One of the greatest challenges writers face is keeping our story material straight and organized. This whacked me upside the head when I started working on my latest project. The book is the fourth book in my Riverbend Saga series. Why am I writing a fourth installment you might ask. I wondered that myself. The…
Like most writers, I spend a lot of time alone applying my craft to the stories calling to me. And, like many people, I can lose myself in my aloneness. This is a good thing when I’m creating. But there are times when it’s not a good thing. I tend to be a loner, private…
God has a will, or a plan, for each of us. Psalm 1[39:16] (NLT) tells us, You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed. Each of us is on this earth for a specific reason….
Many of us have writing quotes to inspire or nag us. Or to nudge us to keep writing. A few of my favorites include: “If my family didn’t want me to write about them, they should’ve behaved better.” Anne Lamott “First, find out what your hero wants, then just follow him!” Ray Bradbury “I love…
One given in the writing world is we will get discouraged. An area where I’ve been discouraged is when a story doesn’t work. My fingers are like stones on the keyboard. What seemed like a great story idea flickers like a dying fire. The plot is what my Italian friends call a frittata. The characters…
2021. A year many of us longed for as 2020 dragged on and on and on. Now it’s here, and I suspect some of us are not all that thrilled with the way it’s started out. And it’s too late to reboot. We’re stuck with it. But that doesn’t mean we’re stuck with our lives….
As you know from previous posts, I have a heart condition. A serious one. And sometimes it’s tempting to give in to it, to pamper myself, to let it limit my experiences and my enjoyment of life. But I don’t. I want to live to the fullest, to enjoy all God has for me. I…
Over the last couple of years, I’ve been working on battling the spirit of fear in my life. Besides the physical feeling of fear, I’ve also dealt with rebuking and replacing the negative voices in my head. The ones that kept me trapped and paralyzed about changing. I had to replace unhealthy messages with the…
“You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” C. S. Lewis As Al Borland used to say on the first Tim Allen show, Home Improvement, “I don’t think so, Tim.” Usually, when Tim was about to blow something up that shouldn’t blow up. But I digress. Many times, I’ve…
I really enjoy the book of Proverbs. Those short, succinct phrases speak clearly about every area of life. As I’ve grown older, I come to value their wisdom and guidance even more. Some, I’ve found, speak clearly to writing. One in particular is Proverbs [14:23] NLT. Work brings profit, but mere talk leads to poverty!…