Inspiration and Motivation

Inspiration is everywhere, if you look. This is a selection of people, places, events, art, and music that motivate and inspire me. I hope you’ll feel the same.

Gambling on an Opportunity I Found Permission

Lynette M Burrows

I took a gamble and went to Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago. No, I didn’t gamble on slot machines or baccarat tables or any of the hundreds of games of chance there. The gamble I took was on myself and my writing. I attended 20Books Vegas 2021: a 20Booksto50k® educational and networking event. By gambling on an opportunity I found permission. How it Started The 20Booksto50k® Facebook group is a social learning group created to share knowledge and best business practices for indie-publishing and selling more books. Michael Anderle, founder of 20Booksto50k®, and Craig Martelle, group leader and organizer, host the conference in Vegas every year(except 2020 when COVID-19 closed Vegas). They keep costs as low as possible to make it affordable for all writers.  This summer, generous donors created a scholarship fund for writers with limited means. Interested people answered essay questions. Awards ranged from covering all costs to partial scholarships to attendance fees only. Need and those essays determined who won what. They awarded more than 100 scholarships.  I took a gamble and answered the essay questions. Figured if I didn’t win, I’d lost nothing. And if I won, it was a sign I was meant […]

10 Quotes to Inspire Your Climb

Lynette M Burrows

A creative endeavor often feels like climbing a rugged, treacherous mountain. One slip and you’ll fall to your doom. Yet, the analogy has many positives, too. Here are ten quotes to inspire your climb up your creative mountain. Know Your Why The summit is what drives us, but the climb itself is what matters. Conrad Anker There’s no glory in climbing a mountain if all you want to do is to get to the top. It’s experiencing the climb itself – in all its moments of revelation, heartbreak, and fatigue – that has to be the goal. Karyn Kusama Don’t Give Up Obstacles don’t have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don’t turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it. Michael Jordan The climb might be tough and challenging, but the view is worth it. There is a purpose for that pain; you just can’t always see it right away. Victoria Arlen Always continue the climb. It is possible for you to do whatever you choose, if you first get to know who you are and are willing to work with a power that is greater than […]

The Second Woman to Win the Nobel Prize in Physics

Lynette M Burrows

Fifty-two years after Marie Curie, society believed women were unsuited for academic or scientific work. Maria Goeppert Mayer pursued her interests, anyway. And she became the second woman to win the Nobel Prize in physics. Early Life Friedrich Goppert, and his wife Maria, lived in Kattowitz (now Katowice, Poland). Their only child, Maria Goeppert Mayer, was born on June 28, 1906. They moved from Kattowitz when her father, a sixth-generation university professor, accepted an appointment as the professor of pediatrics at the University of Göttingen in 1910. She claimed she was closer to her father because being a scientist; he was a more interesting. Education Only one school in 1921 Göttingen would prepare girls to take the university entrance exam, the abitur. It closed its doors a year before she would have graduated. She took the university entrance exam, anyway. And passed the exam at 17 years old, a year earlier than most. Fewer than one in ten German university students were female. Maria entered the mathematics program at the University of Göttingen. But changed to physics. It interested her more. Her doctoral thesis explained her theory of two-photon absorption (aka excitation). Though there was no way to prove her […]