This advice from Terry Rossio is just about the best I can think of heading into a new year, and well, the rest of our lives. Never wait. It's worth reading, believing and putting into practice; so do it. (The rest of the Wordplayer columns are really good too--and yes, they're screenwriting specific, but they are also perfectly applicable to other kinds of writing and to life in general.)

Painted, which definitely counts as doing, but S L O W doing. It-Will-Take-Forever-Doing. We barely finished the little front alcove room, and there are many rooms left to go. And I won't even talk about the 45 minutes I spent REMOVING STAPLES FROM THE FRENCH DOORS. Barbarians who worshipped the Great and Fearsome Staple God inhabited this apartment last, and this God required bad manners and sacrifices of taste and humanity. I wish I knew the guys who wrecked the place's mothers so I could tell them what a horrible job they did raising their sons. I hope they're all living back at home in their parents basements, getting together once in a miserable while to swap barely-remembered stories about how good they had it when they feared the Staple God and how all the bad karma they accumulated now ruins their lives. I wish.

Instead, I remove staples. Sometimes with a screwdriver AND pliers, just so we can paint over the damage.

On a better note, our upstairs neighbor seems very cool and has a Hedwig and the Angry Inch poster.

Finis.