My writings & reflections
Overcast morning:
Sun, like fire, peeking through
the clouds to bless me.
What a beautiful sight on my morning commute! We have a pretty good chance of rain today, and a heavy layer of low-lying clouds hangs in the sky. As I came around the curve of an overpass, I noticed a brilliant break in the clouds. It looked like a fireplace tucked into the troposphere. It felt like God was telling me Good Morning after my few days of foggy feelings, and it was so lovely, I had to write about it.
I didn’t want an iPad until I saw the commercial where it turns into a star finder! So totally awesome – just hold it up to the sky?! I’ve seen some amazing things in life, and I’m constantly humbled and awed by technology, but I was slack-jawed stunned when I saw that commercial. They just held the iPad up to the sky, and it showed them what constellation(s) and other heavenly bodies they were viewing. There’s one app called GoSkyWatch Planetarium and another one called Star Walk, and if I had five hundred bucks to blow, then an iPad would be a freakingly cool toy.
Alas, do you know what I wanted to do as soon as I picked my jaw up from the floor? Call my uber-geek brother. Then it hit me all over again: his memory will always be 30, and time will never go beyond 2009. I’m sure heaven has way cooler stuff than iPads (not that you’d need one, seeing as GOD is there to occupy your rapt attention), but still – it’s something he would be completely stoked about, no doubt.
I think about the woman I was at 30 and the changes that have molded my life since then. To some degree, my tastes have altered: music, food, fashion. My family looked a whole lot different: I had a son in kindergarten, one in Pre-K and an infant. We had recently relocated to Central Texas. I had a different job, different house, different car. I had not started graduate school and certainly hadn’t considered getting a doctorate!
In my mind, Nathan will always be a computer guru who loves hard rock, working out and making fun of politicians. I wonder, if at 35 … 40 … 55 … whether he would still have the same preferences. (I reckon 90s metal would be “oldies” by then!) Maybe he would; maybe he wouldn’t. It’s just something I ponder.
A clever and thought-provoking professor I know hosts a haiku theme on his blog every Friday. Last week, the topic was Dreams. I’ve only had one dream where I can remember talking with Nathan directly, but I wrote my haiku about him, because hearing his voice again would be a dream come true:
No, wait – please don’t go!
There’s so much I want to say;
I miss you, Brother.
The memories may not go beyond 30 years, but there are still 30 years’ worth of memories!
I read a terrific post today in Scott William Carter’s blog series called Games Writers Play. His suggestion challenged me, and I think it is a big reason why I haven’t written very much more on my novel, play, short stories … (can you tell I like to start writing projects but have a hard time finishing them??).
In a nutshell, Carter recommended putting down your pen – or closing the laptop, as the case may be – when you are really on a roll and the words come easy. Instead of waiting for a stopping point or finishing a chapter or scene, stop while you still have ideas anxiously floating around in your mind!
That is my problem, in a lot of cases. I write and write until I get to the end of my thought, and then I stop until a new idea pops into my head. Unfortunately, that usually means strumming my fingers aimlessly on the keyboard and going cross-eyed looking at the blinking cursor or not even trying to write at all for days or weeks. I’m going to take Carter’s suggestion and stop writing while I’m in mid-thought; that way, when I come back to the manuscript, I’ll be eager to pick up where I left off and be much more productive with my writing time.
If you don’t come from a military family, you may wonder about the banners that you sometimes see displayed in home windows. (A picture of ours follows.) In honor of Memorial Day, I wrote a couple of haikus to explain the difference between the blue star (like ours) and the one no one ever wants to have: the gold star.
Red frame, one blue star:
A banner for loved ones far,
Far away … deployed
Red frame, one gold star:
A banner for loved ones lost –
Memorial Day
I know the cliché is diet & exercise, but we have to start somewhere, don’t we? Effective today (no foolin’), I am starting a medically supervised weightloss program. This isn’t something I would normally broadcast, but I figured the four or five of you reading this could help to hold me accountable … and celebrate successes with me! 🙂
Also beginning today, I’m participating in Script Frenzy, which is a one-month screenplay/stage play writing contest. I’ve never written a play before, so it will be a fun challenge.
I was thinking last night about how to plan ahead so that I might be successful in both of these endeavors, then it dawned on me. One of my biggest obstacles with dieting is the lunch hour. It’s sooooo easy to just go out for lunch instead of bringing my lunch, especially when friends from work want to go.
So, for the month of April, I’m going to make a concerted effort to bring my lunch and write my play during the break. It sounds like a win-win solution to me! Aaannnnnd … ACTION!
It’s the middle of the spring semester and the end of a month. Faculty members are anxiously trying to fund summer salaries, graduate stipends and research projects. If only they didn’t wait till the eleventh hour!
Deadlines are looming
Monday, welcome to my world:
Month-end grant requests
I have received some feedback on my post from a few days ago about writing a romance novel. A literary agent who I follow on Twitter and the blogosphere offered some keen insight on her blog concerning what it means to have a Christian worldview as an author.
To me, the point is not that everything in the book must be on the up and up. Quite the contrary, literary characters – like the rest of us – are sinful human beings. I believe that there can be inner turmoil, conflict, bad decisions and even immoral behavior in a novel and yet, when the final page is turned, the book can have redeeming value in the midst of it all.
That said, I don’t believe that a novel necessarily needs gratuitous violence and raunchy sex to appeal to its readers, either. What I’m getting at is that even if a lead character makes less-than-admirable choices in the novel, can’t there be moral value to the tale?
Consider “classic” works of literature like The Scarlet Letter, The Picture of Dorian Gray and countless others. Deception, adultery and murder are important plot points in many great works of literature. Even the Bible is replete with tales of moral misdeeds and sexual misconduct, but the underlying theme is redemption. The reader can learn from others’ mistakes.
Since elementary school, I have wanted to be a published author. I still have my earliest “published” books that we made with construction paper and yarn. The “About the Author” page on one of the ones from fifth grade mentioned that I had been an author for two years.
I do have several magazines and newspapers with my byline, but my dream is to write a book. I have written some stories here and there for children, and I would love to get those published, but part of my problem is that I haven’t found a niche with my writing.
Just because I’ve written children’s stories, does that mean I can’t write nonfiction? I’m a technical writer by day, but does that mean I can’t write a romance novel? I worked as a beat reporter covering agriculture, police and city hall, but does that mean I can’t write a crime thriller?
Do you have to pigeon-hole yourself into one genre as a writer in order to be successful?
The vast majority of authors also have day jobs. Very few write as their sole means of income. That said, here is the crux of my concern: If I write a romance novel (which happens to be the story I’m working on, at present — I’m at a little over 11,500 words … not quite 25% finished), would it be advisable to use a pseudonym? Would it pose a threat to me, professionally, to be a romance author also? What would my colleagues think? What would my boss think?
The bigger question is: Why do I care what anyone thinks? Is writing a book with a *gasp* sex scene or two any worse than writing a book about crime with blood & gore? I’ve always been told that I care too much what other people think of me, but it would be a shame if achieving the one thing I’ve wanted since grade school actually damaged my career because I wrote about something sassy.
Not to mention, if I ever do get published, I want to participate in book signings and all the fun publicity that goes along with being an author. If I write under a pseudonym, I don’t think they’d let me into Barnes & Noble with a mask to disguise my identity.
So, perhaps I should just crawl out from under my rock and own up to the fact that yes, I’m writing a romance novel. And when I’m finished, I may start on the crime thriller that has been tapping at the back of my mind for several years. And sometime between now and then, I think I will resubmit my children’s story. And on Monday, I’ll go back to work and hone my technical writing with some new grant proposals. So there.
I follow a few publishers & literary agents on Twitter, and I love reading their comments. They often write snarky quips about what not to do. Some of the warnings are so blatantly ridiculous, it gives me hope that maybe my pipedream isn’t so far-fetched, after all. I should build up my courage to submit another query.
Rejection sucks, but if I don’t submit, I’ll never get published!
I have this urge to stay up till midnight and defiantly greet Jan. 23 with a sneer, but my body is telling me that I must go to bed forthwith. My sleep schedule is messed up from having been home sick for a couple of days.
Since it would take more than an act of Congress to blot out Jan. 23 from the calendar entirely, I wrote a couple of haikus to mark the day:
The breath within me
Punched out and smothered by grief –
Joy comes with the dawn
—
Mourning this black day
One year, one day at a time
Closer to glory
My sister-in-love reminded me today of one of my favorite verses, Revelation 21:4. It is promises like this that I cling to on dark days. When I have days that I don’t feel like praising God at all and just want to have a pity party, I remember Job and imagine that Satan is taunting God to see how much he can throw at me, and it strengthens me to want to retaliate against the enemy by willfully praising God in the midst of my troubles. God is who he is, regardless of how I am feeling at the moment; therefore, he is always worthy of my praise.
faith, sweat & tears 