Writers' Reel is a weekly video feature. Below we've shared a recording of Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself." Credit: PBS.

I imagine the new year like this: a whole calendar laid bare, waiting to be marked up—month by month, day by day, moment by moment, by who we are and what we will do with ourselves in this new parameter of time.

Today’s the day: the day the Mayans predicted would be the end of the world. Today is also the winter solstice, the shortest day and longest night of the year. Our earth is in transition. Life is in transition as we gear up for a new year, which gets me thinking about beginnings and endings.

McSweeney's Internet Tendency presents: Ask a Former Professional Literary Agent, Part VII
By John Hodgman

These days, everyone’s a writer.

Not of books, but of blurbs, blogs, sound bites, tweets, texts, etc. We are communicating our own stories, day-by-day, moment-by-moment, reflecting on our everyday lives or on the flashing headlines that make truth seem stranger than fiction. So where do novels fit in in the zeitgeist?

In the video below, filmmaker and professional badass Werner Herzog reads "'Twas The Night Before Christmas."
The Mark Blog will continue posting through this week and then will be off for the remainder of the year. See you in 2013!

Image: Carol Aust

“Don’t be kind of bold. Be bold.”— William Zinsser: On Writing Well

This week, I’ve been thinking about boldness.

Photo: "Tidal Resonance Chamber" by Robert Horner.

The Friday of the Project Defense I continually ruminated on the upcoming event. Throughout the day I kept on reminding myself to return to the moment at hand.

So it begins. The final push. Having birthed the first draft, now it’s time to grow this baby into something I can be proud of; into a bound volume that can share the shelves with Shakespeare, and all the other greats and even just really good writers who’ve come before me and articulated our human condition more eloquently than I could ever hope to. So why should I try?

I don’t know.