My grandpa passed away exactly one year and one month to the day after my daughter passed away on August 16, 2009. Since I can remember, Grandpa told me stories about his time in the Navy in World War II. When he went to basic and his job school (which is the equivalent of AIT in the Army), everyone put down their preference of where they wanted to be stationed. They could either choose the East Coast or The Pacific in Hawaii. Since he was from the west coast he choose The Pacific and since … [Read more...]
Day 107: A Love Story #acfw
Great loves of our life. Depending on the person, there can be many great loves or only a few to maybe only having just one. For me, my first great love is for my Heavenly Father in heaven. It is through Him all things are possible. My next great love is for my husband, Keith. In my childhood there were many kinds of abuse that happened to me and as a result this shaped who I am today, or at least partly shaped. I don't have the greatest self-esteem. I have issues with letting go of … [Read more...]
Day 106: Odd Notes #acfw
In life we all have our times where we will either jot down a quick note or store something away in the corners of our minds for later use. As writers I think it's even more important to write down those sudden thoughts that come to us. It's in those thoughts that the true magic of our writing comes out. Our hidden story ideas that get written on the page. I still remember the day about three months after Mari died where I had all these thoughts floating around in my head needing to be … [Read more...]
Day 105: PERFECTION! #acfw
I don't think there's a single person out there who wouldn't want to do something and know they did it perfectly. The thing is we are human and we will never be perfect. As parents we try our very best to be the best parent we can. We want to raise our kids to one day be adults and be as successful as they can be. But no matter how hard we try we will never be perfect at it. We will make mistakes along the way. We will doubt ourselves. We have to learn from both our own mistakes and also from … [Read more...]
Day 104: Writing Your Own Front Yard #acfw
Think about this for a moment. When we write or talk about things do we use our past experiences during those times or do we just guess and hope what we say makes sense to others. Personally, I think our best writing comes from the things we have personally experienced. I'm not saying that those who haven't experience something they've written about is good. What I do mean is when we write from things that have happened in our past, we're able to put part of ourselves into what we write. There … [Read more...]
The Journey with Natalie Monk #acfw
Please welcome this weeks guest Natalie Monk for The Journey. She answers the question: How have you seen God work in your writing journey? “He hath made every thing beautiful in His time...” Ecclesiastes 3:11 Sometimes the writing journey is wonderful. Other times we writers shove our foot onto the brake pedal and ask ourselves if the endless hours we spend drafting, rewriting, editing, marketing and networking are really accomplishing anything. This is especially true for those of us … [Read more...]
Reflecting back over the A to Z Challenge #AtoZchallenge #acfw
This year is the first time I did the A to Z Challenge on this site. However, I did do it last year on my daughter's dedication site (mommysangelinheaven.com) and fell in love with doing it. So this year I decided to really up the ante, so to speak, and do the challenge on both this site as well as my daughter's site. It wasn't easy and I even was late a couple of times with posting, but I was able to write on every letter and get them posted on both sites. Yea!!!! The topic I chose to write … [Read more...]
Z is for ZZZs #AtoZchallenge #acfw
The dreaded ZZZs. It's exactly what we don't want to do to our readers. That is make them fall asleep as they are read our books. We want our novels to be so engaging that they have a hard time putting it down so much so they don't want to go to sleep. This has happened to me so many times where I'm so into the book that it's hard to put it down. I still remember waking up not to long ago and my Kindle was on my bed beside me. I was so close to the end of a book the night before that I wanted … [Read more...]
Y is for Year Journey #AtoZchallenge
For those of you who've been following my site for a while know I've been doing a year-long writing journey. What I've been doing is going through a book with 365 different entries, reading through what the author has put, then I write out my own take on the prompt she had for that day. I temporarily put doing this on hold while doing the A to Z Challenge. However, on May 1 I plan to pick right back up where I left off on day 104. I think by doing this those who read the posts get to know me … [Read more...]
X is for eXpectation #AtoZchallenge
In life we have so many expectations that we'd like to see happen. From watching our children grow and hoping they become successful adults in whatever we do. To being successful in whatever job we do. To so many things in life. As a writer I have several expectations I want to do or have happen for myself. Like, continually being ready to learn how to improve my craft of writing. The more I focus on this the better my writing has become over time. I know I still have more to grow, but the … [Read more...]
