Because Mari's inner dare-devil loved to dance on roofs or go dancing in the street. Mari had one of the most carefree attitudes of anyone I knew. She had no fear, or understanding, of trying something she shouldn't. When Keith was stationed at the DeKalb recruiting station, we lived in a four bedroom townhouse. At the time I had my office desk in our living room. It faced the window. One day I was sitting at it doing my business and all of a sudden I saw a foot appear on the roof from … [Read more...]
Day 57: Juggling
In life, the perfect day would be 100% smooth. If we're doing something we don't get interrupted. We blissfully move from one activity to another. The dream life. Well, that's just it. It's a dream. Whether at home or at a job, you will always inevitably be interrupted by someone or something. That's just life. Sometimes those interruptions are either wanted or good. Other times you wish you could disappear. Ultimately, we have to juggle everything we do in just the right combination so we … [Read more...]
End of month two in my year long writing journey
It’s a scary thing as a writer when you’ve written something about your writing journey, go to save it and everything you’ve written disappears. You remember bits and pieces of what you wrote but it’s nothing compared to what you had written and your heart sinks as a result. Well, the original piece I wrote for the end of March, wrapping up my second full month on my 365 day writing journey, completely disappeared when I tried to save it as a post. I very rarely write a post directly onto the … [Read more...]
Day 54: The Beginning Writer
It's interesting to think that when you are staring at a blank piece of paper, or in many cases today a blank document on the computer screen, that we are all beginning writers. As far as literally, someone who's had several books published or been writing for several years is not a beginning writer. A beginning writer is someone like me. Someone who has recently begun to write. I have no published books. I don't have several books I've written waiting to be published. I just have two books … [Read more...]
Day 9: Getting Permission
I wasn't sure what I'd write about when I first saw the topic. In the book it talked about "But from grade school to college, most students would tell him that they didn’t have permission to write about themselves; the teachers gave them the subjects to write about. Established writers would tell him they had to write what editors wanted. If this has a familiar ring to you, or if you feel you need permission to write about yourself or whatever you need to write about, I give you permission. Now … [Read more...]
A book worth mentioning
I feel blessed the I am a member of the ACFW (American Christian Fiction Writers) group. It has been through this group that I have received the obvious, lots of help improving my writing. But more than that I have start to form some of the most wonderful friendship. The road that it took me to get to this group has been an interesting one but God knew in his timing when the right time would be. On my www.kristenatunstall.com website, I have started to new weekly columns. One is where I … [Read more...]
Writing Mari’s story
Today has been an interesting day as I try to take "Her Hospital Story" and make it into a full length book. I came to a section where it kind of stumped me as to how I really should write it. I have so many things that I feel are so important to make sure they are included in this story to get it right. Probably the most important is the emotional aspect. I want the reader to be able to feel how I felt during this time. And to do this requires that I tap into those emotions from that time … [Read more...]
Hitting “The Mark”
I went and visited a website of someone I knew in our grief group back in Chicago today. The reason I visited it was because on the old blogger site I had started this one on (which is technically still up and running, don’t ask me why, it does redirect people to here however :) ) I have this woman’s website listed under Blogs of Importance. Under the listing, it shows a title of the most recent blog post. This one was labeled, “Letting go.” I thought that meant she was letting go of her … [Read more...]
You just never know…
Well, I took a pregnancy test today. Now, before you get excited, it was negative. With today technology age and the Smart Phone, there are so many kewl things you can do. Well, I have the iPhone 4. I started with the 3g. I love my phone other than the keyboard is a touch screen instead of an actually keyboard. I mess up texting more times than I can count because I can’t actually touch the screen. Back to the reason I bring up my phone. As they say, “There’s an app for that.” Yes, there … [Read more...]
Old and New
It’s interesting to me to have a child, my niece, ask me a question about a conversation she over heard me having with her mom on the phone talking about how I died the day Mariana died and a new Kristena was born. Athena asked me this morning, “Auntie Kris, last night when you were talking to my mommy you talked about an “Old Kristena” and a “New Kristena,” what was the “old Kristena” like?” I wasn’t quite sure how to answer this. How do you explain to an 8 year old what you used to be like? … [Read more...]
