Tag: blog

The Writing Life

Getting Back to It

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I’ve been out of the loop of writing this blog. I don’t actually have any particular excuse for stopping. It’s sort of like exercising. One day of not working out becomes two days and the next thing you know you haven’t been to the gym in four months. And though I didn’t gain any weight, my writing became slightly sluggish. So I avoided blogging.

But there was this constant buzzing in my head asking me when I planned to get back to the blog. It’s the same annoying voice that bugs me about cleaning out my closet and organizing my cabinets. Try as I might to ignore her, she is persistent.

Then God stepped in and administered the divine two by four to get my attention.

The owner of a local antique shop asked me to teach a blogging class at her store.

I panicked. How could I teach a blogging class when I no longer blogged?

“Wait,” I thought, “I blog once a month on the Minerva Rising Blog.”

Of course, God doesn’t work that way. When He wants you to do something, He means for you to listen.

I get to the class and my only student is the friend who got me to start blogging in the first place. It seemed odd that she would be taking a class on blogging since she had a wonderful blog. Well, it turns out she hadn’t blogged in several months and was looking for guidance on how to get back on track with her blog.

Funny, huh?

So there I was face to face with my own predicament. Suddenly, I was forced to figure out how to get back on track myself.

None of this was by chance. God has really been dealing with me lately about finishing what I start and the blog is only the tip of the iceberg. He has also been nudging me about the novel that’s shoved in a box in the corner of my office. He’s been saying it’s time to revise it and get it out into the world.

To be frank, I’m scared. What if I don’t have what it takes to revise it yet another time? What if it isn’t any good? But I’m reminded of what the senior pastor of Community Christian Church in Naperville, Dave Ferguson, once said: “Work like it depends on you, but pray like it depends on God.”

So, I’m diving back into blogging as the Confident Writer with a new twist. I will now be blogging about the process of revising a novel. My weekly post will be about my individual progress on the novel as well as the process of revision. Occasionally, I might throw in a post on what I’m reading or what motivates me.

I hope you will come along for the ride as I get back to living the writing life.

 

 

 

 

 

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The Power of Sharing

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Finding the right balance between humor and appropriateness is a challenge in morning radio, especially when driving my fifteen-year-old daughter to school. I really enjoy listening to Elvis Duran and the Morning Show, but sometimes their conversation gets too graphic. So the other day I quickly changed it to my other regular morning show, Tom Joyner Morning Show and happened on a conversation about African-American programming in television. The commentator suggested African-Americans support the shows that are out rather than complaining about Hollywood’s limited representation of minorities. He used Alicia Keys’s directorial debut in the Lifetime movie Five as an example. The movie is an anthology of five short films directed by five different women: Demi Moore, Jennifer Aniston, Alicia Keys, Penelope Spheeris, Patty Jenkins, and Jeanne Tripplehorn. Each film chronicles the impact of breast cancer.

I don’t watch a lot of television, so I hadn’t heard about the movie prior to the spot on the radio. Nothing against Lifetime (well maybe a little), but I stopped watching their movies a long time ago. I found them too melodramatic. But I wanted to see Alicia Keys as well as Demi Moore and Jennifer Aniston in the role of director, so I watched it. I was also intrigued by the idea of an anthology of five short films. Well, let me tell you. The movie was amazing. I came away from it resolved to do two things: schedule a mammogram (I haven’t had one in two years) and get more active in the cause. If you haven’t seen it, you can watch Five online. I highly recommend it!!!

What I find most interesting about this experience is that if the commentator hadn’t shared his thoughts, I would have missed the movie. He promoted the film as a way to support Alicia Keys and her work. As writers, we have to promote other writers by sharing their work in our area of influence. Generally speaking, people are more willing to try something when someone they trust recommends it.

Though it may sound self-serving, I think this is particularly true in the blogging world. There is so many out there that it’s hard to sift through them all. I find myself much more likely to read a blog if a friend or a blogger I like recommends it. This has long been true with books. There are several things I would have never picked up if they hadn’t been recommended to me.  So in the spirit of promoting fellow writers here are a few things that I recommend you check out:

Witty Word is a blog written by Christi McGuire. I happened on it one day when I was looking for examples of writing blogs. She writes about her faith by sharing tidbits from her everyday life. I enjoy her passion for grammar (She’s an editor). And I’m particularly fond of her Wordless Weekend. Those pictures are sometimes just the break I need on a busy Saturday.

Helensadornmentblog is a blog written by a friend of mine, Helen Kemp. Helen is an artist who works with fused glass and lampwork glass. Her blog has beautiful pictures of her work as well as a description of her technique. Helen also writes post where she breaks down craft projects and scores them from 1 (you need Martha Stewart and her staff) to 5 (great fun). If I were more crafty, I would have tried a few of them myself.

I also want to recommend Home For Christmas written by my friend Deborah Grace Staley. Debbie writes the Angel Ridge Southern romance series, set in a small town in Tennessee. She won the Holt Medallion for Excellence in Mainstream Romance. It is currently available on Kindle as a free download.

These are just a few of the writers that I respect and admire. I will be sharing others. Leave a comment promoting writers, artist and films you admire so that I can add to my list.

Until next time.

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Reconsider and Alter in Light of Further Evidence

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Saturday afternoon I received a text message from a friend who wanted to know how to subscribe to my blog. I had a few subscribers so it never occurred to me there was a problem. I pulled up the blog in order to give her instructions, but I couldn’t figure how to do it. I discovered the theme I selected wasn’t enabled for side widgets. I saw the warning when I first set up the blog, but I didn’t know what a widget was or that it had any relevance to my particular blog.

I figured one of the two engineers I live with would be able to fix it. My son, a junior at Michigan State in electrical engineering, took a quick look, concluded it was easy fix if I knew how to write code (which I don’t), and then went off to lunch with his brother. My husband, a civil engineer, proceeded to search for another way to solve the problem. (He doesn’t know how to write code either.) As I watched him try various settings, it occurred to me that if I was willing to revise the whole blog, I could alleviate the problem. Simple enough, right? No, not really.

I face revision with a sense of dread. I don’t like pulling things apart and venturing into the unknown. I don’t want to give up control. It reminds me too much of life. Just when you think you’ve got it all together, something happens that forces you to examine your life and make changes.

Last year’s move from Chicago to Atlanta was a big revision for me. I thought I knew where my life was headed. I had returned to graduate school to pursue a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. My reasoning for the degree was to be able to teach Creative Writing instead of Composition. Though in my heart, I really wanted my writing to move from avocation to a vocation. I thought I was on the right track.

The move threw me into unknown territory. I had to change the way I lived my life. I didn’t have a community of friends to depend on or a job to fill my time. And let me tell you, I had some really difficult moments. I cried daily. But in the midst of it all I also wrote. And more importantly I learned to depend more heavily on the Lord.

. . .refine them as one refines silver, and test them as gold is tested. They will call upon my name, and I will answer them. (Zechariah 13:9 ESV)

It was only through the revision of my life that I was able to become what I truly wanted to be — a writer. Revision is a reality of life. We don’t revise because we got something wrong. We revise because we have new information that requires us to make alterations. Revision expands our thinking and broadens our possibilities. In short, not only does it makes us better writers, it makes us better people.
So how do we get through revision as a confident writer? First, we honesty evaluate our writing. Is there a clear vision for the work? If not, then we have to spend some time clarifying our thoughts. I do this by free-writing in my journal. Essentially I write about the writing. What is the piece trying to say? Do the ideas work together? Does it communicate the intended message?

Another important step in the revision process is openness to the opinions of others. If my friend hadn’t questioned my blog, I wouldn’t have known there was a problem. I can’t help but wonder how many other people tried to subscribe and gave up. We have to give the reader enough information. You can’t expect them to spend time or patience trying to figure things out. This is true whether you are writing a business proposal or novel.

It helps to have another set of eyes read your work. I highly recommend joining a writer’s group. The process of reading and discussing one another’s work will make you a better writer. You develop an eye for what works and what doesn’t work. There is one caveat, though. You have to be the master of your own work. Don’t take the suggestions of others as law. Use it as a sounding board to test your own thoughts.

We can’t avoid revision in writing anymore than we can in life. Things change and we have to change with them. I hope the revisions I made to my blog makes it easier to subscribe and comment. If not, let me know. I’ll make another revision.

Until next time,

The Confident Writer.

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Write with Confidence

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Write with Confidence

I’m a procrastinator at heart. I put things off even when it would be much easier to just do it. Nowhere is this more evident than in my writing life. When it’s time to sit at my desk and write, I check my e-mail, peruse Facebook, or suddenly feel the urge to wash dishes.

Proverbs 14:23 says, “ Work brings profit, but mere talk leads to poverty.” Procrastinating is a form of mere talk. We tell ourselves we will do it later. And at the time it feels like an easy out. However, as time passes our mere talk leads to a feeling of inadequacy. This can be especially dangerous to writers. The more we put off writing the less qualified we feel. There are many people who have a great idea for a book, but never write down one word. There are others who start a story, but don’t ever finish it. Then there are those of us (myself included) who have completed pieces, but don’t take the next step. We put it off because it’s not quite right or we fear rejection (my personal favorite).

It’s all a form of procrastination and it leads to a poverty of spirit. We lose the power we need to achieve our goals. To move beyond this we have to step outside of our comfort zone. Action brings value to our lives and confidence in our abilities. It creates a sense of satisfaction, especially when we accomplish the work God has set before us. But often doing that work means we have to take a leap of faith, trusting God rather than relying on our own understanding.

Writing this blog is a leap of faith for me. I have attempted to start a blog two times before. I signed up with blog spot. I agonized about which theme to use. I even wrote a first blog for each. But in both instances I put off unveiling the blog to the public. I told myself it wasn’t ready yet. And while that may have been true, the real problem was fear. I was afraid of rejections. What would people think? What if it isn’t good enough? What if no one read it? But none of that matters because I know this is something that I am supposed to do. The longer I put it off the more I doubt myself.

We face certainty anytime we step out of our comfort zone, but we can’t allow fear to control us. We have to feel the fear and do it anyway, knowing that we are not alone. When we put our trust in the Lord, we can write with confidence.