My Mantra

"I am an internationally beloved children's author.  My work has been translated into scores of languages.  Millions of children and parents delight in my words.  I have a bookcase filled with awards.  I am now sitting down to begin my eagerly anticipated new work, which may well become the greatest thing I have ever written."

Yes!  YES!!!  YES YES YESSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is the power of mindset.  It works for any field you choose! 

Sometimes, as in my case, it takes great friends or family members telling you that they have faith in your gift and what you have to offer the world. 

It was at that moment in time, when my friends so lovingly cornered me, that I began making writing goals.  I longed to experience the publishing process, so I originally started rewriting my family narrative, which my grandmother had left to me when she passed away.  I wanted to bind it nicely, and keep it as an heirloom to be passed down for generations to come.  I set my deadline for March 18th, 2011, my 31st birthday. 

I typed daily and saved the document to my little panda bear shaped USB drive, occasionally backing it up on my hard drive.  Well, one day I went to get the panda USB off of my key chain and it wasn't there.  All of that work lost!  25 pages, gone.  And only 9 pages saved on the hard drive. Bummed me out.  And even more scary, the USB had ALL of my other writing, including college work, poetry, stories and plays.

So what now?  Get back to retyping it? No way!  I was ready to start working on getting my OWN writing out in the world before some stranger did! 

I had everything I needed to succeed, right there, right then.  I just had to say I could do it.  I had to adjust my mindset.  I had to lace up my shiny new writing boots and get to trudging those thick, muddy waters immediately!

"Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win"  '
-Sun Tzu, The Art of War

I decided to take the advice of a computer saavy friend, who suggested that I start a blog and publish my stories publically, so that readers could get acquainted with my voice.

That day http://missamandapanda.blogspot.com/ was born.

By changing my mindset, I have since written a new children's story, Larry Bear and the Endless Sea, joined a children's authors critique group, started a Facebook author page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Amanda-Steinhaus/187655541276631, bought the domain name http://www.msamandapanda.com/, which I am eager to begin designing soon, and connected with an illustrator in Florida https://www.facebook.com/MADARTGallery to start collarborations on Larry Bear. 

Ahhh...the power of positive thinking and the law of attraction.   It really exists. 

The task now is to stay focused on the new goal: To publish Larry Bear as an eBook by my next birthday!  It's totally achievable and I am excited to do it.  There are so many other stories in my collection that I will be hashing through with my critique group, so do not be surprised if I add some other projects to my timeline soon!

"Through our thoughts, we make the world."

Make it a happy place :)

Thanks for reading!