself can be the best product of your idea.
Listen, I was that person who was like "watch me do what I want to do even though I got back feedback on it" when I did that fanfiction competition. If I strongly disagreed with the feedback, I would rework what I was doing to trick the beta readers on my team into falling in love with my idea. Goodness, I thought I was so smart and tricky, espeically when it worked. But the reality was, even though I was in a totally garbage mindset, I was compromising. I was steadfast in my ideas and goals in my writing, but I was willing to push myself to do these technical acrobatics to convince the reader that I'm correct in what I wanted to accomplish. Sometimes, I would compromise much more than I wanted only to find that I really did like the story better with the changes.
On the flip side of that, sometimes I compromised far less and found that I actaully disliked what I wrote and should've been more critical about the value of the feedback. Of course, there were times when readers like what I hated or hated what I loved, even when I comromised. Regardless of those experiences, though, it did teach me so much about that value of feedback from readers. Feedback from writers and feedback from readers are very different in a lot of ways. Readers can tell you what works, what doesn't, what is problematic or confusing; writers can tell you where you descriptions are lacking, what kind of imagery is coming through, and whether your technical efforts match the creative ones. You grow so much when you are willing to seek out and accept the feedback as a teamwork. Each member of the team offers something special to the final product, especially in traditional publishing arenas. Compromise is often disregarded and labeled as a form of giving up, but no original idea is perfect exactly as it is - that's why we get new tech and new laws all the time. Flaws always exist, but we can reduce the number of wrinkles by working together.
I used to be ashamed that I wrote fanfiction, and I refused to talk about my writing to anyone if it wasn’t an original piece. It was years before I made the connection that I was the great writer I believed myself to be because fanfiction gave me a platform to share my ideas with others who cared about the same things I did. I learned and grew because of strangers all around the world reading my “silly stories.” It ended up being my experience in a fanfiction writing competition that landed me my career writing contract now. With everything being a riff on everything else, it is a waste of your energy to be ashamed of it and to judge it as less than. You end up missing out on good stories, good experiences, and good people.
Something else that I didn't elaborate on in this post was that, if we're being perfectly honest, everything is a fanfiction of something else. There's all these writing classes and classical trainings about literature, and you hear about the 7 archetypes, the 6 plots, or the 36 motivations, or whatever the teacher and article have decided to call it. Without a doubt, they're all relatively close to the same information. Under that reasoning, there's not been a truly original story in centuries. Under that impression, it's either high time we start recognizing fanfiction as a legitimate form of art, or we need to start questioning any agency and publishing company that reprints anything. Don't even get me started on Hollywood and all their remakes. I've got lots to say about how basically every movie you've seen was heavily inspired by something else - thereby making it a form of fanfiction in the loosest sense of the word: the relling of an established story.
And that's all there is to fanfiction, really. I've read fanfiction more original the the "original" printing that the characters were borrowed from. Disney's princesses are borrowed from darker fairytales from the past, Star Wars shares many similarities by the show that inspired Lucas - Flash Gordon. 50 Shades of Gray started as a fanfiction. Carry On was a joke fanfiction in a book Fangirl based on Harry Potter's Drarry ship. There's just a connection between everything and the way we borrow from those existing pieces of literature and art does not change the truth that everything is a retelling of something. We don't even try to hide it most of the time because so many books are compared to blended versions of two works. Sometimes there's even the exact phrase "a modern re-telling of" as a way to promote the work.
It enrages me that fanfiction is belittled so much when there are fanfiction stories that are way just as good as what you're buying off the shelf for money, if not better than what you're buying, and it is all for free! FREE! How are we going to hate free stories and judge them as less than for not being an "original" piece of writing as if these people didn't put their heart and soul and time into sharing their version with the world. Anything else that's free isn't judged as subpar or less than on their respective markets. Buy one phone line with us, get a free iPhone 11 (or whatever model is relevant nowadays). Buy 2 bags of chips get 2 bags of chips free. Free food samples in the grocery stores to try new products. None of those items are considered lesser quality or less legitimate than other items available. Your free phone isn't a joke because it was free. Your extra chips aren't nasty because you got them for free. Your free food testers might not be great, but that doesn't mean if you tried deli turkey at a sample table that the other deli turkey options are just as bad. Fanfiction is not less than any other form of writing just because it's not "original" by the privileged and skewed perspective of an industry that farms many of its writers from a market that will have read or written fanfiction at some point during their journey to publication.
It really it really is time to start respecting the work that fanfiction writers put into their stories. Whether or not it's edited or perfectly fleshed out, the fact that they are trying is often the only thing that matters. To this day, some of the shittiest writing I've done still gets loved and positive feedback because when someone chooses to read fanfiction, they're understanding that it's an art that grows and matures with the writer's experience. They can accept the fanfiction for what it is and what it aims to do for its readers.
And what's more - fanfiction has a culture of tagging and disclosing anything triggering so that potential readers are safe when reading their works rather than being taken by surprise when a book suddenly has explicit content that is upsetting. Even though it's getting some negative media presently in 2021, overall? Fanfiction has always aimed to be as respectful and honest as possible to respect the readers who are making the writers feel sucessful in their own little ways while sharing their stories with literally the entire world.
It is ridiculously easy to feel like if we’re not perfectly joyful to be doing our work that it’s not the right work for us. Social media and the entertainment business make “perfect” look easy and natural when it’s not. Movies, books, Instagram, TikTok, Vogue, etc - it shows the best outcome, best version, best whatever. We are only seeing the perfect times and if we’re less than perfect we question it. You cannot love every minute of every thing that you do in your life. Things will be hard, things will make you sad, and you will get burnt out sometimes. The real strength comes from finding your way back to that happy place. Coping skills and action plans aren’t reserved for the mentally ill. Everyone needs those skills and resources. Being prepared for good days and bad days makes you a great worker, and you’ll see it pay off in dividends.
As someone who has writing in the public eye on the internet for over a decade, let me tell you a big something. Some of my best rated stories were written on a whim with no editing and several hundred hours of sleep. Some of my favorite stories are the result of weeks of struggling with extremely critical feedback from beta readers. The reality is, though, there are periods of "non-writing" mixed in where I have half-finished stories posted online or living in dusty virtual folders. I have idea cards and paid contracts that I withrew from because the work I was doing wasn't worth it for the product I expected to have. If I quit every single time I felt the struggle of creation, I would have never made it as far as I have with my writing. I still have plenty of room to continue forward, too, and I know that I can't give up just because I have a rough patch writing.
In fact, something that I've really accepted now that I've been career writing for two years is that some days come and you want to do literally anything but write. There can be healthy procrastination that can truly function as a coping skill and get you through the lack of motivation. It could be reading, it could be art, it could be cooking, driving, singing, exercising - whatever! I personally find being creative helps inspire more creativity, which will only benefit your writing as a whole, but some people need space from creativity because they're running on empty. Getting up and getting space can be healthy too. It's normal to have a bad days or a bad week here and there and I wish more people really understood that about their jobs. You cannot love everything about anything.
I have fallen victim to comparing how many shares and followers I have compared to someone else. I have felt bad and wanted to quit. It was especially bad when my friends celebrated their numbers excessively or exclusively. Being around those who value only one type of success and only celebrate one type of measurement of success is unhealthy and it suffocated your ability to grow into your own as a writer. Surrounding yourself with supporters and seeing them as friends rather than as competition is going to allow you the freedom to share your wins in this field with others rather than feel bitterness when you don’t hit the exact same milestones. Bitterness will erode you.
I'll be honest, there's not much more that I want elaborate on with this, but I do want to be more specific so that it's clearer how comparing yourself to others can tear you down.
I started to do NaNoWrimo 2017 with someone that I thought was a positive friend in my life, but who was constantly bragging about her statistics and progress. We had started NaNoWrimo together after she wanted to participate with a friend to hold her accountable to finish. Having tried and failed to do NaNoWrimo in like 2013 or 2015 because I couldn't hold myself accountable, I really felt like this would be fun.
Until it wasn't. I couldn't meet the daily minimum of 1,667 words because I have multiple jobs and a family and she was just a college student with a boyfriend and crappy roomie. She managed to log around 10,000 words in the first three days. I considered quitting by Day 4 because I figured it would easier to quit than withstand the inevitable bragging that she finished first and early. Even though her pride in her work was bragging and bordered rude on many occasions, part of the reason that it was such a terrible companionship to keep was becasue I was comparing my success to her success. After I had a few days of zero words on the day, I fely my brain resetting. She and I had a falling out over a few different topics, namely that her boyfriend had a negative opinion of me without ever having spoken to me - meaning that she was speaking negatively of me. For this reason, I identified that everything about the friendship was toxic and did not hold back finally addressing everything about the friendship that I'd been holding back. As it were, one one person between the two of us finished NaNoWrimo 2017. Much like the story of the turtle and the hare, it wasn't the speedy typist that earned that certificate at the end. I finished early that year, by the way.
However, I wasn't over the self-comparison just yet because I participated in 2018 with two friends in my arsenal. One struggled with comparing herself to me while I struggled comparing myself to the friend I had online. Even though I was more confident in my ability to succeed this year, my online friend was pushing out thousands of words every single day with the goal of reaching 100,000. The way she spoke was reminiscent of the first toxic friendship from the previous year, making it seem like 50,000 words in a month was too small. She tried to correct and be sensitive, which was miles ahead of the previous friend who was older than her by a a fair few years, and we're still in contact today in a different capacity. At the end of the month when all three of us were close to 50,000 words, it was upsetting because I found that I wanted to prove myself worthy by getting to 50,000 first and sooner than the year before and finish my manuscript. It was silly because I had no real motivation for it except to feel like I was able to brag about something meaningful. It was petty and it made me hate a lot of the process because I kept convincing myself I wasn't good enough when the people writing with me were younger and without families, worrying about significantly fewer things than I was at the time. I convinced myself that all of my responsibilities weren't excuses for moving at a different pace.
Today, I make brief references to stats but I worry about it very minimally overall. I might have a day or two every few months where I go bananas about not being popular enough or something, but I have to love my work and trust that it will speak for itself regardless of what my online stats are because quality work always finds a way to prevail.
While my family is supportive, that’s as far as it goes. I have felt more supported when I have writing companions who share in my enthusiasm and bounce ideas around with me. I find that my writing is stifled when I don’t have as much contact with those healthy peers who love writing like I do and the way that I do. They say “it takes a village” often when talking about raising children, but there’s a reason humans need relationships with others to be healthy mentally and emotionally. Have a village of support and you’ll be well prepared to keep moving forward.
I remember when I was nine years old, in my room, acting Dramione fanfiction (innocent Dramione fanfiction, just for full transparency). I didn't think anyone would want to listen to my silly stories because I was just a silly kid who thought the way stories were told should be different or changed. I kept all of my stories to myself until I was in middle school, and even then I only shared the stuff I was writing with a small group of people. I didn't usually get much feedback other than "That was good," or "I really liked it." I wanted more feedback than that. Even the writing contest I participated in during my eighth grade year didn't give feedback. It wasn't until ninth grade that a teacher finally put words to my readership. "Your writing moved me to tears and you're so young to be telling such big stories so well." The only people that I talked to about writing stories were my teachers and one semi-invested friend who hyped up my stories only until I asked her to read them. If she did read anything, she was just very unkind and hurtful providing the feedback. It was really discouraging, but I didn't give up hope that there were true writing companions to be had and just tried to keep my sanity as I played writer, editor, and reader to my creations.
Even when I started sharing my fanfiction online, there were loyal readers and there was always Tumblr, but nothing quite like a network of supports. The first time I met someone who was genuinely as into writing as I was and wanted to collaborate, bounce ideas back and forth, and grow their skill set in writing wasn't until 2016 when I fought my store manager on retracting a job offer to someone who now my best friend. Like me, they wrote mostly in fanfction but wanted to be an author with traditional publications someday. We started by auditing online writing classes, and when I was invited to join a fanfiction competition, they joined me in that too. We get excited about each other's stories and writings and are encouraging to one another to stay dedicated to this craft that we both deeply enjoy and love. I then became friends with another person through the fanfiction competition who, again, was able to appreciate each step of the writing process as much as I did, and having someone on your wavelength in that way is truly priceless. I have learned so much about myself as a writer and about what matters to me when I'm writing through these relationships.
Like I said, you don't need to have that network of supports in fellow writers, but it helps in so many different ways. You find a wholeness in having that tye of connection with others who share your interests and goals because you can work together side-by-side.
So many businesses and members of the publishing industry will push sales, copies, prints, due dates, etc. Whether it’s your ad sense, literary agent, or publisher, numbers will prevail always as a way to measure success, but it’s not the only way. Success is abstract and defined by the person experiencing it. A best-selling author would be appalled if their second book only sold 1,000 copies, but a first time author whose first 1,000 prints sold out would be thrilled. Numbers matter at different values and times. Those unmeasurable successes? Those are universal. Brainstorming that climax scene all day? We’ve all been there and felt great after. Figured out a way to answer that one question you couldn’t figure out at the end? We all have celebrated those AHA! moments. Success doesn’t have to be all statistical and measurable.
I have never felt a relief like when I stopped getting upset with myself for how "much" I was getting done on my writing. I credit a lot of that inner growth to having a publication/journalism job now. Progress isn't always soemthing you can put numbers to and brag about on social media. With my magazine writing work, I have to write the main article - the centerfold article - about local families. However, nobody finds those families for me. I have to reach out to them. I have to get the documents they need to fill out and return. I have to write and edit the article. I have to approve the final proofs before printing. I am in charge of every step and it's not something I can really track with numbers all the time. So with 3-5 weeks to see an article come together at any given time, I tend to track progress in terms of milestones rather than through statistics and numbers now. Everything comes in phases and some phases can have numbers measurig progress, like how many words do I have typed in the story, or how many edits do I need to submit requests for. Othertimes, it's just a matter of - do I have a family lined up? Did I send emails out? Don't be afraid to track your progress by answering yes/no questions.
Did you think about your story today? Did you take notes about your plot together? Did you have a brilliant idea come up for a character you've been developing? Did you figure out the plot twist?
I remember stressing out about the number of views my stories got on FanFiction.net and how I thought it was shameful to have stories with less than 100 views and that it showed potential readers that I wasn't good enough to be read. I deleted some of my favorite writings because of how important numbers can get when you're in the wrong mindset or talking with unhealthy writer contacts who stress only the importance of the numbers. There are stories I wrote that I loved and they're gone forever because I was embarassed that the stats weren't good enough to measure up to other writers. I used to think that writing fanfiction was only purposeful if you were aiming to be fandom famous. I quit stories because readers tore me in different directions about expectations and I didn't want to see my numbers drop. I came very close to hating writing. Period.
I still get a tiny bit sad when my writer contacts celebrate 100 new followers, or reaching a total of over 1,500 followers in all. Their celebrations of subscribers and post likes are gifts to them and I am happy for their happiness, but I've long ago learned the cost of being too swept up in it. While I want to brag about those numbers myself at times, I remember what it cost me and my writing to be focused on it. Quality over quantity is true for most areas of life, as far as finding meaningful success, and while I used to find my ability to produce lots of stories in short periods of time, I like who I am and what I create much more when I'm less interested in the numbers and most invested in the outcome of my efforts.
My best closing line on this topic is probably this: If you are worrying about what your readers are saying or thinking more than you're working about what your characters are saying and thinking, then you may want to reconsider your "why" so you don't lose the passion you have for the thing that makes you happy.
If you're reading this line, then you have either scrolled to the bottom or read the entire post. Either way, I appreciate the time you've spent on this post on my page. If you've read everything, which piece of advice stood out the most to you? Which one do you think will be he most helpful for you moving forward? Is there a piece of advice you would add to this list? I enjoy the interaction with anyone who shares a love of writing. We could use more writer friends anyway, I bet.
Take care & Don't forget to be good to yourself!
--ab