The Queen of Perseverance

Are You Seeing the New Posts?

2009-03-20T08:09:00.002-04:00

Hey, Folks.

Just wanted to check and see if you've found the new blog. Also, if you've subscribed to Dimensions, are you getting your updates? We're posting regularly, so come take a look, or let me know if you're not getting your emails.

I don't want to lose touch with anyone. I've enjoyed getting to know all of you!

Here's how to contact me if you have questions: robing8300 at gmail dot com.

And here's the new URL: http://dimensionsartandeternity.blogspot.com/

Thanks!

THE QUEEN HAS MOVED!

2009-03-10T09:35:00.000-04:00

The Queen is currently posting at her new blog:

Dimensions: Art and Eternity

Come on over and visit!

Prizes and More Prizes!

2009-03-08T09:33:00.000-04:00

One last reminder to come on over to the new blog, Dimensions: Art and Eternity, not only for the great content, but also for the prizes!

We'll be holding a prize drawing once a week for the first eight weeks or so for lots of cool stuff including hand-made jewelry and books. Then, at the end of April, we'll hold a grand prize drawing for a $50.00 amazon.com gift certificate.

You can join in the fun by posting comments or by subscribing. SUBSCRIBERS AUTOMATICALLY RECEIVE ONE ENTRY INTO EACH DRAWING!

If you want a reminder what the new blog is all about, just click here. Hope to see you at Dimensions!

It's Time to Make the Switch!

2009-03-06T09:10:00.003-05:00

This is it, folks. Time to switch over to the new blog.

The new blog (Dimensions: Art and Eternity) is up and running, although not in its final form. But we plan to start regular posting there next week. Which means, I won't be posting here after this week, at least not in the near future.

So, I'd like to ask a couple of things of you. First, go over to the new blog and subscribe. There's a very easy subscription box on the right-hand side that you can use. (Just remember step two. After you receive an email about your subscription, you must open up the email message and click on the link to confirm!) After subscribing, you will not only receive notifications every time there's a new post, but you will be entered into EVERY PRIZE DRAWING ON THE SITE!

And there are going to be numerous prize drawings! We're planning to give away something fun every week for about eight weeks, culminating in a big, grand prize drawing at the end of April. You'll be able to get entries by leaving comments, and one automatic entry for being subscribed.

Second thing I'd like to ask of you: If you have your own blog, would you be willing to link to our new site? If you're already linking to The Queen, you can just substitute Dimensions. As an added bonus, if you go ahead and do this now, you won't hear from me about it again! No whining, begging emails showing up in your inbox. Think of the irritation you'll be saving yourself!

Anyway, all my regulars out there have become very special to me, so I hope you'll follow me over to the new site. We'll still talk about perseverance, and pirates, and the strange things that cats do. (I have a bizarre new Wendy story coming up.) There will just be far more variety and a wider range of topics with Kristi's input added in.

Hope to see you at Dimensions!

Snow is Creepy

2009-03-01T20:24:00.006-05:00

When you're a native Georgia girl, snow can be a little bit creepy. Especially when your husband is out of the country, you're all alone in the house, and the snow is falling so hard that you can barely see. I've read horror novels that begin that way.

This was the view of our back yard and shed from the doorway when the snow first started falling. It got more impressive over the next hour or so, but I only had my cell phone for taking pictures (my husband has the camera with him in Chile). So I never managed to capture how beautiful it was. And creepy.

It's been a strange weekend. Yesterday was warm with rain and thunder and tornado warnings all day long. Typical spring weather. When I got up this morning, it was still fairly warm, but then the temperature plummeted. Suddenly we're back to winter.

Dave is in Chile for six weeks, where they're reaching the end of their summer season. I teased him that he's missing the entire Georgia winter and that it will be spring when he gets back next weekend. I may have been right. Next weekend, the high is supposed to be 78 degrees.

That's Georgia for you!

We Have a Winner and a Name!

2009-03-01T20:20:00.002-05:00

The winner of the drawing for the $15.00 gift certificate is...Brittany J. Brittany, I'll get your prize to you right away.

Thanks to everyone who gave input. We got some very good advice. Oddly enough, the last suggestion we received is the one that struck both Kristi and me as just right, and it's the one we're going to use. A new visitor to the blog, Lizzieswanhouse, suggested Dimensions: Art and Eternity. We love it! It sums up our concept nicely, is concise and (I think) easy to remember.

I'll let you know when we're up and running. Thanks again for all the help.

Last Chance: Between Worlds

2009-02-26T18:59:00.000-05:00

The last idea I mentioned as a possible name for the new blog was Between Worlds.

This idea came from an address by N.T. Wright on "The Bible and Christian Imagination." Here's the part I love:

..."We find worship offered God by the angels, who in Isaiah 6 sing day and night, without ceasing, 'Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of Hosts, The whole earth is full of his glory.'
And we say, yes, it is — the whole earth is full of God's glory. I see it. I catch it on the sunrise and the sunset, the flight of a bird. . . Then we remind ourselves that it's also a place of violence and destruction, and of terror and shame and fear which invade our own souls. And then we move on in Isaiah and just a few chapters later in Isaiah chapter 11 we find there a vision, an extraordinary vision, of a world healed by the love of God, a world in which the lion and the lamb will lie down together. . . We, my friends, are called to live between the vision of the world which is already filled with the glory of God, and a world which is yet to be filled with the glory of God. . . .God's call to Christian artists [is] to have this unique vocation of enabling people to see what they can't otherwise see, to see that the world is already full of the glory of God, and that it will one day be filled yet fuller."

Let us know what you think of this idea. And remember--each comment gets you an entry into this weekend's drawing for a $15.00 amazon.com gift card. It's not too late to enter--but this is your last chance!

Story Quest

2009-02-25T18:51:00.004-05:00

I recently started reading a book by Madeleine L'Engle called The Rock That is Higher: Story as Truth. I was excited when I started the book because I found another book of hers--Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art--so inspiring.

Sadly, I've been disappointed in The Rock That is Higher. It just wasn't exactly what I expected. But the quote on the cover blew me away:

"If we open ourselves to story, to fairy tale, fantasy, myth, novel,we cannot help being aware of the ultimate unexplainableness of the deepest depths. We know we are on a quest, but we do not know the entire nature of the quest, nor where it is going to take us. . ."

Somewhere in that quote is the essence of why I read. Why I write. How the whole experience is in some mysterious way connected, for me, to God and Eternity. I'd love to find a name for the new blog somewhere in there, but all I could think of was Story Quest.

Any other ideas out there? And just in case you've forgotten, comments will get you an entry into this weekend's drawing for a $15.00 amazon.com gift card.

An Easier Way to Enter the Contest

2009-02-21T16:22:00.001-05:00

When I asked you to enter the drawing for a $15.00 amazon.com gift certificate by suggesting ideas and names for my upcoming blog, I obviously stunned you into silence. Things have never been so quiet around here. Never before have my attempts at bribery come up so empty-handed.

Okay, the drawing is going to be held in about a week, so I'm giving you another chance. I'm going to list the ideas that Kristi and I have been kicking around so far. You can just tell me which one(s) you like, and you'll get an entry in the drawing.

First, I have to tell you about the fish angle. Yes, you read that correctly.

When Kristi was thinking of starting her own blog, she was going to call herself "Little Fish," because she feels like such a tiny little fish about to tackle the huge pond of Hollywood. And then I often think of myself as a fish out of water, because my poor writing never seems to fit in. It's too commercial to be literary and too literary to be commercial. Too Christian to sell in the ABA and too secular for the CBA. Too much suspense for the romance genre, not enough to be pure suspense. You get the picture.

So last week I had a brainstorm. "Fiction, Faith, and Fish"! I loved it. I loved the way it sounds, and it's intriguing. Kristi could be Little Fish and I could be Fish Out of Water. Only trouble was that we're not just going to talk about fiction. Kristi's first interests are film and theater and acting. And Fiction, Film, Faith and Fish starts getting too long and complicated.

So I started looking for some other words that start with F that have something to do with the broader idea of telling a story. I got things like:

Fantasy
Fancy
Flight of Fancy
Fable
Figment
(And then there were Fib and Fabrication, but do we really want to go there?)

From that, I had an idea like: Figments, Faith and Fish. Under the title we could write:
Figments: Of the imagination, whether expressed as story, film, drama or image.
Faith: In a God who created us in His own image, so that we possess the desire to create worlds of our own.
Fish: One little fish about to try her luck in the big pond of Hollywood. One writer fish who always seems to be out of water ETC ETC YOU GET THE IDEA.

(Hmmm...from reading the above, I also like "In His Image.")

Other ideas being kicked around:

Flight of Faith, Fiction Fish
Flight of Fiction, Faithful Fish
Flight of Fantasy, Fish of Faith
Flight of Fiction, Fish of Faith.

Earlier, we suggested
The Joyous Journey (from Surprised by Joy, the C.S. Lewis book)
Story Quest
Between Two Worlds

What do you think?

Maybe you'll help us get this nailed down from this post. If not, I'll share some quotes that influenced some of these ideas and give you yet another chance to provide input. Thanks for your help!

While His Wife is Making Up Stories...

2009-02-18T17:00:00.004-05:00

While his wife is struggling to make up good adventures, my husband Dave is off having real ones in the wilds of Chile. He's working down there for six weeks. I'll let him tell you about his weekend:

The day started with me buying a cup of the strongest coffee I ever drank in my entire life. I learned that even though a company is a U.S. company, that doesn't mean the employees speak a word of English. I now know how to ask for a "cafe grande" at the Dunkin Donuts shop.

I met up with William "Willy" Tang (grew up in San Francisco...works in Miami) and we were picked up by a local tour guide. We were told the night before someone would come around and pick us up and take us to the Maipo Valley and the cost would be 180,000 pesos, or 240 dollars. I wouldn't normally spend that kind of money, but after things worked out like they did, I was glad I did.

First we met the tour guide Natural (the closest we could come to his name in Spanish). He then introduced us to Jorge, the driver. And then if that wasn't enough, we met up with a "trekking guide" Rodrique (Rod). He was running late, so we did a little shopping (little tents set up for weekend selling) in San Jose de Maipo, the little town where we met the trekking guide. Once we connected with Rod, we started up into the mountains in the van. The road soon became something that only vaguely resembled a road. We were moving slowly up the mountain. Finally we made it up to a little open area where some kids and a dog were playing and parked. Rod went up to the house and apparently obtained permission for us to use the trail. When he returned, we started up the mountain.

Since Willy is an entomologist, he had an insect net and an aspirator and was collecting insects as we went. We would turn around and Willy would be nowhere in sight. Finally Rod said, through Natural, "We will have some really good collecting areas up ahead." Of course this really meant, "Hurry up...let's go!" So I think Willy caught on because he picked up his pace. We walked for a good hour and finally came to the most rickety bridge--really just a lot of small logs tied up side-by-side--across the creek.

Pretty soon Rod began to whistle really loud. He continued to do this several times and then finally crossed the creek and disappeared up the trail. After a couple of minutes he returned, but with an old man. We all crossed the creek and made it up the hill. We eventually learned that the old man was named Lalo. We walked up to his "house." He pulled some chairs around for us under the trees and we sat down. His dog stretched out on the ground near us and his extremely scraggly chickens, who were pretty much tame, walked around us.

The Chileans talked to Lalo at length and then as the conversation progressed, I noticed that Lalo started to drop some English words in here and there. Eventually he just straight out began to speak English. As it turned out he had lived in England for 5 years, and then went on to Germany, then to France, and finally to Spain. He worked in various jobs in all those countries. Some time ago, he returned to Chile and has been living up in the Andes in his shack for 23 years.

He had a black cook pot hanging over a fire pit, lots of fruit trees, and of course, his chickens. I asked him what the dog eats, and he said the dog has guardian angels who take care of him. Willy asked him if he had cable t.v. (a strange question to ask an old hermit living up in the Andes...but remember, Willy is an Entomologist). He said he only had a c.d. player he listens to sometimes. He also had his gun leaning up against the tree and he said he shoots rabbits from time to time for meat, but he doesn't want to overdo it because there are hunters that come up there and would be upset with him if he over-hunted the area. Rod mentioned through the interpreter that the first time he came up that trail Lalo met him with his gun and demanded, "Who are you and what do you want!!!" They have been friends ever since.

We talked for about an hour and finally got up to go. Lalo shook all our hands and gave us a hug. Well, anyway, maybe I had the honor and distinction of meeting the Ernest T. Bass of Chile. Or maybe what really happened is I saw a reflection of myself in Lalo. Maybe sometime in the future I will be sitting around telling anyone who happens by about all the places I have worked. Even if I don't, so far the highlight of coming to Chile has been meeting Lalo.

(Lalo and Dave outside Lalo's House)

Greetings from Kristi

2009-02-16T11:45:00.001-05:00

Since Kristi will soon be sharing a blog with me, I thought I'd let her introduce (or reintroduce) herself to you:

Greetings! Some of you know me well, and some maybe not so much. But here I am anyway, writing to let you all know about a couple of awesome things that are going on in my life right now. So, patience, Grasshopper- this is a little long but quite informative!

Many of you may be aware that I finally finished my bachelor’s degree in May, graduating from Kennesaw State’s cutting-edge program with a Theatre and Performance Studies major, and a Film Studies minor. Before I graduated, I began to pray in earnest about what my next step should be after graduation.

I spent much of my twenties “gathering life experience”, or as some might call it, wasting time. Don’t get me wrong- there were some bright lights amidst the fog- not all of that decade was time and energy lost. But one day, during an extremely difficult period, I asked God to take over anything I was trying to hold onto, because that is the only way, I truly believe, to make the most out of every second- to really be who we are meant to be. I did not- do not- want to waste time anymore.

And now, thanks to God, here I am, a few years later, officially educated. But the question has still remained--or at least it had until a few months ago- what next? I tried a few different possibilities--sometimes the process of finding God’s way for us is by having doors closed in our faces, while others stay open, or are thrown open wide. Usually through this process, we learn a lot along the way, if we are open to it.

That is the attitude I tried to take as I put in numerous applications for grad school last year, dragging members of my family around the Southeast with me as I auditioned for various MFA acting programs, as I wrote treatments for filmmaking programs, as I tried to demonstrate my ability to handle an MA/ PhD program, and as I failed to get into any of them. That is the attitude I tried to keep as I graduated, still working the same job I had before I started. I tried different paths in and around the Atlanta area, some resulting in failure, some in success. I had an amazing experience building a new show from scratch for the North Carolina Renaissance Festival. That collaboration and travel experience taught me so much about myself and working with others to make a production where before there had been none. My two partners in that process were wonderful, and I will never forget them!

And yet still, the question remained- where do I go from here (here being the Atlanta area), or do I stay here, and if so what do I do? I had been playing with the idea of moving to Los Angeles for a while (much to my sweet mother’s dismay). Over the last couple of years, a growing feeling- maybe even a calling- seemed to be settling in my heart for the West. Still though, that is a big move, and I just was not sure. Until probably 5 ½ - 6 months ago. I had been reading a series of fictional books which moved me so much, not only as a reader but as an artist--as a PERSON--that I knew I had to go for it. Do you ever have an experience like that, where one event in your life can have so much impact on a seemingly unrelated second event? I find this seems to happen a lot when God is involved. There was a peace inside me now about what I had to do that I had not known before. I had to follow my dreams, the dreams I believe God has laid on my heart to seek.

I have asked myself, what is it I am seeking? Fame? Money? A secure spot on Hollywood’s A-list? Not necessarily noble ventures. The main thing I have to seek is God’s glory. I want to explore through poetry of performance and writing, and hopefully eventually, my own filmmaking, God’s Truth and Beauty. Does that mean every venture I undertake will be puritanical in nature? Not necessarily. Sometimes to find Truth, ugly and uncomfortable elements must be exposed first. Does that mean I won’t have to do a few cracker or toilet paper commercials? Please. I hope I can get those gigs! But the glory of God is why I believe I am being led to go there, and God willing, I will be successful in following Him.

Now, on to the second exciting development in my life recently (and I will try to make this brief). I am starting a BLOG! Actually, I will be sharing a new blog with fellow artist and wonderful aunt of mine, Robin Johns Grant. She is a writer, and we are sharing many similar experiences in our walks as Christians and artists these days, and are both very interested in exploring the crossroads of the two. How does one stay true to God, and true to her calling as an artist? This is one of the questions which will be a recurring theme in our blog, but we’ll be delving into other important areas as well, such as will there be another Pirates of the Caribbean movie, or whether or not Rupert Grint is too young for me. Or where exactly is my position in Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon?

I will also be giving updates on my progress as I ready for my move to the West, which is scheduled for late April. My dad and his wife are generously helping me relocate, and we will be viewing some of the West along the way. What an adventure! I will share my victories and losses once I get there, and of extreme importance- my celebrity sightings! Sometimes Robin will post, and other times I will, but I hope that everyone reading this will check it out, and keep in touch! I will strive to do the same.

Big Changes, Part 2

2009-02-11T09:00:00.000-05:00

Last time, I gave some exciting news about upcoming changes to this blog—including its name. I announced we’re going to have a contest so you can help us name the new improved blog, and maybe win a $15.00 amazon gift certificate in the process.

So what’s going to be different about the new blog?

My niece Kristi will share it with me. So you’ll actually get a break from me every week!

The new blog will have a broader focus:

I write fiction. Kristi writes fiction, acts in theater, makes films. So hopefully we can talk about a lot more art forms.

Kristi will bring in new readers from theater and film. Should be interesting to get comments not just from writers and readers, but from actors and film-makers and lots of other creative folks.
I hope to write reviews of not just CBA fiction, but books published in the secular market, movies, classic books. And I’d love to connect with authors and artists you might not get to read about in the other blogs you follow. That’s my hope, anyway!

We’ll look at how Christianity and the world of the arts mesh—and how they might conflict.

We’ll still talk about perseverance, but I’d also like to focus on the creative journey of this upcoming year, for myself and for Kristi. Are we led to persevere and wait without moving? To make big changes? What surprises lie along the way?

We’ve had a few ideas for blog names, including:
The Joyous Journey
Story Quest
Between Two Worlds

All of those quotes were inspired by someone like C.S. Lewis or Madeleine L’Engel. I’ll share some quotes with you later.

In the meantime, start thinking!

I’ll announce the winner of the drawing on February 28.

Big Changes Coming to this Blog!

2009-02-09T16:06:00.002-05:00

This blog is about to change!

Before I took my long blogging break a couple of months ago, I gave a hint that I would have an announcement about an upcoming change to the blog. I didn’t mention it again because the change has been slower in coming than I would have hoped, but I’d like to tell you a little bit about it now. Plus, you’ll want to keep reading, because there’s a contest and a chance to win goodies in it for you!

The bottom line is, The Queen of Perseverance is going to fade away, to be replaced with a new blog that I share with my niece.

Three or four months ago, Kristi (the aforementioned niece) told me she would like to start a blog and asked my advice. I was excited to hear this, because I’d been wanting to ask her for some time to share a blog with me. Over the past couple of years, Kristi’s and my interests have really meshed. We’ve done a lot of talking about our creative dreams, story ideas, ambitions—and how all that fits into God’s plan for our lives. We’ve both read a lot of C.S. Lewis and been inspired by his ideas about Christianity and the imagination, about our longing for something beyond ourselves that is ultimately a longing for God.

Beyond our interests, Kristi and I are both searching, trying to find where our creative interests fit in our service to God. It’s something we’ve both been trying to work out for a long time. (Okay, I’ve been at it a lot longer than Kristi has, but still, she feels a little weary at times, too.) Even so, we both have a feeling that the upcoming year will be pivotal, that we’re both going to be on a journey that will lead us to some answers one way or another.

I, for one, just finished up up a romance novel geared toward the CBA (Christian Booksellers’ Association). My agent advised me to write it to try to help me break into publishing. I’ve been doing a lot of things like that over the last few years, trying to reach that publishing goal. I haven’t gotten published and haven’t been terribly happy with my writing, either. I’ve been talking to God about all this, and my intention is that, if this manuscript goes nowhere, I’m going to take a whole different path. I’m going to start working on a couple of projects purely because I’m excited about them—not because I can figure out what market they will fit into, or because they will pigeon hole tidily into a particular genre. I may even pursue self-publishing or small presses. I daily pray for God to show me which fork in the road to take, and I’m willing to be flexible.

And if it does sell—well, my journey this year will definitely be different! So I’m excited to see where things are going.

As for Kristi, she graduated a few months ago with a degree in theater and film studies. She’s been acting locally on the stage, writing plays, and making some short films, but she’s wondering where her career is going, too. She feels God is calling her to go to L.A. and try to break into the industry there. Talk about a journey!

So…one way or another, it’s going to be an interesting year. I’m hoping all of you will share that with us. And now…this is where you come in.

We would like your help in naming our blog. Also, if you have any ideas for a tagline, or a pertinent quote we could use on the mast—any suggestions like that would be helpful. And for each suggestion you leave, you’ll receive an entry into a drawing for a $15.00 amazon.com gift certificate. (You can also email me your thoughts, if you don’t want to post. Just use the “Contact me” button in the right-hand column of this page.)

I’ll give more information about the upcoming blog next time, so you might want to wait until then to send your suggestions.
Until then, start thinking!

A Very, Very Good Excuse

2009-02-05T22:05:00.003-05:00

My excuse for not blogging so far this week? I FINALLY finished my manuscript! Yes!!

Or at least, I'm finished as far as I'm concerned. I just hit the "send" button and shot it off to Janet, my agent. Now I'll just have to wait and see if she thinks I'm finished. If you would like to say a little prayer for me on that score, please feel free. I want her to have wisdom and guide me in the right direction, but I'd also like to be finished up with this project. At least unless someone gives me a contract and then wants changes. I'll be quite happy to work on it some more then.

But if not...well, I'm ready to move on. Those of you who have put up with my whining and dragging my feet know that this manuscript has been a struggle for me. On a happy note, I have some new ideas I'm excited about, so no matter what happens, I'm looking forward to writing this year.

Anyway, I just wanted you all to celebrate this milestone with me. I'll try to write something more substantial soon. But not tonight. It's fairly late already, and I have to get up at 5 a.m. to drive to an out-of-town work meeting. That may be fairly normal for a lot of you, but I don't do 5 a.m. I'm also dreading the drive because I not only have to drive to Atlanta, but all the way through it and about an hour beyond. All in morning rush hour traffic.

I'm hoping GPS Lady will find me a way around Atlanta. But I've told you how snitty she can be.

Like I said, pray for me!

Fascinating Research Site

2009-02-01T14:35:00.000-05:00

In one of my library journals recently, I read about a new digital collection called Slavery and Abolition in the U.S., which was put together by Millersville University and Dickinson College from their library's holdings. If you enjoy reading first-person accounts of life in other times, or if your fiction is set in the 19th century in America, this site could possibly be a gold mine.

With support from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the two institutions have digitized and put online for the public approximately 15,000 pages of first-person narratives, legal proceedings, anti-slavery tracts, religious sermons, and more. Through these readings, you can get a glimpse of the debates and ideologies of the time.

I'm always fascinated reading first-hand accounts from "regular" people who lived in explosive times. I was amazed when I went to look on this site and clicked on a book of letters written by a Virginia man. I discovered the first letter was dated 1858 and was written when he visited my home town! It gave me an odd feeling to read his description of the fort and the cemetery on the river--which I still frequently drive by. But reading his description of a slave auction held in my own city was just downright bizarre.

Also interesting was the preface to the book, written by someone other than the author, who decried the tendency of fiction books to write social issues into their plots and try to effect change through their stories. He mentioned not only Uncle Tom's Cabin on the one side, but also the novels written as "answers" to it from the other side of the debate. This editor despised them all and said such issues had no place in fiction. Hmm...sounds like a debate that's still going on today, about the place of religion or issues in novels. Only the issues themselves have changed.

I've only checked out the one book, so don't have deep knowledge of this site. But it looks promising. I haven't tackled a historical novel yet, but I do know from my writing that I love reading first-person narratives on any subject that touches on my novel's background or plot. I don't know a better way to add color and accuracy.

Thank you, thank you!

2009-01-31T11:24:00.004-05:00

I want to thank all of you who went over to Romance Writers on the Journey and left a comment. I was afraid no one would visit and I would let Keli down. Plus be humiliated. Kind of like giving a party and being afraid no one will show up. But Keli says I've already had more page views than a lot of the debut authors she's featured. I'm sure that's thanks to all of you.

I was also impressed that, judging by your comments, you actually read the interview. Wow! That's dedication.

I intended to email and thank you all personally, but I got slammed at work right about then and got sort of sidetracked. Please know I read each and every comment and really enjoyed them. Plus I got a lot of new ideas.

So...have a great weekend, and thanks again.

Help Me Look Important and Maybe Win a Prize!

2009-01-28T13:26:00.001-05:00

I feel like a star! Keli Gwyn is featuring me on her blog called Romance Writers on the Journey. Well, that's appropriate. If anyone has been on a writing journey--a long, long writing journey--it's me.

So if you can't get enough of me talking about myself here, come on over to Keli's blog and check it out. Even if you feel you know more about me than you ever wanted to, I'd love it if you'd still visit the blog and leave a comment, so I won't appear boring and friendless. As incentive, Keli is holding a drawing with some cool prizes involved, and you only have to leave a comment to enter.

Good luck--and thanks!

Glimpses of Heaven

2009-01-26T12:45:00.004-05:00

Back during the Christmas season, I mentioned discovering some new authors and books that the rest of you have probably been enjoying for years. I asked what else I might be missing, and several of you mentioned Randy Alcorn, particularly his book on Heaven.

It was interesting that several of you brought up this particular book, because my niece, Kristi, and I had been discussing it.

We've been talking a lot about Heaven, particularly how we Americans don't seem to be all that excited about it. Maybe it's because our lives are relatively easy in comparison to the rest of the world. Maybe because we're so grounded in materialism.

I've heard missionaries say that in lots of countries, particularly where there is persecution, Christians focus on Heaven. It's the promise that keeps them going. They picture it vividly and ponder it in their hearts.

I think we need to do more of that, ourselves, to keep up from getting so bogged down in the cares of this world. We need that reminder that the story is going to have a "happily ever after" no matter how bleak things are right now. But to do that, picturing some vague cloudy place where we sit around strumming harps all day isn't what we need.

The Bible is the best place to start, of course, to get the right foundation. But are there other authors and books out there than can help fire our imaginations, help us picture the world to come?

Lots of you mentioned Randy Alcorn's book, Heaven. I have read this book, but it was years ago. I was interested to discover a companion book called 50 Days of Heaven: Reflections That Bring Eternity to Light. Here's the description from amazon.com: "The devotional provides an easy-to-follow, 50-day program that reveals the biblical information on what a Christian's life will be like in heaven. Throughout this journey, the reader will learn and meditate upon the promises, rewards, and expectations that a believer in Christ will enjoy for eternity."

I also remember reading Heaven: Your Real Home, by Joni Eareckson Tada, several years ago. Particularly poignant was a dream she had at one point--which she was convinced was a true vision of heaven--in which she is swimming in a beautiful pool. (As most of you probably know, in this life, Joni is paralyzed.) A man is close by, watching, and she's struck by the complete harmony they feel as they look at one another. No distrust, no disharmony, no sin. (I hope I'm recounting the scene accurately. As I said, I read it years ago.)

Last year I picked up two books, one of which was 90 Minutes in Heaven by Don Piper, who was pronounced dead at the scene of a car accident and had an amazing experience during those 90 minutes. The other was called Glimpses of Heaven: True Stories of Hope and Peace at the End of Life's Journey by Trudy Harris. I found this one to be a little disappointing. Harris is (or was) a Hospice nurse and recounts experiences of patients and family as they reach the end of life, but the few stories I read didn't particularly inspire me about Heaven. Maybe if some of you have read it, you had a different experience you can relate.

A book I'm curious about right now is called The Slumber of Christianity: Awakening a Passion for Heaven on Earth by Ted Dekker, who usually writes thriller fiction. Here's what it says at amazon.com: "Dekker exhorts Christians to wake up and find genuine happiness in cultivating a deep desire for heaven. Although he argues that Christians should enjoy the pleasures of earth as a 'foretaste' of heaven, he cautions that these pleasures should not be mistaken for the real thing. Relying heavily on C.S. Lewis and the Apostle Paul, he makes a case for hope as the 'engine of life.' Satan, he says, has redirected our obsession away from God and heaven by filling our minds with earthly things."

Bingo!

Do you have other books or readings to suggest? Have you read any of the books mentioned and want to chime in? I think this is an important topic, and I'd love to hear from you!

Cat Imagination

2009-01-20T15:14:00.006-05:00

I've come to the conclusion that not only do I have a runaway imagination, but so do my cats.

When I was a little girl, my family always had cats running around in the yard and the woods behind the house, mostly strays my mother took pity on. And of course they had babies. I often heard a mother cat coming back from a hunting trip and calling her kittens, so I know the sound. My cat Tegan lived for twenty years. She never had babies, but almost every night she would pick up one of her toys, carry it around in her mouth and make that mother cat noise. Some of my family said she was pretending the toy was her kitten. I always thought she was pretending it was some fearsome creature she had killed, and that she was calling her pretend babies to come see what she had brought them. Either way, the cat version of playing with dolls.

My current cat, Wendy, is just plain goofy. I've seen her suddenly glance at the ceiling and jump away, as though startled. Then she creeps back, staring upward the whole time. When I go to investigate, I find that all the commotion is about two tiny spots on the ceiling. Is she pretending they're tarantulas?

Wendy frequently gets excited over nothing. She can watch a ceiling fan for an hour, with her little head rotating the whole time. I've tried playing with her with bubbles and laser pointers--things normal cats do with their owners. But she becomes so hysterical that when the bubbles pop or the laser light disappears, she's beside herself. She cries, she searches, she paces. It's too upsetting for both of us.

Lately, she's gotten into shadow puppets. I never put pictures back on my bedroom wall after we painted, and for awhile I tried to figure out why she was sitting on the bed and staring at the blank wall. Then I realized that when I sit in bed and read, the shadows on that big expanse of wall are amazing. I started making shadow puppets for her. She's enthralled. She could watch for hours, although she eventually gets too intense about that, too. Sort of like the laser pointer. Sort of like me with a Pirates of the Caribbean movie.

I wonder what's in her little mind while she's watching. But I figure her life is pretty boring, since she's a pampered house cat. Her meals are provided, she has a cushy bed and a warm house. I guess all of us need a little escapism, huh?

The Bible and Christian Imagination, part 2

2009-01-15T16:04:00.002-05:00

For generations now, many Christians have really believed, and acted on the belief, that the arts, the imagination, are the pretty bits around the edge, the kind of decorative border, whereas the middle bit, the main bit, whatever it is, is the kind of solid, stodgy, chunky bit in the middle which is Christian truth, dogma, belief, and ethics, and all that stuff, and then you can kind of go away and play sometimes around the edge if you're lucky. H.T. Wright

H.T. Wright spoke the above words in an address called The Bible and Christian Imagination at Seattle Pacific University. He could have been talking about me. I struggled for years, realizing on the one hand that my imagination was one of the most important parts of my being--the thing that made me uniquely me. On the other hand, I thought it couldn't be important to anyone else. It felt like a gift from God, but not one I could make any real use of for his kingdom. Not like being able to go out as a missionary doctor or engineer, or even a great teacher.

But Wright speaks of "God's call to Christian artists to have this unique vocation of enabling people to see what they can't otherwise see, to see that the world is already full of the glory of God, and that it will one day be filled yet fuller. " Earlier in his address, Wright spoke of how we live in a world that is on the one hand incredibly beautiful and good, but also filled with ugliness. It's already filled with God's glory, but not in the way that the world to come will be, when God heals all hurts and the lion will lie down with the lamb. The Christian artist, through their works, can help erect signposts, helping them imagine the world to come. Helping them to see the glory of God when they feel surrounded by ugliness.

Wright mentions that, once, when he was speaking of this calling, a woman in the audience broke down into tears. Later she told him that she was a Christian artist who never felt as if she belonged with the others in her congregation. "I've always thought that I just had to do this stuff and that nobody really understood why and didn't want it in the middle of what they were doing."

As Wright says, "We've got something which is a signpost pointing us to something further which has yet to be discovered. That is what the beauty of this earth is like. It is a true signpost. God has put us in a beautiful world, and wants us to celebrate it, but he wants us then to use our imaginations to write those other parts. We'll get it wrong, we will imagine it wrong, but then we'll get glimmers which are getting it right, and the music will grow, and swell, and we will teach one another, and enlarge one another's horizons so that we can actually glimpse and see that there is to be a yet fuller beauty, a beauty in which the ugliness of this world is redeemed, in which the violence is rebuked, in which the possibilities of this world are finally fulfilled."

If you'd like to read this address in full, click here.

Is Imagination Christian?

2009-01-13T14:35:00.004-05:00

Last night I came across something by accident that really excited me. I think it was one of those divine "accidents," something that God sent because I needed to hear it right about now. Let me back up a bit.

I got hooked using an iPod a couple of years ago, but I bought a little refurbished one without much memory. Which was fine for awhile, but then I filled it up and had to stop acquiring new music. Since I've started listening to audiobooks of late, I particularly wanted more memory so I could download books to the player and not lug CD's and tapes around.

For Christmas, my wonderful hubby and sister both gave me amazon gift cards which bought me a new iPod with 120 GB of memory. Yep, I decided that this time, I'd buy one I couldn't fill up any time soon. (Now the problem, of course, is that my computer doesn't have enough storage space. But that's another issue.)

Anyway, with all that space to fill up, I went crazy on iTunes, and discovered all this free stuff you could download, including podcasts of people reading portions of the Bible daily. I can't even explain what search terms I put in or how exactly I stumbled across a little gem called "The Bible and Christian Imagination," but I had to check it out when I saw the title. My niece and I have been having all kinds of discussions lately about what it means to be a Christian artist, and how we integrate faith and imagination.

This selection turned out to be a speech given by H.T. Wright at Seattle Pacific University's President's Forum (in 2005, I believe), and it addressed those very issues. Wright has such a poetic way of phrasing things that I want to quote half the speech. As a good librarian who respects copyright issues, however, I won't do that.

Today, I'll just tell you how to find it if you'd like to read or listen to it yourself.
If you use iTunes, just search the store for "The Bible and Christian Imagination," and you should be able to find it.

You can also locate a written transcript by clicking here. (It sounds a little clunkier when you read it, because it is a transcript of a person speaking, with run-on sentences and all. Not like the beautiful, polished prose you consistently find in this blog, of course.)

Next blog, I'll tell you more about the points from the lecture that intrigued me. In the meantime, enjoy!

A Strange Thing About Time

2009-01-07T21:05:00.003-05:00

Time is an odd thing. At least for me. I've heard it said that the job will always expand to fill the time you have, and I've found that to be true. Give me a deadline in about an hour and I'll do amazing things. Give me a two-paragraph letter to write and eight hours to do it--and it will somehow take eight hours. No more, no less.

Apparently I need structure. Or pressure. You know, all those things I rebel against and hate.
I had all those wonderful days off from work and basically accomplished nothing. I'm on my third day back to the old grind, and I've accomplished more than in my entire vacation.

But it's reassuring to know what God can accomplish through me even when I think there isn't enough. Not enough time, not enough energy, not enough money. But he multiplies it all and makes it come out right somehow.

Maybe that was the problem with all that vacation time, anyway. When I think I have plenty of time I just rely on me and my disastrous organizational skills. The results aren't pretty. But when I'm squeezed and under pressure, I have to go to God. Works out much better, doesn't it?

Back to Normal

2009-01-05T16:14:00.004-05:00

I really intended to blog at least once or twice during the Christmas/New Year's holidays, but that didn't happen. Of course, a lot of things I intended to do didn't happen.

No calamities like last year, I'm pleased to report. Although it was sort of funny. We had sort of a weak echo of last year's traumas. Last Christmas, my sister's dog almost died from a gastric ailment. This year, my niece's dog appeared to have the same thing but recovered within hours. Last year we had major flooding from our plumbing. This time we had a stopped-up kitchen sink and a leaky shower head that spit water at the ceiling. Instead of pneumonia, we had colds. All in all, a definite improvement.

Still, I found myself getting a little stressed because of all those days off from work and no accomplishments. Not only did I not clean out the basement or the year's worth of junk mail and magazines that have collected in my bedroom, I didn't even fulfill my heart's desire of lounging in Barnes & Noble with a cup of Godiva hot chocolate and a good book. Only I could put pressure on myself because I'm not accomplishing the fun things on my to-do list!

I guess my expectations are too high for the end of a year--or the beginning of one. I sometimes think that the cycle of school years ruined me when I was young. I grew so accustomed to getting caught up and coming to a definite ending at the close of a term. Next term, everything was fresh and new, a blank slate. Of course, adult life isn't like that.

Oh well. Back to the routine today, and that's okay. Tonight I will start polishing the last draft of my manuscript. Because of course, I let that job spill over into the new year, too.

How about all of you? How is your new year starting off?

Woo-Hoo!!

2008-12-23T14:44:00.004-05:00

I just finished a second draft of my romance novel, right on schedule! This is fairly unprecedented for me. (Being on schedule, I mean.) And on top of that, I figured this draft would be about 5,000 or 6,000 words too long, and turns out I'm only about 1,800 words over the limit. That shouldn't be too hard to fix.

The next draft will mainly be tying up loose ends, polishing, and cutting. The end is in sight. Yay!

Hope to say something more coherent tomorrow. But if I don't get back to you before then, I hope you all have a wonderful, peaceful, joyous Christmas.

How Subtle is Too Subtle?

2008-12-20T09:32:00.000-05:00

I told you last time I'm always playing catch-up. I know you probably heard all about the movie Fireproof a couple of months ago, but that was during my blogging break, so I'm just getting around to it now.

In case you haven't heard, Fireproof is the second movie (after Facing the Giants) produced by a church in Georgia. I believe it's called Sherwood Baptist in Albany, but I've just spent far too much time trying to track down that nugget of information with my computer freezing up and refusing to cooperate, so I'll take a guess and move on. Anyway, I liked Facing the Giants but thought Fireproof was better. Not just because they had a "real" actor this time around, the highly likeable Kirk Cameron, but also because this movie seemed more realistic. Facing the Giants made you feel good, but to me things worked out a little too neatly for everyone, leaving the impression that if you love God, all your dreams will come true and you will live happily ever after.

Fireproof shows more of a real-life struggle as a fireman (Cameron, playing Caleb Holt) makes a decision to try to save his marriage, when his wife is ready to file for divorce. The intriguing part is that Caleb initially is no more enthusiastic about his marriage than his wife is. There are hurt feelings on both sides. It's hard, and they want to quit. Caleb agrees to try a 40-day "Love Dare" to please his father, which involves doing selfless things for his wife and his marriage each of the forty days.

And for the entire period, his wife (Catherine) rejects all his overtures. She's suspicious of his motives, or doesn't even notice what he's done. At the same time this is going on, Caleb's father is trying to get Caleb to work on his own spiritual problems and to accept Christ. But Caleb isn't interested. In one of the more powerful scenes, Caleb and his dad go for a walk by a lake and they come to an area that has a large wooden cross and benches in front of it. Caleb says youth retreats were once held there. He rages to his father about Catherine's bad attitude and says he's sick of the whole thing and ready for divorce. He says something like, "How can you keep loving someone who rejects you over and over?" Dad quietly puts his hand on the cross and looks Caleb right in the eye. Caleb gets it. So did I. Jesus still loves him, even though he rejects his Savior over and over.

The writer in me was screaming, "Wonderful! Gives me shivers! Please don't explain it and ruin the moment."

But they did. Caleb's dad proceeded to explain in great detail the conclusion his simple gesture had already made. And to me, the moment was watered down. Powerful became preachy.

That's how it came across to me, anyhow. I'm sure the makers of the movie, though, wanted to make sure that the audience got the gospel message. So what do you writers, readers, and movie-goers think? Should we spell everything out to make sure everyone "gets it"? Or go for the powerful, artistic moment and hope the symbols carry the message?

One more sidenote about Fireproof. There was a great song in the soundtrack that could be the theme song of this blog. It's called "While I'm Waiting," by John Waller. It's about the pain and difficulty of waiting for the Lord to act, and how we should behave in the meantime. I'll close with a little sample:

I will move ahead, bold and confident,
Taking every step in obedience.
While I'm waiting
I will serve You. . .
I'll be running the race,
Even while I wait.

Why Didn't Someone Tell Me?

2008-12-18T08:39:00.002-05:00

One thing you will notice about me and my reading habits. I'm always playing catch-up. I'm constantly discovering "new" authors and books that other people were excited about months or even years ago. For a brief period of time I was cutting edge, when I was reviewing books for Novel Reviews, but then I went back to my old habits.

I spent October and November reading all seven of The Chronicles of Narnia books. For the first time! (They're very good, by the way. But you already knew that, right?)

Last week, in my quest to find another Christmas-themed audio book, I picked up The Christmas Secret by Anne Perry. My first Anne Perry book. I absolutely loved it! It's a cozy mystery so it didn't exactly keep you on the edge of your seat with danger and suspense, but the atmosphere--snowbound in an English village in the 1890s--and the period detail kept me riveted. When I finished, I wanted more. And turns out this Anne Perry person has loads of cozy Victorian mysteries out there. Who knew! Okay, everybody but me.

Still, I'm excited to find she has more Christmas books, too. I picked up The Christmas Guest at the library yesterday. So far it's hysterical, with the acid-tongued Grandmama Ellison being sent against her will to spend the Christmas holidays with her former daughter-in-law.

I also ran across the unabridged audio of The Fellowship of the Ring, which I may tackle right after Christmas. No, I've never read Tolkien, either.

What else am I missing, I wonder?

Christmas Traditions for Readers

2008-12-12T14:46:00.004-05:00

We hear all the time about Christmas traditions--things that people do every December with their spouse, or their kids. Some people want to hear Christmas songs over and over. I am apparently developing the need to listen to the same audiobook every Christmas.

I've always had books I love to read every December, that help me get into the spirit. I'm a little disturbed about how my habits have changed, though. I seem to have slid from inspiring Biblical fiction to brain candy and fluff.

For a long time, I kept rereading a wonderful book called How Far to Bethlehem. I think it's out of print now, but if you've never read this, check for a used copy on amazon.com or at your local used bookstore. It's written by one of my favorite authors, Norah Lofts, and it follows different characters from the nativity story (each of the Wise Men, Mary, Joseph, Herod, a Roman soldier, the innkeeper, the shepherd) in the months and hours leading up to Christ's birth. All these characters you've come to know separately converge in Bethlehem at the crucial hour, brought together through heart-stopping, dramatic turns of events. Lofts was a secular historical writer, but she had such an amazing way of bringing characters and past times alive, and this book was no exception. So by the end of each reading, I was ready to sing "O Holy Night" and literally fall on my knees!

My tradition for the last three years or so is not as lofty. I've gotten hooked on the audio version of Skippnig Christmas by John Grisham. I'm not sure why I enjoy it over and over. Maybe because Grisham also has a way with characters. By the time you finish this short bit of fluff, you feel as though you know every resident of Hemlock Street, including my favorite, the roving boy busybody, Spike.

Luther Krank is not exactly Scrooge, but he is definitely--well, cranky. In the beginning of the book, I sort of sympathize with his desire to escape the shallow, materialistic mess that Christmas has become. Trouble is, he substitutes another shallow, materialistic pursuit in its place. He and his wife decide to skip Christmas altogether and take a cruise, which involves new clothes, dieting, tanning beds and the like. By the end of the book, the plan has backfired on them in a big way and--you guessed it--Luther learns about true generosity and giving.

Do any other readers out there have Christmas favorites that you're dipping into again this year?

Fun Stuff

2008-12-09T14:04:00.005-05:00

In addition to writing, I've had a lot of other things going on during my official Blogging Break.

I went on a conference for work, but fortunately went with a colleague who loves antiques and crafts as much as I do, so we made a number of fun stops along the way. You've heard of the kid in the candy store?

Well, this is how happy I look when I'm loose in a yarn store. The colors! The ideas! The possibilities for things to knit when I should be writing!

You know that Yoda is often seen lurking around my workplace. A few weeks ago, he was visited by an old friend. Actually an old adversary--and there I am caught between them!

Last but not least, my parents celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary. This is a photo of them on the beach in South Carolina about a year ago. Sixty years! Now that's perseverance. My husband has probably fainted dead away just thinking about it.

(Thanks to Felicia of Fluffy Flowers for the yarn store and Darth Vader photos)

Finally an Update

2008-12-05T15:11:00.008-05:00

It's been weeks since I announced I was taking a blogging break so I could focus on the novel manuscript that I wanted to finish up before Christmas. Some of you have asked me how that's coming along. I'm pleased to report that I made a lot of progress, although not as much as I'd hoped. Actually, I'd hoped to be finished by now, but that didn't happen. But I do have a rough, rough draft and am now into the rewriting phase, which is much easier for me.

I definitely need this to be easier. Writing this manuscript has been one of the toughest projects I've ever tackled--not because the story was all that difficult. I think the real problem has been my attitude. Pardon me if you've heard this story before, but some of you have asked so I figure it bears repeating. (And if you would like to hear my original whining, click here.)

My agent swears that the only real way for me to break into publishing is to write category romance novels, like for Steeple Hill. She does not say that writing these books is easy, just that there are more opportunities for new writers in this genre. I resisted for ages, particularly since I don't usually read those novels. I have nothing against them; we just all have our preferences, and romance novels are not one of mine.

Furthermore, I'm long-winded, I love subplots, and I enjoy playing with language and mood and atmosphere. And that's the type of book I've been writing. And trying to sell. And not selling.

I pointed out to Janet, my agent, that if I can't compete and get a contract with a novel I think plays to my strengths, how will I compete against all those other writers who love category romance--and are already good at it? But she's the agent God sent me and I didn't want to look back on my life and think I was too stubborn to take this opportunity. So I'm trying.

I sent the first three chapters to her a few weeks ago for review, and she had loads of problems with them. I wasn't surprised, since I'm so out of place with this genre. Writing those chapters, I felt as though every word were being pulled out of me, like a tooth or a fingernail. Makes me hurt just thinking about it.

I rewrote the chapters as best I could and send them to Janet, along with a note asking her to feel free to tell me if she thought I was struggling with this category too much, or just wasn't "getting it." That even though I had put in a good bit of time on a first draft, I didn't mind admitting that I stink at this (I put it more professionally than that) and move on. I had folks praying for me that weekend, that God would show me how to proceed based on her response. I was almost hoping she would tell me to stop.

Instead, she said I was now on track, the story was fast-moving and had likeable characters, and she definitely thought I should go for it. So I guess God isn't ready to release me from this yet!

I'd love to think that means I'll publish this novel, but I know from experience that isn't necessarily the case. There are other things He may want me to take away from the experience. I'm having to learn to focus, to make every word count, to skip the atmosphere and get to the action. While I don't want to lose my own voice, it certainly doesn't hurt me to learn to write cleaner and not allow myself to ramble. (Just read a few of these blog posts if you'd like confirmation of that!)

Since Janet told me I'm on the right track, my attitude has been better and I'm finding my rewrites to be easier--like yanking out a hair instead of a fingernail. I think I had been struggling with fear and a sort of hopelessness, not believing this had a chance. I needed that encouragement.

And even though I didn't finish during my blogging break, I still hope to be finished by the end of the year. Yikes! I just realized that's less than four weeks away.

I better sign off and get to writing!

And the winner is...

2008-12-02T10:42:00.004-05:00

Christina Berry!

Christina is really on a roll! Not only did she win the $25.00 amazon.com gift card, but she also just made her first book sale to Moody. If I were a betting woman (not that I am or anything, you understand, cough cough) I might ask Christina to take a trip to Vegas with me and stand very close.

Ah well, congratulations to Christina. More for achieving her dream of becoming a published author than for winning this little contest. And all joking aside, getting that book contract is an achievement, representing years of hard work and, of course, perseverance!

Last Chance to Enter the Drawing

2008-12-01T15:20:00.001-05:00

Wow, it's been so long since I posted, I'm having to remind myself how to do it. I had to think to remember how to log in.

When I left for my blogging break, I promised to hold a drawing for a $25.00 amazon.com gift card when I came back. I plan to do that tomorrow, so here's your last chance to enter the drawing. Just leave a comment on this post if you want to play (be sure I know how to contact you if you win), and I'll announce the winner tomorrow.

Thanks for sticking around!

A Contest and a Blogging Break

2008-10-07T20:38:00.003-04:00

I wanted to let y'all know I'm going to take a pretty significant break from posting to the blog. I really want to concentrate on finishing up a manuscript in the next few weeks. Lately, I seem to be spreading myself so thin that I'm not posting much or accomplishing much on the manuscript, either, so I want to focus on that one project for awhile.

I'm probably going to be "away" until the end of November. I don't want you to forget about me entirely, though. So I want to do a big giveaway when I come back, let's say the first of December. Leave a comment on this post before the end of November to be entered to win your favorite prize--an amazon.com gift certificate in the amount of $25.00. (That's not entirely true. Your favorite would probably be in a much higher amount. But this is the best I can do for now.)

Also as an incentive for you to stick around and not unsubscribe or anything hasty like that, here's this teaser: I hope to have a big announcement about a new course for the blog when I come back.

How's that for a cliffhanger!

The Jar of Oil and the Bottle of Medicine

2008-09-29T21:18:00.003-04:00

Do you remember the story in I Kings, about the widow who took in the prophet Elijah and gave him food and shelter--even though she didn't have enough food for herself and her son at the time? She only had a small amount of flour and some oil in a jar, barely enough for one meal. But after agreeing to share with Elijah, something amazing happened. The flour and the oil never ran out as long as he was there with her.

I know some folks are tempted to discount stories like this as mere fairy-tales. But I've heard several accounts of similar events from contemporary times. The one that comes to mind is from Corrie ten Boom's book, The Hiding Place. When she and her sister were in a Nazi concentration camp, someone managed to sneak in a small bottle of medicine. The bottle was made of dark glass and they couldn't see into it, but they figured there were only a few doses inside. But the medicine lasted and kept pouring out as long as they needed it, dosing prisoner after prisoner.

Some years ago, I made a tiny movement of faith, scaling back from a full-time to a part-time job so I would have more time to write. I was okay financially partly because my car was paid for. But it was getting old, and if I had to replace it or make major repairs, things were going to get complicated. I used to drive around in that car praying, "Lord, please make this car hold out just like the jar of oil and the bottle of medicine." And he did just that.

I'm a little scared about the economy and finances right now. Who isn't? We're facing major budget cuts where I work. Once again, I'm doing okay for now, if my car (which has over 130,000 miles on it) holds out. So a couple of nights ago, when driving home from work, I pulled out my old prayer--that God would make my car hold out like the bottle of oil and the medicine bottle.

You know God has a sense of humor, right? When I got home and opened my chronological Bible for that night's reading, guess what was there in front of me? The story of the widow, and Elijah, and the jar of oil and the handful of flour! I could just feel God smiling down at me.

I noticed something else when reading the account this time. When Elijah approaches the widow and asks for her help, she tells him that she only has enough food for one last meal for herself and her son, and she doesn't know what she will do after that. Elijah tells her not to be afraid (I wonder if she laughed at that one!) and then says something really nervy. He asks her to bake him a loaf of bread first, before she makes a meal for herself and her son.

What an incredible step of faith it must have been for this widow to do as Elijah asked--to follow God's prompting and provide for his prophet before herself or her son. And of course, it all worked out. The oil kept flowing. By letting go of that death grip she had on her meager possessions, she gained security and plenty for her family.

I just pray for that ability to follow God's leading instead of my fears. To believe in his provision for food, for cars--and for my dreams.

A Great Prize Giveaway and an Exciting New Press

2008-09-26T12:14:00.003-04:00

I'm very excited about a new publishing company that's going to have its launch on October 1. I've been hearing about Marcher Lord Press for about a year now, and I can't believe they're almost ready to start selling their first books. They're also going to have a huge prize giveaway as part of that launch.

I'm really pulling for Marcher Lord Press because they're aiming to publish good Christian fiction, but fiction that may be outside the boundaries of other traditional houses. In an online chat last year, founder Jeff Gerke said something to the effect of, if it's "weird and Christian," they're interested in it. Having just returned from the ACFW conference, where one agent's eyes sort of glazed over at my book pitch and he said, "Now that's just weird," I was naturally excited to hear this.

Whether you're interested in this kind of fiction or not, head on over to the Marcher Lord Press site and enter the contest. And if you feel so inclined, you can even say that I referred you so I'll get extra entries. (robing8300 at gmail dot com) I won't mind at all!

Endings and Beginnings

2008-09-20T14:06:00.000-04:00

A few days ago, I mentioned that my feisty little cat Cera had gotten a bad diagnosis from the vet. Last Sunday, she passed away. Since she would have had her twentieth birthday in October, I suppose I couldn't have hoped for much more time with her. Plus, she wasn't herself at the end, and I know she didn't feel good, so I'm glad she didn't linger.

Still, when you lose a little animal friend that you've had that long, it's sort of like losing a part of your life. When I got her as a kitten, I was in my twenties. Now I'm...well, you can do the math. It's sort of like the thread linking me to those younger days just snapped.

I also just lost another animal in my life, a cat named Myman that I rescued a few years ago and asked my mother to keep at her house. He was an old kitty, too.

It's interesting, though, that some animal babies have come into my life just as I'm losing my old friends. Remember I told you about going to fetch the kittens that were dumped at my hairdresser's house? They're thriving and they're such a joy.

And then, there's a new panda cub that was born at ZooAtlanta on August 30. I'm so excited that our pandas, Lun Lun and Yang Yang, have had not one but two babies during their stay in Atlanta. The zoo has a live Panda Cam where you can watch mother and baby. I always find it soothing to take a few minutes and watch that big furry mother cuddling that tiny, wiggly baby. Check it out if you have a moment.

Last, I still have Wendy, who seems to be going out of her way to comfort me. Or keep me occupied, anyway--for example, with games of Hide and Seek. I heard some muffled yowls a couple of days ago and spend awhile looking for her. Here's where I found her.

Never a dull moment!

Left Behind and Enjoying It

2008-09-18T14:06:00.003-04:00

Okay, the title is not referring to being left behind after the Rapture. That would not be enjoyable at all.

I’m referring to the fact that lots of my writer and blogger friends are heading out for the annual American Christian Fiction Writers Conference and I’m staying home. I attended the last three years, but I just couldn’t afford it this time.

I realized a few days ago that instead of being jealous and disappointed, I’m actually a little relieved. The ACFW conference is a wonderful thing, but it’s also quite stressful—for me, anyway. I know other folks say it energizes them, and that rubbing shoulders with all those other writers fires their imaginations.

This wasn’t happening with me lately. I was putting far too much pressure on myself to pitch and to sell. I scarcely had a discussion with anyone about our stories or characters or the actual love of writing.

I’m pleased to report, however, that I found a substitute conference to recharge my creative batteries. That’s my story, anyway. I may just be entering my second childhood, or having a mid-life crisis. A couple of weeks ago, I did something that I haven’t done since I was in my twenties. I attended a science fiction and fantasy convention.

This one (Dragon Con) was huge—thousands of attendees and events covering four major hotels in downtown Atlanta. There were speakers and panels with writers, actors, directors, artists, costumers, you name it. Half the attendees seemed to be walking around in elaborate costumes, which was silly fun.

I have to confess that I myself wore two different costumes in one evening—one a Pirates of the Caribbean costume that I sewed myself.

I enjoyed hearing Sean Astin speak about playing Sam in the Lord of the Rings movies, and attending a panel with four actors from the Firefly TV series and Serenity movie. I rubbed elbows with tons of folks who may or may not have been writers, but who were passionate about stories and loved characters as if they were real.

What more could a writer on a budget ask for to fire her imagination?

A Sad Excuse

2008-09-08T20:26:00.003-04:00

Wow. It's been a LONG time since I posted anything. I was going to sit down and do another one of those cutesie "Top Ten Excuses" lists for why I haven't blogged. And I do have several reasons, including extra evening shifts at work, the guest blogger who stood me up for the second time (yet swears she needs influencers!), an icky virus, etc., etc.

But I don't feel like making a cute list now. While I was laid up with the icky virus, I didn't give my cats as much attention as usual. Even so, it started to penetrate through my antihistamine-drugged consciousness that Cera wasn't her usual self. For one thing, she hadn't suggested tuna fish even once, and normally she demands tuna at least once a day. In fact, she hadn't poked her nose out of the guest room where she likes to snooze.

Then I started noticing other things. How painfully skinny she's gotten. How wobbly she is when she walks. In other words, she was displaying all the symptoms her sister did when she was 20--right before she died of kidney failure.

So, even though I was home on a sick day for myself, we went to the animal doctor for Cera. And he confirmed that her kidneys are shutting down and there's not much we can do. Fortunately, he didn't suggest I put her to sleep. At least not yet. He said to take her home and let her enjoy her life as long as she can, which could be a day or a couple of months.

So anyway, as Lemony Snicket would say, it's been a series of unfortunate events, and that last one has sort of blown me away.

When you're saying your prayers tonight, put in a word for Cera, if you will. Aside from that stubborn streak about groomers and medicine, she's been a wonderful little friend. On second thought, I probably need you to put in a good word for me even more!

Buried in the Back Yard II

2008-08-27T21:55:00.000-04:00

A few months ago, I wrote a post called Buried in the Back Yard, when I learned that a Confederate soldier and his sons had been buried in the woods behind the house where I lived as a child. My family never knew this until the land was cleared for a housing and shopping development and the graves were discovered.

I now have another wild "buried in the back yard" story. (My family seems to draw these things.) My brother-in-law and his family live in Nashville. The first time we visited them there, Dave's brother picked us up at the airport and started asking what we would like to see while visiting. Dave started rattling off old-time country stars. "Minnie Pearl," Dave would say. "Dead," Paul would answer. This went on for awhile until Dave said, "Johnny Cash," and of course we waited for the usual answer. Instead we heard, "He's buried in our back yard."

We laughed.

A few minutes later, we turned into their driveway. Guess what we discovered? By golly, Johnny Cash is buried in their back yard.

Okay, technically, it's not a part of their yard. But the cemetery is right behind their house. Here's a picture from their patio.

Of course we had to walk over and see for ourselves.

Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash are buried side by side, and several other members of the Carter family are close by, including Mother Maybelle.

I'm not sure which is stranger, having Confederate soldiers or a famous singer buried in your back yard. All I know is, I hope the competition ends here.

A Little Encouragement from Deborah Raney

2008-08-24T21:41:00.004-04:00

A few days ago, a woman in my online writer's group sparked a lively discussion when she confessed that she felt a bit discouraged because of all the technical details involved in writing. I felt her pain as she said she just wanted to write, and now she was getting bogged down in all the "stuff" she was supposed to learn. I myself frequently complain on this very blog (okay, sometimes I even whine) that I've lost the joy I used to feel in writing because of all the rules I have to follow.

Author Deborah Raney responded with such a brilliant analogy that I asked her if I could reproduce it here, and she graciously agreed. I know it encouraged me, mainly because in Deb's view, the loss of joy is a temporary but necessary step. The passion and the fun will come again! Here's Deb:

I've thought of this analogy so often: when you first discover a piano as a child, you bang on the keys, ruffle the keyboard and make all sorts of cool (and totally un-concertworthy) sounds. Later, you start picking out melodies on the keyboard and maybe even adding a few chords and harmonies. It's a blast and your friends are impressed because you're pretty stinkin' good.

Then your parents decide you're the next Vladimir Horowitz and they sign you up for lessons. Overnight every ounce of joy is sucked right out of playing the piano. Because now you have to learn the NAMES of the notes, and you can only play what's written on the staff. Worse, you can't even play the notes when you choose to play them. Oh, no! You have to count, give every note the correct beat. Even worse you have to PRACTICE! No more playing just for fun, no more playing just to express yourself or show off to your friends, or experiment and see what sounds cool.

But lo and behold, one day, after lots and lots of miserable hours of practice, you actually get a piece right, and it sounds pretty good. You play it at a recital and people clap and ask you to play it again. Cool! So you go home and work a little harder and learn a more difficult piece. Pretty soon you start forgetting about the names of the notes because you know them as instinctively as you know your colors. Before long you can pick up a sheet of music and with a couple of run-throughs, you can play a song that sounds pretty close to the way you heard it on the radio. And all your friends ooh and aah when you play at parties because wow, you're good! And suddenly you don't mind practicing so much because now you know all the names of the notes and you know how to count time, and you know what all those funny symbols on the staff mean--shoot, you know what a staff IS. Practice has become fun, and playing has become an expression of yourself again, and even therapy sometimes.

Then one day, you're playing along, following the notes and the time exactly as written in the music, and almost without thinking you add a trill in this measure and an extra beat in that one...OMG! You're breaking the rules (your music teacher--and your mother--would KILL you) but it actually doesn't sound bad. In fact, by george, it works! You play with those trills and tweak the syncopation and suddenly the song has turned into your own unique, amazing composition, and now YOU get to make (and break) the rules.

But you never would have gotten to this point if not for those hours of learning the notes and the rhythm, playing them exactly as written. There will always be more difficult sheet music to challenge you, and you will continue to improve the more you play, but you've reached that wonderful place where you know enough that playing the piano has become more fun than you ever thought possible, and the songs you compose are better than you ever dreamed. And you hate to admit it, but your mother and your piano teacher were right, and you'd never be where you are without those stupid piano lessons and those torturous practice sessions.

DEBORAH RANEY is at work on her eighteenth novel. Her books have won the RITA Award, the HOLT Medallion, National Readers' Choice Award and Silver Angel from Excellence in Media. Deborah's first novel, A Vow to Cherish, inspired the World Wide Pictures film of the same title. Her newest books are the Clayburn Novels from Howard Books/Simon & Schuster, including Remember to Forget, a 2008 Christy Award finalist. Deb serves on the advisory board of American Christian Fiction Writers. She and her husband, Ken Raney, have four children and enjoy small-town life in Kansas.

The Great Kitten Caper

2008-08-18T15:42:00.006-04:00

Is this a cutie or what?

She better be. I went through enough to get her yesterday.

Last week, my hairdresser told me that someone had dumped two tiny kittens at her house, and she couldn't keep them because her dog considered them squeaky toys, and her indoor cat would see them as rivals--something he absolutely doesn't tolerate.

My wonderful mother said she would take the two babies, a male and female. Dave and I were camping somewhat near my hairdresser's house. Well, nearer than we usually are, anyway. So I thought this would be an excellent time to pick them up. I plugged her address into my GPS to see if it knew where Traci lived. It swore that it did, and I trusted that confident GPS Lady voice of hers. And away we went.

A few minutes later, GPS Lady directed me to turn onto a dirt road. "Are you sure?" I asked her. She seemed pretty positive, so I turned. I drove down miles of red dirt road, seeing nothing on either side but woods and the occasional abandoned, falling-down house. I had no idea that dirt roads registered with satellites and GPS systems, but apparently they do. My GPS Lady seems to love them. She took me down about four of them to reach Traci's house and the kittens.

Or maybe GPS Lady just hates me. Traci sort of laughed when I told her how I came. It wasn't exactly the normal route. But that wasn't the worst of it. I just happened to see that GPS Lady actually directed me PAST Traci's house number, telling me that the house was another mile down the road. However, I got suspicious when the pavement petered out and a very narrow, muddy road led into the woods. I mean, wide, dirt roads are one thing. I tend to balk at logging trails. I called Traci and sure enough, GPS Lady was lying to me.

Why she wanted to take me into the woods I don't know. I think it was an ambush. Maybe she dislikes cats. Either way, I fetched the kittens back home to my mother, and they're definitely worth it. She was having fun this morning, watching them play.

Interestingly enough, I'm the one who got Traci her tom cat who won't tolerate rivals and started this whole mess. Back when he was younger, he needed a home, too. I guess what goes around comes around.

It's Traci's turn next!

Unless the Lord Writes the Book

2008-08-13T17:00:00.000-04:00

Awhile back, I reached the Psalms of David in my Chronological Bible reading and mentioned how much I loved them.

I'm now reading about his son Solomon's life, and the editors inserted a couple of Psalms written by him. Here's the beginning of what I read from Psalm 127 (New Living Translation):

"Unless the Lord builds a house, the work of the builders is useless. . .It is useless for you to work so hard from early morning until late at night, anxiously working for food to eat; for God gives rest to his loved ones."

What comforting verses, as I struggle to find time to write. As I struggle wondering whether I'm writing the right thing. Whether it will sell. Here's my take on those verses. "Unless the Lord writes the book, the writing is useless."

I don't have to fret. If God is building the house, or writing the book, the labor will get done. And it won't be useless; it will succeed. And I don't even have to work until I drop to prove myself to him. He'll give me rest.

I thought it was a little odd that the next verses abruptly switched to the subject of children. "Children are a gift from the Lord; they are a reward from him." (v. 3) Since I wasn't able to have children, verses like this sometimes make me feel bad. But for me, being a writer, my characters feel like my children. Somewhere I once heard them called "children of the mind."

If God will bless them and grow them, that will be a great reward for me!

Writing Smart or Writing False?

2008-08-11T11:57:00.003-04:00

I wanted to share a great blog post by Kaye Dacus that I read a few days ago. Kaye, a romance writer, was frustrated that so many unpublished authors are advised to start with writing romance, because it's supposedly easier to do and easier to get published. I loved Kaye's post because she pointed out that if writers don't believe in what they're writing, it will ring false, no matter how technically correct it is.

I wholeheartedly agree with Kaye, and I found the post even more interesting because I'm one of those unpublished authors whose agent insists that I need to write romance to break into publication.

To be fair, my agent has never suggested that writing romance is easy. She simply feels, based on her experience, that there are more opportunities for new authors to publish in that genre. So I agreed to try it. She is, after all, my agent--and I haven't had any luck breaking that publishing barrier on my own.

But I'm struggling with my attitude as I write. I'll admit that, for a long time, publishing was my number one goal. But that's no longer true. I don't dislike the romance novel I'm writing. It's fun, and I'd probably enjoy picking it up and reading it if I found it on a shelf. But it's not a genre I would have chosen for myself.

I think, as a writer, I'm a little unusual. When I was a little girl, I started developing several different sets of characters--several little worlds. I love those people I created. I never minded writing or rewriting and rewriting again, because I loved visiting their worlds. I always pictured I would mainly write novels about those folks that I've spent most of a lifetime getting to know.

As I try to focus on what will get me published, it's just a job. I don't think about those characters except during the time in front of the computer, when I do my daily word count. Sometimes I wonder, what if I do get published in this genre? Will I get stuck only being able to publish there? Will it just be a chore?

I have a bad feeling--or a good feeling, depending on how you look at it--that I'm not going to have to face that problem. There are so many new writers out there who are passionate about romance writing that--as Kaye pointed out--I can't imagine me actually succeeding in the genre ahead of them.

So why am I trying this at all? Well, God sent me my literary agent. I want to be open to whatever path he leads me down, whether it's my "dream" or not. I realize we sometimes have to be flexible and put aside our own desires. Or at least, he helps us reach them in a way we wouldn't have expected.

Or maybe he's just using this experience--and thoughts from other writers, like Kaye--to show me that publication wasn't really what I desired in the first place. As Kaye said, "When we [write fiction], we’re actually calling upon things that are real and true: feelings, emotions, experiences, thoughts, deeply held beliefs. If we ignore those things to dash off a particular kind of story not because it’s the story of the heart but because it has a better chance of selling, we’re lying to our readers and betraying ourselves as artists (as Madeleine L’Engle calls us)."

Amen, sister!

Back from the Wilds of...my Back Yard

2008-08-06T16:03:00.003-04:00

The camping trip didn't happen. Various family issues kept us from making the trip to the beach with the R.V. However, I still took my long weekend and basically camped on our back porch.

My extremely talented husband just added this screened porch to the back of our house. He did the work all by himself. (A relative once asked if I help Dave with all these projects. I said yes--I stay out of his way. That's about all I'm good for in the carpentry area.)

Then, to make up for our canceled trip, he bought me the most comfortable chaise lounge in the world.

I've wanted one of these babies for a long, long time.

I spent a lot of my weekend on that new porch, lounging and reading and watching the hummingbirds fight. (Did you know that hummingbirds fight? I didn't until we got a feeder. I thought they were beautiful, sweet, graceful little creatures. I had no idea how mean and territorial they are to one another.)

All in all, it was a wonderful, restful holiday. It was nice to rediscover the joy of sinking into a good book with no time constraints.

Speaking of my talented husband, I mentioned awhile back that he was taking up the dirty old carpet in our bedrooms and refinishing the hardwood floors that were underneath them. He finished that up a few weeks ago, and they're so gorgeous! Here's a picture of our guest room.

Why folks wanted to hide that gorgeous wood under carpet I'm not sure, but finding that hidden treasure is one of the pleasures of having an older house.

Anyway, I'm back to reality now and will try very hard to think of something profound to say for next time. Oh, the pressure!

Announcing the Winner!

2008-07-31T12:38:00.003-04:00

Congratulations to Christina Berry, who won the drawing for the $25.00 amazon.com gift certificate today. Christina is a long-time reader and subscriber, so I'm very happy to reward her.

Wish I could reward all of you! Then again, if I had that kind of money, I'd probably move to the beach, become a completely lazy bum (as opposed to the partially lazy bum I am now), and never blog again. So don't get your hopes up.

Speaking of being a lazy bum, I've been very bad about blogging this week. I've been trying to get ready for a camping trip we're about to take. I'm worn out and we haven't even left yet. I'll be gone for a few days so I may not blog again until the middle of next week. After that, I'll try to do better.

Have a great weekend--and watch for the next contest, which will be coming soon!

The Answer Is...

2008-07-25T14:45:00.002-04:00

Well, I thought I'd given you a challenging question yesterday, but it took Bunny B. about five minutes (literally) to identify the author in question as J.K. Rowling.

I myself was as fascinated by this little tidbit from Rowling as I was by Francine Prose's declaration that sometimes you should tell instead of show. I realize that J.K. Rowling can pretty much write what she wants to now and it will be published and successful, but the quote seemed to indicate that she's never worried about who her target audience is. How do you ever get a publisher or an agent with an attitude like that? Generally when you do a proposal, you have to be very specific as to who the book is intended for. Amazing!

Anyway, Bunny B. gets an extra five entries in the drawing. And I'd like to ask you, Bunny, to leave a comment here telling me how you got the answer so fast. Had you read the interview? (Which, by the way, is available on amazon.com.) Or it just sounded like something Rowling would say?

Anyway, I'll try to think up something harder next time!

Want 5 Bonus Entries in the Drawing?

2008-07-24T10:52:00.004-04:00

First, a reminder that the drawing for the $25.00 amazon.com gift card will be held on July 31.

Second, if you'd like a chance to get FIVE additional entries into the drawing, take a look at the following quote from a contemporary author:

"I never really imagine a target audience when I'm writing. The ideas come first, so it really depends on the idea that grabs me next."

The first person who posts the answer here, correctly identifying the author who said that in a recent interview, will get five additional entries.

If no one gets it by tomorrow, I'll post another hint.

Have fun!

Winter Keeps Us Warm

2008-07-20T15:50:00.002-04:00

I never thought I would refer to T.S. Eliot twice in a short span of time. As I've mentioned, I'm not big on poetry, and it sometimes seems to me that I spent half of my college career slogging through The Waste Land and trying to make sense of it.

Only one line really stuck with me through the years: "Winter kept us warm." I mean, what the heck did that mean? I hate being cold and therefore have always hated winter, and couldn't figure out what ole Eliot was getting at.

Today, as I shivered once again in the middle of a typical Georgia heat wave, I understood. That's right--we're having a heat wave and I'm shivering. If you're cold-natured like me and you've ever spent spring or summer in Georgia, you'll know what I'm talking about--a little thing called "air conditioning."

Lately, in winter, I do fine. I put on my boots and my sweaters and, except in those really bad cold snaps, do fine. The central heating in all the public buildings is generally kept at a reasonable level, so all is well. In other words, winter keeps me warm.

But just let the outside temperature climb to about 65 degrees, and everyone runs for their air conditioners. They may have to set them on 62 to make any difference, but if that's what it takes, by golly, they'll do it.

Most public buildings feel like meat lockers. I tend to dress in layers, wearing sleeveless blouses so I can make it from my car to a building in the blazing heat without fainting, then whipping out my sweater the moment I get inside. Occasionally, as the blasts from the a.c. vents and ceiling fans whip around my head, I wish that women still wore hats.

The interesting thing to me is that everyone talks about "going green" and conserving, but no one seems to be scrimping on the air conditioning around here. A couple of years ago I stayed in a ritzy hotel that had little printed notices all around the room about their conservation efforts. They boasted that they wouldn't be changing my sheets every day for the sake of the environment, and they asked me to re-use my towels. And yet, the air conditioning was set on 58 degrees when I came in! Worse yet, after I turned it WAY up, the housekeeping staff turned it back down the next day.

Church is interesting, too. The men are all dressed in shirts, coats and ties, and thick socks. Women are in sleeveless dresses, with no stockings and sandals. How can anyone possibly get the temperature right with a disparity like that?

Personally, I think the men are winning.

A Writing Blasphemy!

2008-07-17T15:35:00.003-04:00

I gasped and nearly spilled my coffee as I read the first chapter of Francine Prose's book called Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them.

Prose advises writers not only to read good, well-written literature, but also to pay attention while reading, and to take note of why the writing is so effective. Chapter 1 deals with the power of individual word choices. She gives examples of opening paragraphs from writers like Flannery O'Connor that Prose found to be particularly strong, and right away I noticed a problem. If I wrote those same paragraphs and turned them in to a contest, the judges would rip through them. Every one of the judges would scream, "You're telling us, not showing us. Show, don't tell!"

That's when Prose did it. She spoke the words that are considered sheer blasphemy in the writing world: "Finally, the passage contradicts a form of bad advice often given young writers--namely, that the job of the author is to show, not tell. Needless to say, many great novelists combine 'dramatic' showing with long sections of the flat-out authorial narration that is, I guess, what is meant by telling. And the warning against telling leads to a confusion that causes novice writers to think that everything should be acted out--don't tell us a character is happy, show us how she screams 'yay' and jumps up and down for joy--when in fact the responsibility of showing should be assumed by the energetic and specific use of language. There are many occasions in literature in which telling is far more effective than showing."

A gleeful, guilty little thrill ran through me as I read the words. Finally, a "real" writer, a woman who's been publishing acclaimed novels since the seventies, was saying what I felt in my darkest, most rebellious moments.

In following the "show don't tell" rule, I sometimes have felt that my characters are turning into a collection of nervous twitches and quirky little movements. I've wondered how many times they can raise their eyebrows, widen their eyes, clap their hands to their mouths or rub their foreheads in one book.

I understand we need to put the emphasis on showing. A novel that is mostly telling would be boring beyond belief. But as Prose stresses about this and other aspects of writing, a good writer knows what works best for any given sentence or paragraph--and isn't afraid to do it, regardless of what those contest judges do to them!

Words that Last

2008-07-14T20:24:00.003-04:00

I wish I could write psalms. The book of Psalms is one of my favorite parts of the Bible, and often when I sit down for my quiet time with God, I wish I could put my feelings into such beautiful lines. So far it hasn't happened, though. Probably because I'm so terrible with any kind of poetry.

One thing I love about the Chronological Bible I'm reading this year is that, as I'm reading about the life of David, if there's a psalm he seems to have written at that time of his life, the editors include it at the appropriate point in the narrative. I've always loved the story of David, but reading his prayers, his emotions as he cries out to God in the middle of the events of his life makes me feel so close to him. Sometimes I wish I could tell him--and the other psalmists--how often I have turned to their words to express my own feelings. To calm my fears. To remind myself why I should trust the Lord.

Last night, one of David's psalms had these lines: "O Lord, what are mortals that you should notice us, mere humans that you should care for us? For we are like a breath of air; our days are like a passing shadow." (Psalm 144:3-4, NLT)

It's true that David is long gone--gone like the vapor or shadows he named. And yet, there I sat, reading his words, breathing them in, feeling the truth of them fresh and new for myself. I was reminded that, though we mortals don't last very long, our words do. Words for good and words for evil.

It's both an inspiration and a caution for those of us who write. How I hope to be able to pen words that will last, but only if they're true and good. Only if someday, they can bring someone else a ray of encouragement and faith on a dark day.

Time for Another Contest!

2008-07-09T20:02:00.004-04:00

It suddenly hit me I haven't done a contest for awhile. Since I have nothing else to say today (stop the cheering out there! It's deafening me), I decided I might as well announce a new drawing.

I'm not feeling particularly imaginative right now and y'all seem to like the amazon certificates, so let's do one of those again.

Each post that you comment on from today until July 30 will earn you one entry in a drawing for a $25.00 amazon.com gift certificate. Subscribers get an extra entry for being faithful readers--or at the very least, allowing me to clutter up their inbox.

I'll announce a winner on July 31.

Good luck, and thanks for playing!

Wishing for Duck Feet

2008-07-07T14:09:00.005-04:00

I re-read a very profound book the other day, written by a sage named Theo. LeSieg--more commonly known as Dr. Seuss. The book is called I Wish That I Had Duck Feet.

I hadn't read it since I was about seven years old, and trust me, that was a long, long time ago. But it always stuck with me, probably because it scared me. Yes, it's true. I've admitted here before that I was once traumatized by Muppets, and I Wish That I Had Duck Feet made me squirm a little, too.

The boy in the book daydreams about various wonderful things that animals have that he doesn't--like duck feet, deer antlers, elephant trunk, etc. One at a time he envisions himself with these new appendages, first picturing all the neat new things he'll be able to do and the admiration he'll get from his friends. But then realizes the drawbacks and has second thoughts.

Here comes the scary part. He imagines adding all these new attributes to himself at once, which turns him into a whole new creature called a Which-What-Who. In this sorry state, with webbed feet and a long trunk and big old horns, he's not admired but feared. Eventually, he ends up in a cage on display at the circus.

All this is only a daydream, of course. He makes the wise decision that it's best to just be himself, and all is well.

So why am I telling you this? This book kept coming to mind as I mull over my so-called writing career, and the direction I need to take in the future.

When I first started writing, I was just little old me. I wrote the stories that presented themselves to me and didn't worry too much about what to call them.

Then came writers' conferences, and critiques, and meetings with editors and agents and authors, and loads of well-meaning advice. "I think this is really a young adult novel. You should adjust the language." "This is really an adult novel. The characters should be older." "This is close to being a romantic suspense, but you need to look at those guidelines." "This is too literary for a commercial novel. Maybe you should become a literary writer."

One after one, I've taken my poor manuscripts and glued on other appendages. Whacked off my nice psychological ending to give it the traditional romantic suspense, heroine-backed-into-a-corner ending. Removed the "literary" language and tried to make it sound commercial. Sawed it off at the ankles to stick on those duck feet.

After all those Frankenstein treatments, a few of my manuscripts have ended in the trash heap. I think I turned them into unrecognizable Which-What-Whos.

So now the challenge is to be myself, even in my writing. To take the good things I've learned and apply them, but not try to attach so many foreign appendages that I turn my stories into monsters. To discover what I want a novel to be and make it just that--not a conglomeration of ideas and genres and goals.

If any of you out there are as wise as Dr. Seuss and would like to chime in on this, I'd love to hear from you.

Fourth of July with the Washingtons

2008-07-05T20:26:00.008-04:00

Hope you had a great Fourth of July. I can honestly say I celebrated the Fourth in a very appropriate way this year. I attended the Independence Day Festival in Henry County, Georgia, along with George and Martha Washington, John and Abigail Adams, Patrick Henry, and others.

Best of all, Martha was played by none other than my niece, Kristi (second from right, next to George), whom you last saw as the Kissing Wench at the Renaissance Festival. Quite a step up socially, from Kissing Wench to First First Lady.

It was all quite authentic, right down to the genuine Colonial camera man.

I myself am not the greatest camera person in the world, as evidenced by the above photo, but I wanted to show this one for the beautiful scenery. It really was a fun festival, on a farm that's a historic Civil War battlefield. The characters presented a running story throughout the day, with Redcoats breaking up a proclamation by Patrick Henry, duels, and a ladies' tea where women's issues of the day were discussed. (It was heartily agreed by all that women should be educated. Whether education should be co-educational was a bit more controversial.)

Since I normally spend the Fourth of July catching up on projects, like cleaning out my closets, this was a welcome break.

Did you do anything special? Hope you'll share!

I'm So Confused!

2008-07-01T19:50:00.004-04:00

I've been doing a lot more reading lately than I usually manage. Part of this is due to the wonder of audiobooks, which I can zip through while driving, house cleaning, cooking, whatever. A couple of days ago, I finished two books almost simultaneously. The first was one of the best books I ever read--the kind that haunts you for days, that seems to hold a part of you in its world so that you wander around in a fog, not completely back to reality.

The second was one of the worst I ever read. I had to force myself to finish it. It was dull, cliched, and pointless.

So guess which one I'm supposed to be reading so I can learn to write for the line that publishes it? Which one am I supposed to be emulating, molding my writing to be more like it? Yep, you guessed it.

My agent feels I need to do this as a stepping stone to eventually writing the kind of books I want to. But I'm very confused. Sometimes I feel I'm changing my writing so much to conform to all these rules and guidelines and genres that I'm losing my own writing voice. Sometimes I worry I won't be able to go back.

Last night, as I finished reading the vile book which shall remain nameless, I started praying for guidance. Here's what showed up in my devotional reading:

"The Lord says, 'I will guide you along the best pathway for your life. I will advise you and watch over you. Do not be like a senseless horse or mule that needs a bit and bridle to keep it under control.'" (Psalm 32: 8-9, NLT)

I love it that I got immediate assurance that the Lord will guide me in the right direction. And I certainly don't want to be a mule, although for a moment I had to wonder--is writing something that's against my own nature being senseless, or am I being stubborn and willful by questioning my agent's advice? After all, God sent her to me in a pretty miraculous way.

So, for now at least, I'll try to produce a suitable manuscript for my agent--and hopefully one that still retains my own voice and style. It's going to be tricky.

I'll keep you posted.

A Warning for the Published

2008-06-27T12:00:00.001-04:00

I just came across an interesting tidbit in the June 2008 issue of College & Research Libraries News. They mention that a Rhode Island book dealer just donated three rare and valuable books to Brown University Library. One of them is a first edition of The Great Gatsby autographed by Fitzgerald to the poet T.S. Eliot. Judging by the enthusiastic wording of the autograph, Fitzgerald was a huge fan of Eliot. He calls him "Greatest of Living Poets" and says that he (Fitzgerald) is his enthusiastic worshipper. (p. 359)

Unfortunately, he not only misspells enthusiastic, but he also flubs the spelling of the Greatest of Living Poets' name. (He spelled it "Elliot.")

Now, I often lament the fact that I'm not published. But at least, I'm not in danger of embarrassing myself in this particular way. Lots of other ways, yes, but not this one.

If I ever do get published, I can just see something like this happening to me. I'd be so excited to present some of my own work to my literary idol, so thrilled to show that I, too, am now a part of the literary world. And then it would happen. Maybe an hour later, maybe a day, maybe a year. But eventually, I would see my literary idol's name someplace, and I would realize that I misspelled her name. Down in the depths of my soul, I would know that no matter how great my writing, how brilliant my metaphors and dialogue, how stirring my characters, the literary idol would always remember me as that idiot that didn't even know how to spell her name.

Perhaps I'm just looking for solace. Maybe I'm just downright mean. But somehow this story really cheered me up.

Killer Cargo: A Fun and Exciting Read

2008-06-25T19:21:00.003-04:00

I must confess I don't usually read a lot of the category romance novels. I'm not sure why that is, precisely. Maybe I've just assumed they would all be too much alike.

Well, last week I picked up Killer Cargo, a Steeple Hill Love Inspired Suspense novel by Dana Mentink. And I knew I had been wrong. Within about ten pages, I knew this book was going to be different--and in a very good way.

Maria, the pilot of her own private plane, knows she's in trouble when she discovers a package of drugs among the piles of pet supplies she's supposed to be delivering in the wilds of Oregon. The bad guys pull up and know she's discovered their secret, so she has to take off--and not in her airplane. There's no time or fuel for flying. She has to run on foot, then in a borrowed car. Okay, so far, I'd seen it all before.

However, her plane's cargo also contained a three-legged bunny named Hank, who was apparently destined to be snake food. Even in her hurry, Maria decides to rescue him, too. She rents an electric blue 1972 Dodge Demon from a kid working at the airstrip (actually he's keeping it for his cousin, who is currently incarcerated) and tears out of there, with the bad guys in hot pursuit and Hank sliding around on the back seat.

She seems to be doing pretty well at evading the bad guys, until she crashes the car into a creek. She and Hank are rescued and hidden by the handsome Cy Sheridan--the creek is a part of his animal sanctuary. This seems like a pretty good deal, until Maria actually enters his cabin and finds frogs in tanks all over the place. Until she finds mysterious hand-written notes about cyanide. Until she realizes that the animal sanctuary has its own crime problems.

This was a fast-paced, fun read. If you're going to be relaxing by the beach or lake any time soon, grab a copy and take it with you.

"Go Slowly So You Do It Right"

2008-06-20T17:54:00.000-04:00

In his sermon a couple of weeks ago, my pastor mentioned that this month marks the 60th anniversary of the Crazy Horse Memorial in South Dakota. Actually, that's not phrased exactly right. It's been sixty years since sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski started on the project, a mountain carving that will dwarf the one at Mt. Rushmore.

But the carving is nowhere near finished. In fact, a site called roadsidephotos.com says, "Ziolkowski died in 1982; with luck, his great-great-grandchildren will live long enough to dedicate the finished sculpture." And yet, when Ziolkowski was dying, he told his wife, "You must work on the mountain -- but go slowly so you do it right."

What an amazing attitude, especially today, in our generation--because the dedication to this cause didn't end with Ziolkowski himself. It continues with his family. Seven of his ten children have remained in the area, working for the project and the Foundation. At eighty-two, his wife soldiers on. The vision is huge. Not only will the carving, if and when it is finished, be the largest in the world, but the site will include the American Indian University and Medical Training Center.

My pastor pointed out that God's attitude toward us is like Ziolkowski's with his carving. We humans usually get impatient. We get discouraged and abandon our projects. We want to complete things quickly and move on. We want to rush to the victory and get our accolades.

But God works with us for a lifetime. Paul tells us he's confident that "he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion." (Phil. 1:6, NIV)

I'm grateful for these two reminders that it's okay if my dreams take awhile. That it's all right if I "go slowly so I do it right." That sometimes a dream is worth at least a lifetime.

The Culprit Confesses!

2008-06-18T15:32:00.003-04:00

She couldn't take the pressure anymore. She finally broke and confessed. Kathleen--regular visitor to the Queen and self-confessed prankster--sent me the anonymous Pirates clock.

In the comments to the original post, Kathleen said (in response to my guess that the clock was obtained with cereal box tops), "Well, you were partly right. It was from little cardboard tokens off a snack bar (peanut bar with chocolate on the bottom mmm!) box. It was just too tempting. 'Glad you enjoyed it!"

I knew it was her! Mystery solved. Hmmm...maybe I should try my hand at writing mysteries.

A Tax on Hoop Skirts?

2008-06-15T12:39:00.000-04:00

Sometimes in my librarian job I get to look at some really fun things. A few weeks ago we received a trial subscription to a database called American Periodicals Series Online. A company called ProQuest has scanned and digitized magazines and journals from about 1740 to the early 1900s. The publications cover all kinds of subjects--medicine, politics, you name it. They also include popular magazines and ladies' journals.

So I did a search on fashion and limited it to a date range of the late 1700s to early 1800s. I came up with lots of interesting stuff, including a hilarious letter to the editor in The Lady's Magazine and Repository of Entertaining Knowledge, November, 1792, "On the Universal Fashion of Wearing Hoops." The poor writer laments the fact that every woman from low-born to high has been coerced into wearing "useless" and "greatly inconvenient" hoops.

Why is this man so concerned about a woman's fashion? Because he has four daughters--and they're about to bankrupt him. Not to buy the dresses and hoops, but because of how it's affecting the rest of their lives. "At first their hoops were small," he says, "and consequently less inconvenient, but they are now grown to such an enormous size that I must be obliged (if they do not retrench them) to leave my house on the account, as the rooms, where we could formerly move very conveniently, are now too small to admit of our stirring, without incommoding each other. The stair-case, which is rather narrow, is become (if not wholly useless) extremely dangerous to the female part of my family, as they can neither ascend, nor descend in any other direction than sideways."

To help alleviate the strain on society, the writer proposes a tax on hoop skirts, which I don't think ever happened.

Next I read an article from the July 11, 1807 Lady's Weekly Miscellany, in which a writer also lamented the unbecoming fashions of the time, especially hats. "Ought not the figure of the head to be oval? Should not every thing which alters this figure, be considered as detracting from nature? What then are we to think of those bonnets that project both before and behind, and give the head of a woman, seen in profile, the form of a hammer!"

Oh, how I would love to sit and read articles from these fun magazines. And if you're a writer of historicals, what a fabulous resource this would be! Just think of the details, the atmosphere you could add to your story after reading such cozy articles from the time period of your novel.

Alas, we weren't able to purchase this database. Too expensive. But it's a great reminder of what's out there in college libraries that you won't be able to find on the free Internet. If you have a large university near you, in particular, check it out sometime. Often you can go in and pull up gems like these on their computers.

Stalked By Pirates

2008-06-12T19:55:00.003-04:00

If you've been reading this blog long, you know I'm fond of pirates. (Not real ones. Pretend ones. Particularly the ones with the really cool outfits.) You also know I seem to run across them wherever I go. But now I've started getting anonymous pirate paraphernalia in the mail!

A few days ago I received a mysterious package with a return address of the Kellogg Company. Little knowing what was in store, I tore it open, and this is what I found:

Someone with a weaker constitution might have fainted dead away. But I took it pretty well.

It's a Pirates of the Caribbean alarm clock. I figure it was one of those prizes you can get by saving up your cereal box tops and sending away for it. The question is, who used their box tops on me?

I have my ideas. First I accused my husband, but I've cleared him.

I think I know who the culprit is. I think she's even a regular reader of this blog.

Any confessions?

A Long and Winding Road

2008-06-06T09:00:00.001-04:00

Yesterday I reran a blog from last spring, when I was starting a new manuscript and dealing not only with fear of failure but also fear of success. I mentioned that the thoughts were pertinent to me again now, because I'm once again about to start a new project.

Actually I'm just sort of switching gears this time. I've been struggling, trying to turn out a draft of a novel I've attacked over and over throughout the years. It's my creepy gothic novel I've mentioned before, and it's not exactly my agent's cup of tea. I told her I would work on it until June, get it out of my system, and then work on the project she's excited about.

I have the usual trepidation when starting a new project, including that fear of both failure and success that I talked about yesterday. As I get older, though, I'm starting to have a new worry--fear of wasted time.

I have not exactly made a straight run toward my goals in life. Hence the theme of this blog. I started thinking about one of my favorite Bible passages (Proverbs 3:5-6), and the difference in two of its translations. Here's the way I learned it first, in the King James: "Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths."

Later, I read the verses in the New International Version, which I usually love. But I didn't care much for this translation: "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight."

Do you see the difference? In the King James, God promises that he'll direct us. To me, that means he'll show us which path to take. In the NIV, he promises to make our paths straight. When I was younger, that didn't seem as encouraging--as though I'd have to figure out the path myself, but he'd straighten it out somehow.

Then I spent a few more years on the long, winding road that is my life. (Sorry if that Beatles song is going to be stuck in your head now.) I made so many false starts. I seemed to wander around without direction. I took an expensive class to become a legal secretary, and all it accomplished was showing me that I don't want to work in the legal profession. I started a graduate degree at USC in Los Angeles so I could become a screenwriter and work in film. I quit after one semester, because I discovered that I didn't want to live in Los Angeles and I had absolutely no talent for writing screenplays.

My writing journey has been just as circuitous. I've tried different genres. I wrote a manuscript for the secular market, only to be told it was too religious. So I reworked it for the Christian market and was told it's too literary. I've actually found myself thinking--should I rewrite it as a literary novel? I'd like to tell you I only went through this kind of confusion with one manuscript, but unfortunately, that's not the case.

You know how Psalm 23 starts off, "The Lord is my Shepherd?" Boy, do I understand that word picture! I often picture myself as a little lost lamb, wandering about, and God has to gently guide me back onto the path. The straight path. The one that leads me toward those achievements, those good works that he planned for me before the beginning of the world.

I'm trying a completely new genre on this current project for my agent. So I can't help but wonder--is this more wasted time? Another false start down the wrong turn in the maze? But I also have to remind myself that God used every one of those experiences to bring me where I am today, and that's a very good place.

So now I love that NIV translation that tells me God will make my paths straight. I may not know what I'm doing, I may take the scenic route, get lost and refuse to ask for directions, but God knows exactly where I need to go! I know from experience he'll get me there yet.

Fear of Blessing--Again!

2008-06-04T17:37:00.003-04:00

I'm reading through the Chronological Bible this year. (I use the term "this year" loosely. At the rate I'm going, I figure this one-year Bible is going to take me about 17 months.) I've been reporting to you when I come across things that strike me as particularly relevant to our favorite topics: waiting, persevering, achieving your dream. Last week I read through a passage that I blogged about last spring. I was amazed that it was relevant when I came across it last May--and just as relevant right now. So, just in case some of you need to hear it again, I'm repeating this blog about David and the Ark of the Covenant.

A couple of weeks ago, my daily Bible reading brought me to some passages in 2 Samuel. In chapter 5, David is having a great time. Here are the NIV headings for the passages: "David Becomes King over Israel," "David Conquers Jerusalem," and "David Defeats the Philistines." He's on a roll, so he decides to take the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem.

During the trip, the oxen carrying the Ark stumble. One of David's men, Uzzah, takes hold of the Ark to steady it, which seems a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Unfortunately, God had given strict instructions as to who could touch the Ark, and how it should be treated. Uzzah was struck dead for his irreverence--and David was struck with fear. "How can the Ark of the Lord ever come to me?" (2 Sam. 6:9 NIV).

So David left the Ark right there where it was, with someone named Obed-Edom. Then he had to watch as God poured out his blessings on Obed-Edom and his entire household and know that, because of his fear, he was missing all that.

I'm in the process of starting yet another new novel, and I'm finding it really difficult. Some of that excitement I usually have at starting a new project just isn't there. Sometimes I ask myself, Have I done this once too often? Where's my passion? What am I afraid of?

I know I'm afraid of the rejection, of hitting the usual dead end. But sometimes I read blog posts and emails from published writers and think--what if I did succeed? Would I want to have a contract that required me to produce three books over the next year or two, instead of being able to take my time? And if I write books for the Christian market, what if I say the wrong thing? What if I misrepresent God, if my intentions are just as good as poor old Uzzah's--but I turn out to be just as irreverent and mistaken? Sure I'm afraid people will never read my work, but sometimes I'm even more afraid they will.

Even starting this blog was very scary for me. (See previous paragraph. Same principle.) It's very scary to reach out to people and make yourself vulnerable like that. But I finally decided, I don't want someone else to get my blessing! I'm just praying God will give me courage, and show me how to handle his Ark the right way.

Contest Winner!

2008-06-01T17:00:00.000-04:00

The winner of the drawing for the $25 amazon.com gift certificate is Bunny B. Congratulations, Bunny! Contact me and make sure I have a good email address for you, and I'll send you your prize.

Thanks to everyone else who played. I'm sure I'll start up a new contest soon, so stay tuned for the announcement.

They Were Animals!

2008-05-27T16:06:00.004-04:00

Last weekend I made a trip with blog friend Kathleen to the Yellow River Game Ranch. The game ranch is the home of Georgia's famous groundhog/official weather prognosticator General Lee, who is very popular. Of course, as Kathleen pointed out, you can tell the Game Ranch is in the South when you visit the other general in residence:

Poor little skunk.

The Game Ranch was a fun experience, because we didn't just get to look at the animals but also interact with them. Deer and ducks follow you around, begging for you to feed them--which is allowed, provided you stick to approved treats. Although you have to keep a safe distance from critters like bears, many of the cuddlier types just wander around the park and will eat right out of your hand.

The animals had different ways of approaching visitors and snagging their snacks. In many ways, visiting the Game Ranch reminded me of attending a writers' conference. If you've been to a conference, you know what I mean. All us poor writers fighting for attention, for scraps of hope from editors and agents. And we all have different ways of going about it.

Some of us will do anything to get that editor's attention. We'll overcome any barrier...

We don't care how silly we look, or how strange our story about the old lady abducted by aliens from the produce section of the supermarket sounds...

Others of us are above all that. We know our writing is wonderful, and frankly you're just very fortunate we came to share it with you...

Sometimes it all works out. We strike up a wonderful relationship with an editor or agent or fellow writer, and it's great on both sides.

Where do I fit in this picture? I had a nagging feeling I'm like this bear. Good things were being tossed at him, opportunities were all around him, but he was just too lazy to reach out and grasp most of them. Unless the snacks landed either right in front of him or right in his mouth--I'm not making that up. He sat with his mouth open and actually caught an apple and a couple of crackers--he just couldn't exert the effort to see it through. In fact, a cracker landed behind him, and he reached back with a paw and tried to drag it. But after a couple of tries he gave up, totally exhausted.

Okay, I think I'm learning my lesson here. I think I'll go home and do LOTS of writing tonight.

Milestone or Stumbling Block?

2008-05-23T13:33:00.002-04:00

Here's the guest post I promised you, from my niece, Kristi. She has some great thoughts about perseverance, waiting, and trying to find God's will for the next phase of life.

Recently I had a major milestone in my life. I graduated from college at the not-so-tender age of 34. This is such a blessing, and I thank God for it, because He gave me a second chance. Because it is such a wondrous event, something I had hoped to do for a long time, and because it was something I had to work extremely hard for the second time around, the expectations of what would come next were, and are, incredibly high. They have been so high, in fact, that as I come back down to earth after graduation, I am having a hard time finding my footing. It makes me wonder, am I enjoying the milestone of my graduation, or turning it into a stumbling block on the path to the next thing?

The road to this point has been one which certainly required perseverance. The main perseverance which I experienced came not from myself, though, but from God. My past is filled with many things of which I am not proud, which is one reason I did not make it through school the first time. Although I always believed in Christ and really felt that I did love Him, I spent lots of wasted time living my life the way I wanted to. I took advantage of God’s amazing grace. But His love truly persevered. He never gave up on me, and I look back on some of those moments and am truly amazed at the extent of God’s incredible mercy towards us. I wonder sometimes why it is that I am so loved by Him, that He should care so much about someone who has lived such a life. But it is really not about me, but about Him. That is who He is, and He will never give up on us. We can see this in the Bible over and over as He dealt with Israel through the centuries. He would punish them and be seemingly at the end of His mercy with them, but there was always more. There was always that open invitation to come back to Him. Thank God His love and mercy are not dependent upon us, but upon Him. He enabled me to quit smoking and get registered for school, all while going through one of the worst periods of my life. He got me through school, and supplied me with a great job while I went. That is God’s power at work in my life.

The next display of perseverance came from my family. I would not have made it through the last few years if it were not for the incredible love and support of my mother, my father, my wonderful grandparents, and yes, even my sweet aunt Robin. These are people who have seen me go through many difficult times, many of them self-imposed, and who never once said, “You are on your own.” If they could help me, they have helped me.

I remember one really dark day back in 2005. My marriage had fallen apart, and I was having to leave the house which had become my home over the previous three years. I was faced with the awful task of going back several times to this house where some of my things still were. Barely a week had passed and my soon to be ex-husband had already replaced things I had taken, such as the washer and dryer. Redecoration and reworking of areas in the house were underway that quickly- and I had to go back in there and see how easily I was replaced. In the middle of all of this, my car broke down, and needed a repair that would cost $5oo.oo. My mother and my aunt took it upon themselves to make the 100-mile trip, bring a truck, and help me haul the rest of my things out. I never had to go back to that house. Then, my family selflessly helped me in getting a new car. So, I persevered, but I didn’t do it alone.

There have been many long, long days and nights filled with lots of work and practically no social life, but they were always with that goal in mind- to graduate, and I am so thankful to God that I did. I don’t want this at all to seem like I’m not happy about my graduation. I just don’t want it become a stumbling block. Now what, I wonder, and so far, the answer has not come. Most of us probably understand that this does not mean there is no answer, just that God is not ready to show it to me yet. And most likely there is not ONE answer, but many answers along the way. I have been looking for a giant beacon which leads me to that grand destination- that thing that God put me on this earth to do. Probably, the real truth is that there are lots of steps along the way, lots of things for me to do. It is a difficult thing not to feel a little lost these days, after having been so singularly focused over the last 2 ½ years, but as long as I stay on God’s path for me, He will guide my way, most likely a little at a time. If I keep my eyes on Him, and remember how He brought me through and always had a plan for me, my graduation will remain a milestone, and will not become a stumbling block.

The Princess of Perseverance

2008-05-21T13:19:00.004-04:00

Last week I had a very proud moment as my niece, Kristi, graduated cum laude with a degree in Theatre and Performance Studies. In the area of perseverance, she's frankly humbling me.

First, because this degree has been a dream of hers for so many years. Second, because at a bad time in her life, when she could have settled for depression and pitying herself, she jumped back into life full force. She worked, went to school full-time, and did lots of extras like producing and directing a film, acting in plays and taking part in story-telling festivals, and even being a street character at the Renaissance Festival.

Okay, Kristi, you can slow down now. You're frankly making me look bad. I whine all the time just because I have to go to my job, cook dinner, and then find time to write.

Anyway, I asked Kristi to share some thoughts about the journey she's been on recently--as well as her reflections as she finishes up one big goal, only to find there are even more questions out there. More decisions and frustrations. More waiting.

Tune in Friday for Kristi's guest post. I've gotten a sneak peek, and it's good!

Final Report on the Disaster

2008-05-18T14:31:00.002-04:00

Thursday morning, I returned to work for the first time since last Sunday's tornado. Folks had told me how bad the campus where I work had been affected, but I still wasn't prepared. And I was seeing the damage four days after clean-up began.

There are now open vistas across the campus, where before you couldn't see anything but trees.

God was very kind. No one was hurt, and most of the buildings are okay. There are people in our city that are really hurting right now. I've seen pictures of homes torn apart. The poorer areas of town seem to have been affected most, and I've heard of some people whose food spoiled from the loss of power, and they're having trouble just feeding their families. So I realized how blessed my family and my college were.

Our grounds people are fabulous at landscaping and gardening. They'll take this mess and make the best of it, I know. Weeks or months from now, visitors to campus may not realize how different things are.

That's part of what makes me sad. So I want to give a brief eulogy for what used to be--and then I'll thank God for his protection and move on.

There was the walking trail through the woods by Lake Knee-Deep. I would say 95 percent of those trees were snapped in half and were destroyed. The woods will be gone. Future visitors may see a grassy field--or a new building under construction, who knows? They won't even know about the woods and the trail.

I may sound like I'm making a very sudden change of topic here, but there is a connection, so bear with me! A couple of days ago, I started hearing about a novel called The Shack, by William P. Young. Apparently it's quite controversial among Christians, with some praising it and some condemning. As I understand it, the main character interacts with God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, who are in the forms of a homey African-American woman, a Middle Eastern man, and an Asian woman. I haven't read the book and can't really comment on the controversy. However, I get a little concerned sometimes with the sheer number of books and movies out there that portray God as the guy next door. Someone on your level, someone you would never be afraid of.

And then I see something like the power of this tornado, which reached out and destroyed a little forest in a couple of minutes. And I realize that tornado is just a tiny tool in the hands of God. He made the woods, and in a few seconds, he can destroy them.

I long for books that show God's love and mercy, yes--but that also remind us of his power, his holiness. Remember how the Israelites couldn't even bear to look at the face of Moses after he had been in the presence of God? They couldn't even face a tiny reflection of his glory. I'd love to read a book that makes our mouths drop in awe of the Lord.

Even more, I long to be able to write that book. Maybe someday.

I don't think it's coincidental that these lines were in our call to worship this morning:

"Eternal God,

you are the power behind all things;

behind the energy of the storm,

behind the heat of a million suns."

A Comforting Thought for the Frazzled

2008-05-16T13:53:00.003-04:00

After another one of those frazzled days where my plans came to nothing, where interruptions seemed worthwhile but frustrating, I came across another quote from The Overload Syndrome by Richard Swenson:

"God is the multiplying coefficient for our labor. We might only do fifty percent of all that we had planned tomorrow and yet accomplish five hundred percent more in terms of eternal significance--if our efforts are sensitive to the promptings and empowerment of the Holy Spirit. . . Someone has said, 'God can do in twenty minutes what it takes us twenty years to do.' Let's trust more and do less." (p. 72)

Need I say more?

Another Natural Disaster

2008-05-13T21:30:00.004-04:00

Just about this time last year, I told you how my family's vacations tend to attract natural disasters. I got back from vacation this past Saturday evening to a new twist on that tradition: a natural disaster at the end of the trip, in the form of tornadoes sweeping through my town.

Around 5:45 Sunday morning, the tornado alert sirens woke us up and we headed for the basement. I even managed to get my squirming, protesting cats down there with us. We huddled down there with the alarms sounding for almost an hour. The power went off after about 30 minutes. Honestly, though, the weather didn't sound that bad as we sat there. My town sometimes has a tendency to "cry wolf" with those warnings, so I didn't think it was that bad. Especially when I tuned in our news station around 6:15 and listened for about half an hour to the Sunday Magazine show and the normal five-second weather report, which said we were in for clearing skies and wind gusts. No mention whatsoever of the storm.

Obviously, if anything important had happened, the news station would be all over it, right?

With that thought in mind, I sent my poor friend from Savannah out onto the road for home. She had gone to Florida with us and stayed over Saturday night, intending to make the rest of the trip Sunday morning. I already hated that she had to be there for tornado sirens. She went through a tornado a few years ago. In fact, a tree ended up crashing onto her bed. I hated it even more when I turned on the radio right after she left. NOW the news people had come to life. NOW they managed to tell me that I-16 to Savannah should be avoided at all costs, because it was completely blocked by trees and debris and traffic was backed up for miles. About an hour later, she was back at my house and had to wait until Monday morning to try again.

All the pictures are from my husband's workplace. (And bear in mind that this area was not the hardest hit.)

Our house and my parents' house are, praise God, just fine. The college where I work is a different story. I don't have pictures because people were told to stay away for a couple of days. The buildings mostly had minor damage, but hundreds of trees have been destroyed. The campus was so beautiful, I dread seeing it. My library's director told me that the woods by the lake are basically gone. A bulldozer couldn't have done a better job. The college grounds are designated a botanical garden, and even the parking lots had shady trees up and down the rows. I'm told that most of that is destroyed, as well.

But as my boss said, if it had to happen, 5:30 on a Sunday morning is about the best you can hope for. I am very grateful indeed, for that.

A New Contest and a Blogging Break!

2008-05-04T13:42:00.003-04:00

I'm going to be on vacation in (hopefully) sunny Florida all this week, so I'm going to take a break from blogging.

In the meantime, you can start entering my new contest. Leave a comment on the blog by May 31 for a chance to win your favorite--a $25.00 amazon.com gift card! Each comment from now until May 31 will get you one entry in the drawing. All subscribers will also have one entry.

Have a great week!

Are You Highly Productive or Highly Sensitive?

2008-05-02T13:14:00.003-04:00

A few days ago, I introduced you to an amazing book I'm reading, called The Overload Syndrome by Richard A Swenson, M.D. Today I want to tell you about a section that gave me a real "a-ha" moment.

As I've mentioned, since becoming a member of a large writers' group featuring the multi-published, the talented, the successful, and the energetic, I've felt a lot more stress than usual over my writing. If anything, persevering has seemed harder because no matter how hard I work, I just can't seem to keep up.

Swenson addresses this phenomenon, first by saying there are two rules about people and overload: 1) Everyone is different. 2) Everyone is the same.

We're all the same, he says, because as human beings, we do all have limits. We are all susceptible to overloading those limits. As if reading my mind, he broached the question, what about those people who seem to be able to do it all--and on two hours' sleep? Who can run a business and have ten children and do volunteer work and never get tired?

I love his answer. "Indeed such stories are breathtaking. But this does not mean that I should feel guilty if God has not given me those same abilities. We should not be in the business of telling God how He should arrange the personalities in His Kingdom." (p. 30)

Which brings him to the discussion of point 2: Everyone is different. Swenson says that in the area of overload, people are somewhere on a spectrum from Highly Productive People (HPP) to Highly Sensitive People (HSP). Highly productive people are those we just discussed. The ones who can turn out ten novels in a year while working full-time and volunteering in a soup kitchen. Swenson enumerates their wonderful qualities, including their work ethic, great vision, ability to accomplish amazing things. But one downside? "The highly productive person often sets up unrealistic standards for others." (p. 32)

Can I get an "amen"? Swenson goes on to explain that, because such accomplishments come easily to these energetic folk, they expect the same from everyone else.

Then there's the other end of the spectrum, the Highly Sensitive People. I don't have to wonder where I am on this line. Right here at this end, as far down the spectrum as you can go. Here are some qualities of the HSP:

Have antennae up for social discord or discomfort;
Sometimes seem antisocial. Not truly reclusive, but their "batteries are discharged" by a lot of social interaction.
Often creative. "They live in a world in their heads. They are good company for themselves on long car trips, and they don't mind solitude. They dream a lot."
More susceptible to overload. "They pay a higher emotional price for almost everything...They wear down more quickly." (pp. 32-33)

Swenson then addresses one other category of people--Christians--because they often say they're exempt from overload. You know, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." So, then, saying you're worn down or tired becomes a lack of faith, not a physical or personality issue. Swenson equates the overload issue with other physical ailments that afflict humankind, like flu epidemics. Yes, God may heal supernaturally, but it does not mean that Christians are automatically exempted from catching the flu.

Swenson ends with a warning. "Beware of the presumption of overextending. What if we are out on a limb, doing one hundred and fifty percent of what we ought and then get into trouble?...[God says] 'Remember. You are the creature. I am God. Use my power, not your own.'" (p. 34)

From the Middle of Nowhere to the Center of Everything.

2008-04-29T19:23:00.005-04:00

Last night, my husband said something to the effect of, "In two days we've gone from the wilderness to the center of the world's news." From Saturday through Monday, we did a couple of things that were not exactly our normal routine. And boy, were those two things different!

Monday night, we sat in the studio at CNN with Nancy Grace as she did her show live. (I apologize in advance to my sister, Frankie, and Dave for the following photo. I don't usually subject them to appearing on the blog, but this picture is just too good. Plus, Nancy showed us on camera for about two seconds, so we've already made fools of ourselves, anyway.)

Nancy and I have known each other since we were six. I lost touch with her for years, but it's been fun to reconnect lately. She invited me, Dave, and Frankie to come to her show. What a fascinating experience, to see all the feverish activity that's going on around Nancy while video clips or commercials are playing. How she juggles all that information, and the folks talking at her in her earpiece, and clips and callers and guests is beyond me.

Our destination the weekend before was a little bit different from a bustling place like CNN. Dave and I, his boss and boss's wife went hiking. We stayed at the Len Foote Hike Inn at Amacalola Falls State Park.

To stay there, you must hike the five-mile trail to the inn, so the plan was to hike up there on Saturday, spend the night, and hike back down. (Again, I apologize in advance for the photos. I took these with my cell phone, and apparently I always hold the cell phone sideways when I snap the picture.) I took this one in back of the Visitors' Center, just before we started out, which shows that you're near the start of the Appalachian Trail.

I was a little nervous about this trip. Dave and the others are experienced hikers and campers. I'm experienced at taking elevators and staying in hotels. I was afraid I couldn't keep up, and they'd be sick of me by Sunday. But we took our time, and it was fine.

Still, I've never been so happy to see anything as I was to see the Lodge about three hours after we started the hike.

Especially since, right before we reached the Inn, we saw a sign that said, "Please don't feed the bears." If I had realized there was a possibility that I might provide food for a bear on that trail, I probably would have waited in the van!

Overload Syndrome

2008-04-25T14:23:00.005-04:00

God is truly looking out for me. My church's library is fairly small, and yet when I was feeling frazzled a couple of weeks ago and hoped they might have a book that would help, I found two about dealing with overload.

The first is called The Overload Syndrome: Learning to Live Within Your Limits by Richard A. Swenson, M.D. I think Swenson is my long-lost twin brother, because this man sounds exactly like me. Except for being a successful doctor and actually managing to publish a book. But on this overload thing, we're right in tune.

Swenson starts off talking about his own brush with overload and what he did to change things. He goes on to say this kind of busyness is a fairly recent phenomenon, peculiar to western culture (particularly American) in this day and age. I had wondered about that. How, I wondered, could I feel so stressed and overburdened all the time when, frankly, my parents worked a lot harder than I do? And when I don't even have children?

Swenson was quick to explain. Change in society, in the way things are done, came about fairly slowly for hundreds of years. Then suddenly, things started changing at a head-spinning rate. I know this is true. My father tells me stories of how they lived in his childhood on a farm in Florida, plowing with a mule and picking cotton by hand. It's probably not all that different from the 1800s. But how things have changed since then!

You would think all this progress would make things easier for us, and in some ways, it does. But there's a downside, says Swenson. We've been taught to constantly want more and more, faster and faster. We push the envelope. We push our limits as far as debt and time and energy, until we're way beyond them.

Swenson goes on to talk about the concept of margin--a wonderful idea that means you allow some breathing room between your load and your limits. But he says we've been conditioned to think we're being lazy or doing something wrong if our schedules aren't full up with good things. Swenson has a totally different take on it. According to him, if we have overloaded our schedules with our plans, God may not be happy about it.

"Margin allows availability for the purposes of God," says Swenson. "When God taps us on the shoulder and asks us to do something, He doesn't expect to get a busy signal." (p. 18)

Swenson quotes a theologian named Henri Nouwen. "In the spiritual life, the word discipline means 'the effort to create some space in which God can act...." Discipline means to create that space in which something can happen that you hadn't planned or counted on." (p. 18)

Wow! That's completely different from my idea of discipline--that every moment must be productive, accomplishing something I had planned. And what's one of the symptoms of not leaving that margin in our lives? According to Swenson, we start to resent friends or loved ones when they need us, when they interrupt our plans and ask us for help.

The man just described my life!

I'll probably tell you more about this wonderful book as I read on. For now, though, it's a tremendous help to realize that I'm not alone and that it's okay to admit I have limits. That maybe, just maybe, God hasn't wanted me to be pushing so hard, anyway.

The Queen Visits the Faire

2008-04-21T21:53:00.004-04:00

I knew I was going to enjoy the Renaissance Festival this past Saturday when I found this t-shirt right inside the gate. Obviously, these people understood royalty, and I would no doubt feel right at home.

Of course, I was a bit miffed when I attended the joust and saw that some other young upstart was sitting on the pavilion and calling herself Queen. Imagine!

I've been taking my niece, Kristi, to the Renaissance Festival since she was a little girl. Now she works there as a Kissing Wench. I'm so proud! (I really am, actually. She's about to get a degree in Theatre and Performance Studies. I discovered that the actors playing these characters rehearse for weeks and are chosen for their ability to improvise.)

You knew I'd have to find a few pirates, didn't you? Even I was surprised to find Captain Jack himself!

This guy was a bit of a shock after Jack Sparrow, but he was pleasant enough if you could get past the toothy smile.

All in all, a very pleasant way to spend a Saturday. Even if my sister did force me onto a kiddie ride--a big swing in the form of a ship. The most embarrassing part was that I had to beg the lad pushing it to slow down, ere I threw up on him. (At least I used proper Renaissance language for it.)

Settling on the East Side? Part 2

2008-04-18T13:58:00.004-04:00

When I ended yesterday's post, I mentioned I was getting a little uncomfortable by all the messages I seemed to be getting about crossing the Jordan into my Promised Land of writing. I feel a definite need to stop striving so much and trying to compete with every other high-powered writer in the world, but was God trying to tell me to stop whining and go forward no matter what?

I picked up my Bible for the day's reading in Numbers 32, where the Israelites are finally preparing to cross the Jordan River and fight. Representatives of the tribes of Reuben and Gad came to Moses and said, "If we have found favor with you, please let us have this land as our property instead of giving us land across the Jordan River."

Okay, now I was interested. Some of the Israelites were asking not to cross the Jordan, but to be given land where they already were?

Moses didn't seem too happy with their request. In fact, he blasted them. "'Do you mean you want to stay back here while your brothers go across and do all the fighting?' Moses asked the Reubenites and Gadites. 'Are you trying to discourage the rest of the people of Israel from going across to the land the Lord has given them?'" Moses reminded them that their timid ancestors had done the exact same thing. They scounted out the Promised Land, got scared of the people living there, and decided to stay where they were. Moses warns the Reubenites and Gadites that the Lord was furious with those earlier scouts, and he'll be furious with them, too. (Numbers 32: 5-10, NLT)

Uh-oh. So was the the Lord furious with me for my timidity, my lack of energy? Gulp.

Part of my quandary as I've been praying about my writing is that I set out with this blog to try to encourage other writers and dreamers who might be having a hard time hanging in there and completing their journeys. So if I admit I need to slow down, or that I can't keep up a certain writing pace, will I discourage everyone else? If completing the journey to the Promised Land was becoming God's message to me about staying the course, these verses seemed to make that a very real possibility--that I might be discouraging folks instead of encouraging them.

But then I read further.

The people of Gad and Reuben protested to Moses. "We simply want to build sheepfolds for our flocks and fortified cities for our wives and children. Then we will arm ourselves and lead our fellow Israelites into battle until we have brought them safely to their inheritance...But we do not want any of the land on the other side of the Jordan. We would rather live here on the east side."

They weren't out to discourage or desert their brothers. They planned to fight with them and stay the course. But they had a feeling their inheritance from God was going to be a little different. And when Moses heard that, he calmed down. He thought their request was reasonable and granted it.

I never remember reading this before or hearing it in sermons or in all those other places about crossing the Jordan--that some of the Israelites asked for and received an inheritance on the near side of the Jordan.(v. 16-19)

What exactly does this mean for me as I try to figure out what I'm supposed to do? I'm still praying and pondering, but for now, I've drawn a few things from this:

God does have a promise for me, a destination. Something I'm supposed to achieve.

I am not supposed to give up, wallow in doubt, and quit--thereby discouraging everyone else who's on this difficult writing journey.

On the other hand, it may be all right for me to show that there's more than one way to do things. More than one destination ahead of us. I put a lot of pressure on myself when I try to be just like everyone else in my huge online writers' group. When I try to turn out just as many manuscripts as they do, and go to all the conferences, and write a blog, and read writing books, and think of nothing but how I will discipline myself and publish. No matter what.

But all our lives are different. The stresses and demands, the amount of energy we have, all of it.

God has a promised land for each and every one of us. But we won't necessarily end up in the exact same spot.

Settling on the East Side?

2008-04-17T20:29:00.004-04:00

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that this year, I'm on a quest to find out what God wants me to do about my writing at this particular time in my life. Specifically, should I keep on the path I'm on--striving to turn out a daily word count, to follow all the rules, to throw myself into trying to get published? Or should I allow myself to relax a little, take life and writing a bit more slowly, and try to rediscover the joy in this gift?

When I started praying about this, I seemed to immediately be bombarded by allegories about the Children of Israel crossing the Jordan into the Promised Land. You know how that is, right? When God seems to be trying to get your attention by sending you the same Bible verses or story everywhere you turn? That's what happened with this. I heard about crossing into the Promised Land in Sunday Schools and in sermons. I read it in two or three books. Of course I read about it every day in my Bible reading, because the Israelites are just now reaching the Promised Land in my one-year Bible. (Which is going to take me 18 months to read this time around, apparently. But that's a different story.)

But that's not all. I'm in a rental club for audio books, and I've had Believing God by Beth Moore on my wish list for months, but it was never available. Suddenly, there it was in my mailbox. Guess what Beth proceeded to talk about at great length? How the Israelites didn't believe God right away. Hence the wandering and settling for less all those years, rather than claiming the destiny He had for them.

Here's the craziest thing of all. The novel I'm currently working on is called Jordan's Shadow. My niece read a portion of it during this same time period and asked me why I called the character Jordan. I told her it was because when this mysterious girl with no memory shows up in the story, she goes around humming "On Jordan's Stormy Banks" all the time, so they call her Jordan. And the song plays a part in the story. Remember the lyrics to that hymn?

"On Jordan's stormy banks I stand
And cast a wishful eye
To Canaan's fair and happy land
Where my possessions lie.
I am bound for the promised land..."

So here I am, praying about the direction for my writing as I work on this book, and God seems to be bombarding me with messages about believing him and not being afraid to cross that river and claim what he has promised for me. It's even in the very thing I'm writing!

I started to feel a bit uncomfortable. Maybe down inside, I really have been wanting permission to slow down. And God seems to be telling me, "Stop whining and doubting like the children of Israel. Cross that river. Do what I called you to do!"

But then the story took a little turn from there. I'll tell you about that next time--hopefully tomorrow.

A Tax Day Story

2008-04-15T16:27:00.004-04:00

If you're stressed over your taxes today, I thought I'd tell you a little story about what's going on with me. It might make you feel better.

No, I'm not trying to meet the tax deadline today. We've already filed. Already paid. Twice in fact. That's right. TWICE!

On March 31, I efiled our tax return and paid what we owed--a fairly substantial amount, at least for us--with my debit card. I only get paid once a month and that was payday, so I bit the bullet and sent the money. I received a confirmation email that our tax return was accepted. Received a receipt for the payment. Went to online banking and saw that the payment had gone through, taking most of my balance with it, on April 2. All was well.

Then came April 9. I check my online banking every morning just to make sure everything is okay and I haven't forgotten to record something. On April 9, I got quite a shock. I was severely overdrawn. Overnight, my remaining money for the month had disappeared.

You've probably guessed it by now. My payment to the IRS had gone through a second time.

Can't you just see where this is going? Yes, that's right. I was now going to have to communicate with the IRS and try to get my money back.

I spent an hour on the phone with them and with folks from the bank that day. An hour in which everyone agreed it was the same transaction, same transaction date, same amount, and same reference number. Everyone admitted it was a simple mistake.Want to guess how simple it's been getting my money back?

The rep on the phone told me they would get right on it and the money should be back in my account within a week. I frankly thought a week was unacceptable. And why should it take so long? Folks don't seem to have any problem taking money OUT of my account. If I go shopping on my lunch hour and buy something with my debit card, the charge has gone through by the time I'm back at my desk. And if the clerk at the mall makes a mistake, I simply hand them my card and they reverse the incorrect charge.

So why can't the IRS do that?

The story gets even better. Yesterday was the fifth day since I was told I should have the money back within a week. I got home and checked my mail. I had a letter, with a form attached. An affidavit that I must complete, sign, and return to them swearing that I have a right to have this money returned.

Uh...excuse me? They take my money, and suddenly I have to swear on an affidavit that the money is mine?

But at least they appear to be working on it.

Hmm...Maybe I shouldn't have published this until after I get my money back.

Winner of Sharon K. Souza book

2008-04-11T10:31:00.002-04:00

The winner of Sharon K. Souza's book, Every Good and Perfect Gift, is Sherrie Ashcraft. Congratulations, Sherrie, and thanks for entering! Just send me your mailing address and I'll get the book on its way to you.

So what shall I give away next? Hmmm...

Keep watching and find out what I decide!

My Miracle Notebook, Part 2

2008-04-09T16:57:00.003-04:00

Here's the conclusion of the story I started yesterday:

The drive home from the conference took a couple of hours, and something interesting started happening in my heart and in my mind. Recently, I had been trying to sell my work in the secular market. But years before, I had been aiming for the Christian fiction field. I started to remember with great nostalgia the Christian conferences, the Christian editors. Oh, I got rejected there, too—but at least the people were kind. At least they provided fellowship and spiritual support.

I remembered a couple of rejections on my current novel that said it was “too traditional,” or something similar. Did that mean too Christian? Could it possibly be fitted for a Christian market? I could hardly believe it, but within two hours, I was already thinking of trying again. Could it be that instead of telling me to quit, God wanted to redirect me? To direct my path?
I prayed all the way back to my neighborhood, and when I was almost home I made a decision. One more try. I would do some rewriting on this novel, try it in a Christian market, and let God show me once and for all whether this door in my life had truly closed.

I stopped in a Christian bookstore close to my house. I hadn’t read Christian fiction for awhile and didn’t know who was publishing what. I browsed and looked at the prominently displayed fiction, the bestsellers, the ones that seemed closest to my writing. That’s when I took out the notebook.

I had bought this cheap little thing at the last minute to take notes during all the wonderful sessions I planned to attend at the conference. So it was, of course, blank. Now, on page one, I wrote down two authors’ names for future reference. One of them was Terri Blackstock. I didn’t buy anything that day, but soon afterward I started reading her books. I was impressed not only by her work, but by how far Christian fiction had come since I last read it. I felt encouraged to start my rewrite.

Not too long after that, my husband returned from a trip to visit his family in another state and asked, “Have you ever heard of Terri Blackstock?”

Dave had told a friend of his family about my writing woes, and she mentioned she knew Terri, who might be able to give me some advice. To make a long story short, that’s exactly what happened. Terri read a sample of my work and encouraged me to keep going. She suggested I might need an agent to help me find the right market, and she referred me to someone. I signed with an agency a few months later.

Now, does this story have one of those magic happy endings, in which I sign a contract and become a best-seller overnight? No. Things have still been agonizingly slow. In fact, it's been about four years since I signed with that agent. But God has provided the strength and direction to keep me going and wait for his timing.

I had frankly forgotten about the notebook until one day when my patience was once again wearing thin and I was starting to question everything. I pulled out the notebook to scribble down a phone number or something trivial, and there it was on the front page—Terri Blackstock’s name. Written as I stood in that bookstore on the darkest day of my writing life. Written at the very time when I wanted to quit. God knew things were moving when I thought everything had come to a crashing halt. He even had me write myself a reminder of that fact!

Sometimes I take out this notebook and look at it, just to remind myself of his love and his presence. And when things feel so unbearably slow or uncertain and I can’t feel anything happening at all, I think about the notebook and ask myself, “I wonder what He’s up to today?”

My Miracle Notebook, Part I

2008-04-08T21:18:00.004-04:00

Reading Sharon K. Souza's words last week put me in mind of a story I wrote up a couple of years ago, telling about my darkest day in my writing journey--and the incredible turnaround that God brought out of it. So I decided to share the story with you. I'm posting Part I today, which ends on sort of a discouraging note. Tune in tomorrow for Part 2--the part where God steps in and does something amazing.

I have a miracle notebook. It looks pretty ordinary. In fact, it’s a dollar-store special. But to me it’s a treasure, absolutely awe-inspiring. God used it to show He was right beside me on a day I would have sworn He was hanging out on the far side of the universe. It reminds me He was working out his plan for me at the very time I was ready to give up.

I started that fateful day full of optimism—which is not to say I wasn’t also nervous. It was the beginning of yet another writers’ conference, and my quest to become a published novelist had gotten a bit long. When I was only seven years old and discovered the magic of reading, I decided I wanted to write books for a living. At eighteen, I sent my first full-length novel manuscript (co-authored by my cousin) off to a publisher and discovered the magic of rejection. No problem. I was only eighteen. Then nineteen. Then twenty. . .

Now I was forty-three. Yes, that’s right. Twenty-five years since I put that first manuscript in the mail. I had learned the value of writers’ conferences for learning and for networking, but I have to admit that conferences were getting pretty tough for me. There I’d be, packed in with a herd of bubbly, excited writers seeking their fortune—none of whom, I suspected, had experienced twenty-five years of rejection. Normal people who go through that sort of thing quit and stay home. But not me. I always came back for more.

Without fail, the other writers I met fell into two categories. First came the helpful , friendly type who had just decided to become a writer eighteen months ago. Since then, she had published several articles in her church newsletter and was therefore a professional and would be happy to share her secrets of success with me. I wished I could share newsletter-lady’s contentment and enthusiasm, but doggone it, I wanted to be a novelist!

Then there would, of course, be the authors who had accomplished everything I wanted to. Usually with great ease. Need I say more?

I approached each conference with increasing desperation. Look here, Robin. Do you know how much this thing is costing? You won’t be able to afford another conference for two or three years. You must sell a manuscript NOW! With that kind of pressure, plus my previous track record, is it any wonder I found it hard to bubble and smile along with the other writers?

But this time would be different. First, I had spent serious time in prayer, offering to God to give up the whole notion of being a novelist if that wasn’t what He intended for me. I truly felt he had answered that I should go forward. Second, I shored up my confidence by remembering how close I had come to success in the past, the positive reactions I had received from editors and agents about my writing. Above all, I reminded myself I had never had a bad experience at a conference, never had anyone tell me my writing just wasn’t good enough.

Well, never say never.

I bubbled, I schmoozed, I collected email addresses from editors and invitations to submit my work. I was bolder and more confident than ever before. Unfortunately, this all occurred during the first half hour of the conference.

Immediately afterward, I met with the editor assigned to critique my sample chapters. This woman worked for a publishing company and also had a business “doctoring” people’s writing. Ironically enough, I had hired this woman’s doctoring partner to work on this very manuscript a few weeks earlier, and she had been very enthusiastic about my work. Another good sign. Maybe this would be the day when the editor would take off her glasses, lean toward me, and declare, “Forget the critique. My company wants to publish your novel. Sign here!”

She did indeed take off her glasses and lean toward me. But then she frowned and sighed. “I’ve found some problems with your work.”

My heart sank a little. Okay, it dropped to my ankles. “Really?”

“You see, stories must have conflict. Do you understand what I mean by that?”

After thirty-something years of writing and an English degree? Aloud I said, “You’re saying my story doesn’t have conflict?”

She lowered her voice to a whisper, as though she hated to say it. “I think you tried, but it’s very. . .shallow.”

The whole interview only got worse from there. She asked if I had ever considered taking a writing class so I would understand the process. I asked her (yes, I admit, I was not taking this in the proper humble spirit) if my graduate work in the Master of Professional Writing program at the University of Southern California counted. She even started to point out specific sentences that were awkward and showed poor writing skills—the very sentences her “doctoring” partner had helped me rewrite.

Finally I made it out of there, absolutely crushed. I crawled into my car in the parking deck and sat there, stunned, for ages. I thought that eventually, I would start to recover and be able to go back inside.

But what was the point? Obviously, when I prayed about giving up on writing, I misunderstood God’s answer. He had been trying to tell me to quit, but I hadn’t listened. I heard what I wanted to hear. So now he was shouting at me. And I heard Him. This was the end. I cranked up the car and started home.

Sharon K. Souza's Long Writing Journey

2008-04-04T08:50:00.006-04:00

Sharon K. Souza's new book from Navpress, Every Good and Perfect Gift, deals with two issues that have struck my family pretty hard: infertility and Alzheimer's disease. So I'm looking forward to reading her book and I'm excited to be giving away a copy of it. (Just leave a comment on this post to be entered into the drawing.)

I was also happy that Sharon discussed her writing journey with me so frankly. It's always helpful to me to know that other writers have faced discouragement and doubts and have overcome them. If you need some encouragement today, read on:

Thanks for visiting my blog today, Sharon. Can you tell us how long you've been writing?

I've been writing seriously for 20 years, though I've had a love of reading and writing as far back as I can remember. I think the first time I toyed with the idea of writing a novel and actually sat down with pencil and paper I was in my early 20s. And yes, when I first started writing I wrote by hand. After I got my first computer it was quite some time before I could sit down at a blank screen and compose. I started by typing into the computer what I wrote by hand. Then I would edit that. Eventually I could actually write at the computer, and now I wouldn't think of doing it any other way.

Can you tell us a little about your road to publication?

When I began my first serious attempt at a novel Christian fiction as we know it was a fairly new genre. That first novel was set during WW2, and it took about 2 years to write. At the time I had a 13 year old, a 12 year old and a 10 year old at home, I was an associate pastor's wife, and employed during the school year, so like many of us, my writing time came at a premium. While most everything on the Christian fiction shelves at that time was historical fiction, most of my rejection letters said editors were looking for contemporary fiction. So I rewrote my novel, using Desert Storm as the time period. That took another year. And while neither version will ever see the light of day, it was an excellent learning experience.

During that same time I wrote and sold a number of articles for our denomination's weekly magazine, I spent 3 years as publisher and contributing editor for a monthly newspaper our church produced, I worked on three non-fiction books with another author, and continued to write more novels.

In 2000 I finally received a contract for a suspense novel I'd written, and boy was I thrilled. Under the terms of the contract, the company (which shall remain nameless) had 3 years to publish the book. I went through all the normal processes from cover design to final edits, and just before the contract was due to expire -- still without a finished product -- the company went bankrupt. That was bad enough, but I had agreed to purchase a certain number of those books myself, had paid the money in advance, and lost every dime. Any legitimate traditional publisher (those not specifically marketed as subsidy publishers) will never ask an author for money for the production of their book. I hope this information prevents another writer from falling into the trap I fell into.

In 2004 I published my Christmas novella, A Heavenly Christmas in Hometown, with WinePress. I chose the self-publication route for that book because it's difficult to find publishers for seasonal books. I was very pleased with the product, but continued to seek traditional publishers for my other novels. In 2006, I received a contract for Every Good & Perfect Gift and Lying on Sunday (to be released 9-1-08) from NavPress, after connecting with an editor at Mt. Hermon Christian Writer's Conference. Attending that conference opened doors that nothing else had ever accomplished.

Has there been a time you felt particularly discouraged about your writing dream, or felt like giving up? How did you get through that?

Many, many times. It was a long journey from that first manuscript to my first contract, with some major disappointments in between. I can't tell you how many times I questioned my ability, my call, the possibility that I would ever be published. I knew in my heart that writing inspirational novels was my passion, but I got to the point that I seriously doubted it was what the Lord meant for me to do. And yet the thought of not writing them would bring me to tears.

My family has been a great source of encouragement. Without their support and cheerleading I never would have kept going. And I held on to a favorite verse from the Bible: "For it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose" (Phil. 2:13). I came to fully believe that the passion I had for writing Christian fiction was indeed from the Lord--who also loved to tell stories. Once I settled that in my heart, then I just had to be the best writer I could be, and I had to leave the results to him.

Do you have any advice for writers who might be discouraged today?

Do all you can to hone your craft. Practice may not make you perfect, but it sure makes you better. Find a critique partner or group that will honestly evaluate your work. Find a writer's conference to attend. Take advantage of those conferences that allow you to submit your work to a critiquer for a professional evaluation, or to an editor if the piece is ready for publication. Above all, don't quit. You'll never achieve your goal if you do.

Okay, time for a plug for your new book. What's Every Good and Perfect Gift about?

Gabby is present for all of it, noting the increasingly strange behavior of her lifelong friend after the baby's birth. Then comes a diagnosis that threatens to shatter their world. Gabby must find the strength and faith to carry DeeDee and herself through the dark unknown, but is she up for it?

Were these characters based on real people?

The concept of the story was based on a real situation in regards to the Early Onset Alzheimer's. But the characters are not based on real people. I do typically use people I know/have known and then take their personality traits/quirks to extremes--almost like a caricature--in order to make the character as interesting as possible. Almost always my daughters will recognize something of themselves in my make-believe world. It makes for fun conversation.

What inspired you to write Every Good & Perfect Gift?

I wanted to write a book about a "Jonathan and David" type friendship between two women, knowing that I was ultimately going to tell the story of a young woman who is diagnosed with Early Onset Alzheimer's. I have a close friend who, at the age of 42, began to exhibit many of the symptoms portrayed in the book. Since completing the book I've learned that another close friend has been diagnosed with EOA. What are the odds?

In determining what course the friendship between Gabby and DeeDee would take, I asked myself: What is the greatest way one woman can express friendship to another? The answer: By helping her have a child if she's unable to, which one character is willing to do if it comes to that.

Thanks so much, Sharon. I'm looking forward to reading the book, and I wish you all the best with it.

A Winner and a New Giveaway

2008-04-02T17:19:00.005-04:00

The lucky winner of the $25.00 gift certificate to amazon.com is...

Tracy Ruckman!

Congratulations, Tracy. Enjoy. As the rest of you know, I do these giveaways pretty often, so I hope you'll stick around and try again.

In the meantime, I have a great new book to give away. It's Every Good and Perfect Gift, by Sharon K. Souza. Here's what it's about:

DeeDee and Gabby have been friends since the sixth grade, when headstrong and courageous DeeDee began mapping out their lives. But after twenty years with her husband DeeDee changes her plan. Nearing forty years old, she wants a baby - now! Two years of infertility, prayers, and outrageous behavior finally results in the birth of DeeDee's demand. Gabby is present for all of it, noting the increasingly strange behavior of her lifelong friend after the baby's birth. Then comes a diagnosis that threatens to shatter their world. Gabby must find the strength and faith to carry DeeDee and herself through the dark unknown, but is she up for it?

I'll be interviewing Sharon Souza on Friday. If you'd like to read this book, leave a comment today or Friday, and I'll announce the winner next Friday, April 11.

And be sure to come back for the interview. Sharon's been on other blogs lately, but I asked her some special questions about her writing journey. Very inspiring stuff.

Recharging Your Creative Side

2008-03-28T14:28:00.003-04:00

Today's guest blogger is Brenda Jackson. I wanted Brenda to tell her story here because her struggle sounds so familiar to me--and because it has a happy ending. I'm looking forward to that Yee-haww moment, myself! Here's Brenda:

Thanks, Robin, for inviting me to take a spin here in the land of perseverance!

About me: I took up writing screenplays with a friend in 2002. I highly recommend writing at least one screenplay in your life to flex a different set of writing muscles. One screenplay quarterfinaled in a national competition. But after 3 years, I learned screenplays were not my passion and began pursuing my ultimate dream – a career as a novelist. My heart’s desire (Lord willing) is to become known as the author who writes “Westerns With An Arizona Brand.” I’m currently working on my first 3 book series but don’t know when they’ll be ready to pitch (to editors – not out the door.) :)

A career as a novelist is not an easy path. I just went through a 3-4 month creative dry spell that sucked the life out of me. I couldn't write a word on my novel if someone threatened to shoot me, due to a combination of reasons: a pneumonia/asthma/creeping crud that refused to die, puppy raising (if you ever want to feel absolutely inadequate, try raising a puppy after not having done so in years). Worst of all, in the months leading up to that dry spell, I did not take care of my creative side – Artist’s Date style (if you haven’t heard the reference, check out Julia Cameron’s “The Right To Write” and other books).

The WORST feeling in the world is the times in our spiritual journey when it seems God has left us - that sense of absolute abandonment at the height of our trials.

I think the next worst feeling is wondering if you're ever going to be able to write another word again, wondering if your writing dreams might as well be dead.

Well at last my dry spell is OVER! YEEHAW!!!!!!

I'm back to eagerly looking forward to writing sessions, to those impatient moments at work when I stop and say "man, I can't wait to go home and write!"; to those times when your mind catalogs research tidbits and scene ideas, etc.

Several things helped me break that dismal cycle, like: going to Pueblo Grande Museum last weekend (dedicated to teaching visitors about the ancient Hohokam Indians), going to a Civil War in the Southwest event, seeing “The Bucket List,” and beginning to read James Scott Bell's "Plot & Structure."

Granted, time, money, and the calendar do not always permit flitting from one event to the next. But simply going to your local park can recharge your creative batteries. I also learned last weekend there were a ton of museums in the Phoenix metro area that I did not even know about!

The moral of the story is, do NOT make the mistake of starving your creative side. It's easy to do what with being caught up with the day job, the kids, the bills, etc etc. But it is far more costly in time to ignore the creative part of ourselves than it is to spend a little time each week (or otherwise regularly) making sure the creative juices are healthy and well-tuned. I hope I don't go through that again for a long time.

And I hope you all never do!

Waiting and Running and Fainting

2008-03-26T20:29:00.003-04:00

A few days ago, I posted that I was on a journey this year to find God's will for my writing. In response, Melanie Dickerson asked a good question--am I being proactive in my quest for publication, as well as sticking it out and learning to wait.

I'm glad Melanie asked, because I talk so often about waiting, but I'm not sure I've talked about how active we're supposed to be while we do. Kind of reminds me of the old saying, "God helps those who wait, as long as they work like the dickens while they're waiting." Actually, I've cleaned that saying up a bit, but the general meaning of it is good.

One of my favorite verses is Isaiah 40:31: "But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint." (KJV) Notice it's talking about people waiting upon the Lord, but at the same time they're walking and running and needing all kinds of energy. These folks are active!

So yes, to answer Melanie's question, I think I'm working pretty hard on writing and submitting. I don't talk about those efforts all that much. Maybe I need to so I won't give the impression I think we should sit back and wait for good things to drop in our laps.

In the meantime, in thinking over this question, I wondered if my problem isn't the opposite. It could very possibly be I'm just plain lazy. Seriously! I think I would prefer to sit back and wait. I'm exhausted. I've been writing steadily and submitting for decades, but I've really made myself buckle down the last couple of years. In 2006, I wrote a novel in eight months. That may not sound like much to you, but for me, it was amazing. My previous record for turning out a manuscript is three years. If I stay on track this year, I will have produced three manuscripts in three years. I like that accomplishment, but I can't say writing is as much fun as it used to be.

So maybe God just needs to give me a good kick in the pants and tell me to stop whining and being so lazy. Actually I am seeing a lot of myself in those whiny children of Israel as God drags them out of Egypt to the Promised Land, kicking and screaming the whole way. I'll tell you more about that soon.

Sad News From Our Little Blogging Community

2008-03-25T15:59:00.002-04:00

If you read this blog often, you've no doubt seen comments from someone named "Kathleen." I actually became acquainted with Kathleen through this blog. She's been one of my most faithful readers and supporters, and we've become good friends. Yesterday I received some sad news. Her father, who has been battling Lou Gehrig's disease, passed away.

If you want to know true perseverance, take a look at Kathleen's family. I've only known them for a short while, but they're special people. Kathleen and her mother have been taking care of her father at home. Not only that, but Kathleen's sister has some tough health issues, so they've been looking after her, too. Through all these difficulties, they've exhibited an attitude of patience and love that truly inspires me. I never met Kathleen's dad, but she told me stories about how he reacted to the various stages of his disease, with patience and cheer. He must have been a wonderful man.

I'd like to ask everyone to pray for Kathleen and her family through this very difficult time.

When Perseverance Goes Bad

2008-03-20T15:31:00.004-04:00

Is perseverance sometimes a bad thing?

Well, if you use the term “perseverance” correctly, maybe not. According to Dictionary.com, perseverance is “steady persistence in a course of action, a purpose, a state, etc., esp. in spite of difficulties, obstacles, or discouragement.” Furthermore, the word is “regularly used in a favorable sense.” The idea, then, is that if you’re persevering toward some destination, you’re striving for something worthwhile.

But what if you’re mistaken?

I started thinking of some of the persistent souls I’ve seen on the news. People who dangle themselves in a glass box from a crane and see how long they can sit inside it, that sort of thing. Their only goals are getting attention and maybe ending up in a record book. So are they persevering—or just plain nuts?

I went to Guinness World Records online and did a search on the word “longest.” I came up with all sorts of interesting results. For example, Wesley Pemberton has the world’s longest leg hair. It measured five inches on August 10, 2007. (My mother’s birthday. Just think, while I was goofing off, partying with my family, Wesley was making history.) Maybe this isn’t a good illustration of perseverance, however. Wesley probably didn’t have much choice in how long his leg hair grew.

But then there’s the longest tattoo session, which “lasted for 43 hr 50 min, achieved by Stephen Grady and Melanie Grieveson.” Now, that required some endurance! Or questionable judgment. Perhaps both. Same goes for Bernie Baker, who at age 66 was the oldest known male stripper. Sure, he may have been persevering when other, younger male strippers were giving up. But the question is—why? Worthy goal? Probably not.

I’m bringing this up because I don’t want to be another Bernie Baker. I want my destination to be worthy and real, and I want to go about getting there the right way.

I'm on a journey this year, and I've decided to invite you all along. For a long time I hesitated to let you know about the fleece I'm laying before God this year, because I was afraid I would discourage you. But it's really not a discouraging journey.

Remember my verse for 2008: "Show me your intentions so I will understand you more fully and do exactly what you want me to do." As a part of praying that, I've asked God to show me things so clearly that I can do things differently next year. I believe he will either let something so encouraging happen with my writing that I will know I'm on the right track. Then I will stop torturing myself with doubts. Or he may show me it's okay to take some time off. He may give me a new direction for writing--or for living.

Wherever he takes me, it will be good. When you run a marathon, you have to pace yourself, and I'm excited to discover whether God's going to tell me to speed up and head for the finish, or slow down and enjoy the scenery.

I'll let you know how it goes.

The Top Five Reasons Why...

2008-03-17T21:42:00.004-04:00

...I haven't blogged lately.

5. I took on some extra working grading essays on a test that college students in Georgia must pass before graduating. I did approximately 150 of these in less than a week. By the time I finished, I felt a little disoriented and confused, although I learned a lot of things. For example, apparently there's an old saying that "modesty is the best policy." You can learn a lot of "life lesions" even if you're home schooled. And "quiters never win." Those sentences were in the good essays.

4. Here's a picture of my next reason:

Dave is going to redo the floor in our bedroom, so we had to move everything out. Obviously we left one of Wendy's toys, but that's about it. We moved the furniture and everything else that wasn't nailed down into the basement. The mattress and box springs were the most fun, especially since the box springs wouldn't fit down the stairs and had to be carried around the house.

3. I could hardly move because of sore muscles. (See excuse #4.)

2. I was in a very crabby mood. I emailed a friend of mine about the week I was having, and I think it scared her. So I decided not to inflict that on y'all.

1. I've run out of things to say. Well, almost. I can tell you about one interesting thing I saw today. Here in my hometown we have a yearly Cherry Blossom Festival. People tend to go a little nuts painting things pink, but today I saw the winner. Some folks were out walking one of those big standard-sized poodles, and they had dyed that poor dog pink. Not a soft baby pink. I mean flaming, hot pink! I wish I had had the camera.

I wonder if our groomer would like to try to dye Cera pink.

Announcing My Blogaversary Contest

2008-03-12T20:01:00.003-04:00

It's my first blogaversary!

Actually, I'm jumping the gun a bit. According to my records, I made my first blog post on March 20 of last year. I planned to celebrate on the 20th and announce a contest in celebration. But I just haven't been able to think of anything to blog about this week. I figure, when in doubt, give something away.

Those amazon.com gift cards are always a favorite, so I'm doing that again. On April 2, I'll announce the winner of a $25 amazon gift certificate. All my subscribers will have one entry. If you'd like another entry, leave a comment on THIS POST no later than March 31.

The contest is one way of saying thank you for hanging out with the Queen this year. I can't believe all of you folks that I wouldn't have known if I hadn't started this blog. (What a convoluted sentence that was. I wish I could say my writing skills have improved.) I've even met a couple of you in person--like Sally at the ACFW conference. And Kathleen and I discovered our common love of crafts and have met to shop for fabric and sew. (Some writers get together to write and critique. Not us. We can critique online.)

As you've probably noticed from my blog posts, I have a tough time with discipline and time management. So I'm pretty darn proud of myself for sticking with this for a year. I've also posted three times almost every week, which was my original intention.

Again, thanks so much for playing along! I couldn't have done it without you. (And thanks to my friend Felicia for that wonderful word, blogaversary. I don't know whether she made it up or got it somewhere else, but I love it!)

If This is Really So

2008-03-07T13:22:00.004-05:00

Some people talk about having a life verse. I usually have a verse that serves as my "theme" for a year or so at a time. While doing my daily reading a couple of weeks ago, I came across what I believe will be my verse for 2008--Exodus 33:13.

At this point, Moses has already led the Israelites out of Egypt, and they've started their trek across the desert. God speaks to Moses personally, allowing him into his presence like no other man. And yet, at one point Moses becomes frustrated and confused. The Lord has told him time and again that Moses has found favor with him, yet he says, "Please, if this is really so, show me your intentions so I will understand you more fully and do exactly what you want me to do."*

That's my verse. After all these years of pursuing my dream of writing, I struggle more now with the question, "Is this really so?" than ever before. Maybe because the journey is getting so long. (And who knows more about long journeys than Moses!) The thing I'm asking about--wondering whether it's so--is a little different from Moses' question, of course. Day after day I wonder, is my writing a calling from God? Is it something he wants me to do? Or it is just a dream, a desire that has no more importance than a longing for a vacation in Hawaii?

This writing business takes loads of time and energy. I have limited reserves of each. I need to allocate those resources wisely. When I'm pulled away from my writing for the crisis of the day, I feel tremendous guilt. Immediately afterward, I wonder why. Most of the "crises" seem to be things God would want me to handle. In fact, I often feel guilty WHILE I'm writing, because I'm neglecting something else.

If God truly showed me that He wants me to write, that it's not just a whim, I think my energy and devotion to it would increase. Maybe after the crisis du jour, I'd find the energy to stay up a little later and write, anyway. On the other hand, if I could just figure out once and for all that writing is a joy and a hobby, but no more important than my knitting, then I could skip the guilt when I'm called away. I could just enjoy the experience whenever I could get to it.

So like Moses, I'm praying this year, "Show me your intentions so I will understand you more fully and do exactly what you want me to do."

* New Living Translation

Oh No, Not Again!

2008-03-04T21:22:00.006-05:00

My brain is fried tonight. Dave and I just did our tax returns. So I don't think I'll be able to come up with anything particularly profound or inspiring to tell you. Instead, let's just have a little fun at my cats' expense.

Last week it was time to go to the groomer again. I have to have their hair cut once a year because it gets so matted. (Because they won't behave and let me comb them.) You may recall that last year, bad, bad Cera gave the groomers so much trouble that they only managed to shave half of her. Would you believe...

Yes, that's right! She did it again. No toenails clipped, no bath, just half of her hair cut off. Doesn't she look proud of herself?

She would almost look like one of those show dogs that prance around with bizarre, intricate hair-dos if hers were only symmetrical. I can't adequately show you how bad this looks in a flat photo, but on one side she's completely bald. On the other, her hair poofs out about halfway down.

Last year, I drew some profound insights from Cera's shenanigans. This year I don't have the heart. I will say, though, that if anyone illustrates perseverance, it's my Cera. She may only weigh eight pounds. There may be three or four hundred total pounds of groomers trying to hold her down--and those groomers may come from the dominant species on Planet Earth. But they give up before she does every time!

One last photo. This is Wendy--who is nicer and does give up:

If you want to see how she looked before, take a look at this post from December.

Maybe I understand why Cera fights the groomer, after all.

Explaining Weird, Scary Message

2008-03-03T12:53:00.003-05:00

A couple of subscribers emailed me today saying they received what was alleged to be one of my posts, but it had the scary title "Blogger 403 Forbidden." This title makes it sound like either a) I'm Blogger 403 and I've done something so heinous that I'm forbidden to use the service anymore or b) my message is Blogger 403 and it's going to destroy your computer.

I'd like to assure you that neither is correct. Still not sure exactly what it does mean, but here's what Feedblitz told me: "Apparently last night some Blogger / Blogspot blogs returned "403 Forbidden" errors instead of the publisher's content. It's Blogger's issue, not ours... (and let's hope that whatever ailed Blogger last night is now working again). "

I'll second that. Anyway, hope no one was scared away by the creepy email. I'm also not sure whether anyone got the actual post, "Wendy Picks a Winner." Click on the link if you missed it and would like to see my cat picking the winner of Rotten Reviews & Rejections.

Wendy Picks a Winner!

2008-02-29T16:24:00.002-05:00

I didn't intend for this to happen, but Wendy ended up picking the winner of Rotten Reviews & Rejections. I put the basket with the names on the floor and stirred them up with my hand. The sound of the rattling paper drew her like a dinner gong. I turned my back for a minute, looked back, and she was pulling out one slip of paper. I thought, what the heck? At least she's impartial!

And Wendy picked...Elizabeth Musser. Congratulations, Elizabeth! I'll get the book on its way to you.

By the way, you may notice in the above photo that Wendy appears to have lost most of her hair. Yes, it was time for the cats to go to the groomer again. That's a whole other story. Maybe more about that next week.

Have a great weekend, and thanks to everyone who entered the contest.

God of Infertility

2008-02-27T14:42:00.004-05:00

As I've mentioned before, I'm reading through the Chronological Bible this year. In the early portion of Genesis, something struck me in a new way. Have you ever noticed just how many of the women in the first generations of God's chosen people had to deal with infertility?

First, God tells Abraham that he's going to be the father of a great nation, that the number of his descendants will be like the grains of sand on the beach. Then Abraham and Sarah proceed to wait. In fact, they grow old without having produced a single child.

Eventually, of course, Sarah gives birth to Isaac. When Isaac becomes an adult, one of Abraham's servants returns to their homeland to find him a wife. The servant prays for a specific sign so he'll be sure to choose the woman that God has picked out for Isaac. God sends the sign. Apparently, he also sends Isaac another infertile woman. Genesis 25:21 says, "Isaac pleaded with the Lord to give Rebekah a child because she was childless." (New Living Translation) God answered the prayer and Rebekah had twins, Jacob and Esau.

Jacob married two sisters, Leah and Rachel. Guess what? Rachel struggled with infertility. This passage is from Genesis 30: "When Rachel saw that she wasn't having any children, she became jealous of her sister. 'Give me children, or I'll die!' she exclaimed to Jacob. Jacob flew into a rage. 'Am I God?' he asked. 'He is the only one able to give you children!'" (NLT, verses 1-2) Rachel did eventually give birth to two children, one of them the great patriarch, Joseph.

God chose this line of people and set them apart. He intended them to become a nation and promised them they would be fruitful and produce many descendents. He fulfilled this promise, but not without causing the first three generations to struggle with infertility. Having those children did not come easily to Abraham's family. They had to wait. I'm sure they wondered. Sometimes they cried. They prayed.

We Americans tend to believe that things are supposed to come easily and quickly. If something is difficult, we assume it isn't God's will. If God guided us to that marriage or that job, it should go smoothly, right?

Reflecting on this first book of the Bible, I had to remind myself that isn't always so. God's plans may take a long time to come to fruition. The path may be difficult. And that's not necessarily because we're fouling things up. It may just be that God planned it that way.

God had an overall plan of building a nation from Abraham's family, but he also cared about each individual along the way--each building block of that nation. Maybe he wanted them to think about his promise constantly, to think about Him. Perhaps he wanted them to depend on him and know those children came from him and his grace.

Whatever the reason God gave them these struggles, I'm sure that each of these babies, when they finally arrived, seemed like little miracles.

Anniversary on the Little River

2008-02-24T21:42:00.007-05:00

Today is my 18th wedding anniversary. We just got home from our anniversary trip to Mentone, Alabama, where we stayed at the Little River Cabin. The place had wall to wall glass across the front, and we had great views of the water.

Our friends built this cabin a couple of years ago. I expected something simple and rustic. I had no idea how charming and special the cabin would be. It even had a loft with beds and sloping ceilings--something I've always dreamed of having in my own home.

As usual, I took particular note of the four-legged folks we met on the trip. This is our friends' dog, Millie. At least I think it's Millie. Their dogs are named Millie and Guinness and I called this one Guinness the whole time, and our friends were too nice to correct me. But I'm pretty sure her tag says Millie. Isn't that the cutest face you ever saw?

The mule didn't tell us her name. I think if she could have talked, she would have said, "What are you staring at? Get that camera out of my face." Mules hate paparazzi.

Our friends are building a new house on a mountain close to the cabin. This is going to be the view from their deck. I can't imagine waking up to this every morning, but it's a nice thought.

By the way, the Little River Cabin is for rent, so if you ever want a quiet vacation in the mountains of Alabama, check it out.

Jane Austen, Part II: A Sad Mystery

2008-02-20T19:52:00.003-05:00

I teach library research classes to college students. A few days ago I was running some sample searches in literature databases, preparing to teach an English class. Since I was reading Just Jane by Nancy Moser at the time, I used "Jane Austen" as a sample search. In the first item I pulled up, I noticed her date of death: 1817. I felt a little stab of sorrow, as though I'd stumbled across an obituary for an old friend. I had just reached the year of 1811 in Moser's novel. Jane was thriving and in the process of publishing her first book, Sense and Sensibility. She was only in her thirties, finally realizing the dreams of a lifetime. So what in the world happened to her in the next few years?

I read a couple of biographical articles and they frustrated the literary detective in me. They merely said she died of an illness at age 41. So I turned to other databases looking for an answer, including indexes of medical articles.

Apparently I'm not the only one fascinated by this mystery. Doctors and medical experts have been speculating for years. The common story is that Jane Austen became ill in 1816 and struggled with her condition for about a year before passing away. Symptoms, according to a few sketchy letters, included "biliousness," back pain, dark discolorations of the skin, weakness and fatigue. In a British Medical Journal article in 1964, Zachary Cope reached a conclusion that stood for many years. Jane Austen died of Addison's disease, which destroys the adrenal glands. Other doctors today think Jane's condition may have been Hodgkin's disease, a kind of cancer. Annette Upfal, author of an article called "Jane Austen's Lifelong Health Problems and Final Illness," says that "both diseases were unidentified and untreatable in Austen’s lifetime, and the outcome was always fatal." (Medical Humanities, 2005)

Upfal uses scraps of information from Austen's own letters and those of friends and relatives to try to solve the mystery. Upfal also addresses the question of why so many people feel a need to answer this question. "The futility of this death from an illness that now offers recovery, with the image of a dying writer struggling to use a pencil...and above all, regret for the novels that were yet to be written, have added a sense of pathos to Austen’s iconic status."

I myself just felt sadness that Austen died when she finally seemed to be accomplishing all her dreams. I so identified with the struggle, the waiting, the years passing by that she experienced in her journey to become an author. In the final part of Just Jane, Nancy Moser has Austen praying the Bible verse asking for God to "restore the years that the locusts have eaten." Once again, I felt astounded, because I have often prayed that verse--and in connection to my writing!

Perhaps I'm looking at this the wrong way. After all, God did bring her dreams to fruition. Her dreams are still living today, in all of us who read her books and live in the wonderful worlds she creates.

What writer could ask for more?

Jane Austen and Me, Part I

2008-02-19T19:37:00.005-05:00

I haven't blogged in days. I feel so guilty. For once, I have a pretty good excuse. I've been working on my novel plus reading a wonderful book. Isn't that great?

I'll spare you the details of my own writing, at least for the moment, but I have to share my experiences reading Nancy Moser's amazing book, Just Jane, a fictionalized account of the life of Jane Austen. I mentioned this book once before, when I had just read a review of it and discovered that Jane Austen actually had a long, difficult journey toward being published. It's taken me this long to get around to reading the book myself, and it's hard to explain the powerful effect this story had on me.

Or maybe it's not hard. I felt a kinship with this woman as I walked through the years with her. I felt we had so much in common. I don't mean the details of her life, or the writing talent. (So you can all stop choking now.) But her temperament, and the overall direction of her life--well, here are a few examples.

From childhood, Jane was a writer. That's how she defined herself, and how most of her family and close friends defined her. She seemed to be working on one story or another practically from childhood, and yet she wrote only a few complete novels. There seemed to be a limited number of stories and special characters that she worked on, writing and thinking and rewriting, throughout her life.

I could have just described myself in that paragraph. I've identified myself as a writer since I was about seven years old. Like Jane, I have four of five groups of characters and stories that I pick up, finish, put down, and then come back to years later. When I signed with an agent a few years ago, the book I had just "finished" was in about its fourth incarnation. I started the first one when I was twelve, and at that time I was in my forties. The book I've been working on this past week is one I conceived when I was a teenager.

I've mentioned this before, but so many modern writers advise that you simply must sit down and crank out a certain word count every day, finish a story in a few months, and move on to the next one. I just can't do that, or at least it isn't natural for me. It wasn't for Jane, either. Not only did she seem to love the characters she created and want to live with them through the years (as do I), but life often intervened so she simply couldn't write for awhile. I know that feeling.

Jane Austen identified herself as a writer but she seemed to assume that she would also be a wife and mother. The years passed. Things happened. The husband and family never came, and the woman who conceived characters that will live forever never gave birth to a child in life. Though she never gave up on publishing a book, she seemed to accept that eventually it was too late for marriage and a family. I went through years of wondering if all that would pass me by. I did marry when I was 30, but I never was able to have the children I had planned.

I must confess that all the above Jane Austen information comes from only two sources: Nancy Moser's novel and a biographical article (which seemed to corroborate the general events in the novel). So I can't exactly say I'm an expert on her life. But I want to say thank you to Nancy Moser for introducing me to this woman, who almost feels like a friend now. Being a librarian, of course I'm so intrigued that I want to do more research.

This is getting a bit long for a blog post, so I'll continue tomorrow. I want to tell you some intriguing things I read about the end of Jane Austen's life.

Does God Waste His Spirit on Arts and Crafts?

2008-02-14T17:48:00.003-05:00

My Chronological Bible reading is taking me through Exodus right now. Some of those chapters are slow-going. Lots of lists and instructions on how to construct the Tabernacle, how to build the Ark of the Covenant, even how to make the robes for the priests. (I have to admit that last part interested me most. I love fashion!)

Then some verses in chapter 35 jumped out at me. God chose specific individuals to work on His tabernacle, the place where he would meet and interact with his people, because of their skill in arts and crafts. Not only that, he had specifically given them the skills they needed, through his Spirit. Here's the exact quote (from the NIV version):

"Then Moses said to the Israelites, "See, the LORD has chosen Bezalel son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, and he has filled him with the Spirit of God, with skill, ability and knowledge in all kinds of crafts--to make artistic designs for work in gold, silver and bronze, to cut and set stones, to work in wood and to engage in all kinds of artistic craftsmanship. And he has given both him and Oholiab son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan, the ability to teach others. He has filled them with skill to do all kinds of work as craftsmen, designers, embroiderers in blue, purple and scarlet yarn and fine linen, and weavers—all of them master craftsmen and designers." (Exodus 35:30-35)

I sometimes wish God had gifted me to be a doctor or nurse, so I could actually help people. Or given me the ability to preach or to understand deep doctrines. Instead, I'm interested in making up stories, and sewing, and making jewelry.

I love these verses, that remind me that He has uses for the artsy-craftsy people, too. Someday He may have a project that He has uniquely gifted one of us for.

Win a Copy of Rotten Reviews and Rejections

2008-02-11T18:45:00.000-05:00

Last September at ACFW, keynote speaker James Scott Bell occasionally quoted from a book called Rotten Rejections. I couldn't believe there was actually a book called that, but if was real, I wanted it.

Sure enough, I found it on amazon.com. Actually, the version I bought is called Pushcart's Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. It combines three smaller volumes that were published earlier and it's just what it sounds like--a compilation of bad reviews and mean rejection letters of books that have since become classics. Or at least sold lots of copies.

I love it! What a morale booster. To know that reviewers said that Emily Dickinson was destined for oblivion, that Faulkner was a "minor talent," and that Dickens would not be remembered in 50 years' time . I love the statement about Wuthering Heights: "the only consolation which we have in reflecting upon it is that it will never be generally read." Those are from the reviews.

The rejection letters are even better. Having had many editors explain to me why my books will never sell, I wanted to laugh with glee when I saw that editors in the past said the same thing about books that went on to sell millions--that are still selling after decades.

My favorite story was about a journalist who typed up a "manuscript" of a novel that had won the National Book Award only a few months earlier. He then submitted it to editors and literary agents under his own name, as an experiment. All of them rejected it--and lots of them explained why it would never sell. Even the publishing company who originally published it rejected it!

In another story, a publishing company accepted a book for publication and sent it to an artist to do illustrations. After completing the illustrations, the artist sent the manuscript back to them. The publishers apparently thought he was submitting the manuscript, because they sent him a rejection letter for it!

But here is my personal favorite, from a Chinese economic journal (p. 212): "We have read your manuscript with boundless delight. If we were to publish your paper, it would be impossible for us to publish any work of lower standard. And as it is unthinkable that in the next thousand years we shall see its equal, we are, to our regret, compelled to return your divine composition, and to beg you a thousand times to overlook our short sight and timidity." None of the rejection letters I've received used those exact words, but I'm sure that's what they meant.

I'd love to share this little morale booster with one of you out there, particularly if you're a writer in need of encouragement. Even if you're not a writer, the book is fun. If you'd like to win a copy for yourself, leave a comment ON THIS POST to that effect, and I'll hold a drawing on February 29th.

Good luck! I simply must end with one more, from page 56 about Rudyard Kipling: "I'm sorry, Mr. Kipling, but you just don't know how to use the English language."

Quotes are from Pushcart's Complete Rotten Reviews & Rejections, edited by BillHenderson & Andre Bernard. New York: Pushcart Press, 1998.

How God is Not Like a GPS Device

2008-02-08T15:55:00.000-05:00

This time last week, my husband and I were on our way to Atlanta to visit his cousin and her family for the evening. We decided this would be an excellent time to test out the GPS device I received for Christmas. We had Adrienne's address, and I thought I knew the approximate area she lives in, but we didn't have specific directions. So off we went.

If you're familiar with Atlanta, you know there are many ways to get wherever you want to go. You can hit I-285, the "Perimeter," and go around what used to be the outer rim of the city. If you're braver, you can take I-75/I-85 right smack through downtown. These two interstate highways flow together for a few miles through the middle of town, then split again. While they're together (the Connector), they are not for the faint of heart. About six lanes wide, they're always crowded. If the cars aren't in gridlock, they zip along at somewhere between 65 and 400 miles an hour, approximately three inches from one another. And here we were, testing the GPS.

First of all, with the two of us listening to the spoken directions and me reading the directions on the little screen, I still managed to misinterpret the GPS lady's first crucial directions. (I know it's just an electronic voice, but it sounds like an irritated woman. She's probably irritated because we seldom do what she says.) For about 15 minutes, the direction at the top said "I-75 to I-285 West." I knew you could get to Adrienne's neighborhood by taking I-285 West, so that made sense, and I told Dave that's what we were doing. But at the very last second, she told us to get in the left lane and take I-75. Ha! Not only is the GPS lady irritated, she's also insane! So we just got on I-285 West.

Usually when we disobey, she gets over her snit pretty quickly and recalculates to follow our preferred route. Not this time. We followed her next directions, and by golly, she made us circle around and get back on I-75.

You'd think I would have learned after that experience. A few miles later, in the 400-mile-an-hour bumper-to-bumper traffic, we approached the split where I-75 and I-85 would go their separate ways. I was sure we needed to go to the right on I-85, but she kept telling us to keep left on I-75. We started to panic. My eyes were glued to the screen. I told Dave maybe I was wrong and didn't really know where Adrienne lives, because GPS Lady insisted we stay on I-75.

When we were literally at the split, the lady barked at us to go left on I-85! This time Dave managed to do it, but let me tell you, it was pretty exciting for a few seconds there.

All in all the GPS device is amazing. It led us right to Adrienne's door. You know by now how my mind works. When I first started playing with this device, I thought, I could make an analogy out of this. It's like God's guidance. He only shows me one turn at a time. I have to trust it's the right one and that I'll end up in the right place, because I'm not seeing a list of all the turns ahead of me. Plus, I might not always understand the route that's chosen for me. I might look back and think, hey, I could have chosen a more direct route. There's some reason for the choice that I'm not privvy to--but there is a reason.

But then my analogy started breaking down. God's guidance may seem to be late in coming--but it always comes at exactly the right time. God knows the whole story. He knows about the wild drivers and the bumper to bumper traffic. He knows how long it's going to take us to make a move, and he's going to take give us just enough time to make that move--safely.

For less heavily populated areas, though--I'm still going to love using my GPS!

My treasures are famous!

2008-02-06T21:40:00.000-05:00

I got a nice surprise today. Remember the goody box of handmade treasures I gave away back around Christmas? Today, the winner (Brandy) featured them on her blog. It was a nice little lift on a rainy, gray day. They look very cute in their new home. Check it out:

http://comfycottage.blogspot.com/2008/02/unplanned-hiatus.html

Thanks for the publicity, Brandy!

Off Track for Forty Years

2008-02-04T20:13:00.000-05:00

Say the name "Moses" and what comes to mind? Leading the children of Israel out of slavery in Egypt, through the wilderness to the Promised Land, right? But did you ever notice how much of Moses' life had passed before he even reached that part of his life's story? So was that the whole point to his life? Was he just waiting around to become the man who freed the slaves?

All this came to mind because I've started reading Exodus in my chronological Bible, which begins with the account of the Israelites falling into slavery in Egypt. That, in turn, brings us to the story of Moses.

Awhile back, I was in an online writers' group (not ACFW, the one I'm in now). When one new member introduced herself, she related a number of impressive things she accomplished early in her life. Then she said, "But I killed the Egyptian, so that got me off track for years." There was an immediate outcry from the other members. "What does that mean?" "You killed somebody!"

I had to laugh. I knew what she meant. She made a bad decision, or did something that got her off of that straight path to success. Moses did the same thing. In the opening chapters of Exodus, Moses has lived a cushy life in Pharaoh's palace, but he starts to visit his people, the Israelite slaves. He starts to identify with them. He seems to be right on track to fulfill God's plan. God is obviously about to move, in his life and theirs.

Then Moses gets into a fight with an Egyptian overseer, kills him, and has to flee into the wilderness. He remains there forty years. Talk about getting off track!

Moses was already forty when he killed the Egyptian. Add another forty to that and you come up with the ripe old age of eighty--and there he is, still in the wilderness.

Sometimes lately, I feel pretty old. I work with college students who are younger than my cat. I'm in a new online writers' group, with people half my age publishing multiple books per year while I still struggle for that first contract. It's quite reassuring to me that when Moses was eighty, he hadn't even gotten started on the most important accomplishments of his life. Once again I remind myself that God's timing is so different from mine. If he wants to use me now or thirty years from now, he'll do just that. He can give me the energy, the strength, whatever I need.

Want to bet you're going to be hearing a lot more about Moses?