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Look for the February 2004 release of The Usual Rules in paperback!

January 4, 2007

Dear Friends,

So, the new year is upon us, and I am feeling filled with resolve to put off nothing that matters to me, and put off, forever if possible, as many of the things as I can that occupy too much of my time, that do not matter. (Just a few weeks ago, for instance, I got tickets to hear James Brown — a long deferred goal. He didn't make the show, as we all know. I left that one too long.)

So, once again this January, I am full of resolve to do more yoga and less buttered popcorn, work on my Spanish, learn to play a stringed instrument –- even badly would be good, get into a figure drawing group again, get a bone density test, put CD's back in their cases after playing them, work in my garden, spend more time with people I love.

Mostly, what I'm feeling right about now (and it's a feeling I try to hold onto throughout the year, though it slips out of view now and then) is the preciousness of time, and the great gift of health, family, friends, the ability to work, and the beauty of the natural world around us. I love what my friend Laurie said to me, this past February, as we were sitting on the shore of my house on Lake Atitlan, in Guatemala, (having finally gotten around to spending a week together, as we'd been planning to do for a decade). There was just enough of a breeze in the air that we had been hesitating over getting into the water. "I never regret a swim," Laurie said. And dove in. I dove in after her. And she was right of course: no regrets.

Speaking of Lake Atitlan, we've got an extraordinary group of students signed up now, to come down and work with me on their writing next month. (So many of you decided to come to my workshop, in fact, that I have brought in a second teacher — my dear friend, the fiction writer Robert Bausch, who will be a terrific addition to the week.) If you're not joining us this year, I hope you'll think about it, next time around.

Meanwhile, I'm off to Maine to visit a school in Portland where the entire sixth grade has been reading my young adult novel, The Cloud Chamber, and then to teach, as I do periodically, in the writing program at University of Southern Maine. After that, I'm Guatemala-bound, to swim and read and ponder my next book and prepare for the writing workshop. As always, I look forward to hearing what's on your minds.

Here's to a new year with no regrets. Dive on in.

With friendship,

Joyce Maynard

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