I don’t always get what I deserve. No one gets what they deserve. But I want to deserve what I get. – Eloise Klein Healy
I heard my friend and teacher Eloise say this yesterday; she gave me a way through all the days when writing seems so thankless, when agents reject my manuscript (4 so far), when students entrench themselves in the academic style we’ve been taught, when money seems to disappear like so much smoke. 
I will work hard so that I deserve anything I get. I won’t take the short cuts of “how to” books that I can publish and sell but that will be forgotten like the lattest fad diet. I won’t succumb to the temptation to write blog posts that are easy and formulaic, with kitschy pics and sensational SEO Words. I won’t use other people to climb up onto platforms and shout my still gestational ideas.
Instead, I will be like Eloise – strong, true, and kind enough to touch my face as we say good-bye.
In giving, that near cliche but truth says about receiving . . . sometimes it takes a poet to remind me of that.
What will you do – fight for what you deserve or work to deserve what you get?
I’ll tell you again why I’m afraid of the dark.
I can see it coming
and can’t ever tell just when it has arrived.
I sense it thin and waiting between the pages of books
but it’s too fast even for a good reader.— from “Dark” by Eloise Klein Healy