"It's a great life if you don't weaken."

I don't know if John Buchan, First Baron of Tweedsmuir (seriously) was speaking of war or publishing when he made that remark. I can only say it definitely applies to publishing.

Buchan is the author of The Thirty-Nine Steps, a book I fondly remember from my youth. It was published in 1915 and made into a movie by Alfred Hitchcock twenty years later. (I vividly remember checking it out from a tiny, underfunded library in Onalaska, Wisconsin, and reading it high up in the branches of the mulberry tree that dominated the front yard of our house.) Apparently, Buchan never weakened. He was a prolific author and did a whole lot of other interesting stuff.

"It's a great life if you don't weaken."

As Colleen continues to spin those plates and I whack away at the banana stalks with my literary machete, we can't afford to wimp out. We believe in the life. And we try to help each other stay strong.