How Do I Know What I Think Until I See What I Say?

The new FTC rules on endorsements have caused a bit of a stir around the online writing community, because they apply to bloggers as well as to corporations. Basically, if you haven't heard, the new endorsement rules require bloggers reviewing a product (including a book) to disclose if they got the book for free.* That's pretty much it. There's a lot more detail, and some fine distinctions as to who is considered an "endorser" of a product, and who is just a consumer blabbing about a personal experience, but the long and the short of it is that, if you get the product for free, you should mention that when you write about the product on your blog.** If you think about it, the new rule*** makes sense. If I'm reading a blog about books and the blogger has gotten a bunch of books from a publisher for free, that's relevant information. Most blogs are run by individuals and their ties to corporations are not obvious. I wouldn't know, necessarily, that ...

By nature, I am a planner. Not in my writing , as I've mentioned before, but in my life. I set goals, I work toward them, and I achieve them. I am someone who can "get things done." But over the last few years, I have changed my perspective on goals. It started when I was in graduate school and realized that what I had been working for since the fifth grade (a PhD in literature)* was not going to make me happy. So I bailed on that and went to law school, because it seemed interesting and lawyers made a decent living.** Still, I was a planner. Goals, work, achievement, lather, rinse, repeat. I thought that the law school thing was an anomaly, not an indictment of the method. Then, about four years ago, my personal plan for myself was disrupted in such a fundamental way that there was no going back. Everything I saw for my future, everything I had planned...gone. Immediately and irrevocably. At that point, I realized that long term goals don't work for me. Bet...