A Healing Journey: Understanding now...

Pss. 118: 23 “This is the LORD's doing; it is marvellous in our eyes.”

A healing journey: Understanding now…

What I didn’t know then

Ever since this healing journey began which pretty much feels like most of my life, flashbacks. Flashbacks are the instances you thought you long forgot but something triggers a memory and you wonder, where did that come from? I believe it is all part of the healing plan and releasing the old baggage to pack a new one filled with the good arsenal that remains. I’m beginning to understand now what I didn’t know then.

When I was diagnosed I kicked into research mode seeking out the causes of this disease and remedies because I knew that nothing I did in life was of the conventional method. I knew from the very beginning that the unconventional route was going to be my journey so I set out on a mission of research and understanding. The first thing I stumbled on was stress. Stress happens to be one of the main factors of many diseases we now know to inhabit our bodies. 

From the outside, you might look at people and say, ‘they don’t look like they have stress’ or you might think, ‘I don’t have any stress’. Allow me to tell you, we ALL have stress that has built up solid walls inside us that if not tackled and taken down WILL surface as an illness now or later in life. While PTSD is a well-known stress ‘disorder’, not reserved just for soldiers, people are reluctant to admit to their own stress disorder lurking like a shadowed grim reaper.

From the Science Daily link:
"Effects of stress on regulation of immune and inflammatory processes have the potential to influence depression, infectious, autoimmune, and coronary artery disease, and at least some (e.g., viral) cancers," the authors write. 

There is PROOF that stress triggers autoimmune disorders. Stress is linked to many other cardiovascular illnesses also. Just type stress and autoimmune into your ‘search’ box and see what pops up. Stress is a leading factor of death. The trick here is to not rely on drugs to assist you in healing. Drugs may be important for some things but not good as pacifiers that are only going to continue to disguise your symptoms. Later on, when you realize the drugs are not helping, you’re going to need to actually mentally DEAL with what caused the stress to begin with, one way or another.

For me, it’s in the way of flashbacks. I’ve had tons to deal with over my life but not as much as many other people, I know, but of course looking from the inside out mine is always bigger. I’m sure everyone feels that their stress is bigger than anyone else’s too. It’s like all this snow we’re getting in the beginning days of spring. Winter and Spring are having a wrestling match and since Spring moved into winter territory for years, winter now feels entitled to waltz right into spring terrain! My winter looks worse because I’m here living through it but when I look out at the world, this winter is mild compared to other states.

While healing from stress you need to look from the inside out. I thought I’ve cleaned out this closet so well that I could now head into an adventure filled path of healing. That’s funny because the more I clean out, the more secret compartments I find to dig into usually in the form of flashbacks. Just one little trigger memory exposes the hidden door. I believe this is where any prescription drugs you are taking masks the hidden compartments and you can’t find a complete healing. Doctor after doctor, therapist after therapist, there will be no healing as long as you’re on drugs; the compartments stay medicinally hidden.

I don’t have the luxury of drugs pacifying my memories and burying portions of my past. The shadow of doors are all open, it’s just a matter of seeing what is behind each one so I can face it head on, release the trauma, and edge my way to a healing spot in my journey. Recently, the further I climb down the rabbit hole the more flashbacks surface and expose an event I overlooked. Now where did that come from I think to myself, but then I know it is all part of the Master’s plan and a big player on my healing journey.

While I’m on the healing path I look out at those who are essentially stricken with the need to kill themselves on the drug route and face death. My brother, who fractured his hip over a month ago, was told he needed surgery. They’ve tried weaning him off alcohol and Oxycontin [gave him a different lethal drug], cigarettes [gave him the patch], and gave him physical therapy to try and mend the too far gone bones in his body. They told him not to walk on his one leg or it will put too much pressure on his already weakened legs. Word came through the wires that he is not listening to anything they’ve told him. How frustrating to hear. Nobody wants to listen and adhere. They all want to be part of the herd. 

I was told that chemotherapy might add a year or two to my life and the stubborn (or sound?) woman in me scoffed at their offer of drugs that would kill me quicker than any alternative route. I’m sure people laugh and shake their head at me, as they pop yet another pill. I’m sure there are people out there feeling like chemotherapy saves lives, but they’re also waiting for the bomb to drop that well, guess what, the disease is back, the pacifier failed.

As my flashbacks open further doorways in my healing, I hurt for the many who basically live with all of the doors closed and are only willing to follow the herd. I crave life and living while they feed off of neutrality. I long to stand firm and walk on my path while others take the train. I wonder if they knew now what they didn’t know then would anything change, or would they allow fear to reign?

A quote from a Dr. Coldwell:
"Needle biopsies, for example. People need to understand that a tumour is there to save your life. When your body is full with poison, toxaemic and acidosis and you are basically going to die of that poison – your body builds a bag and collects all the poison from your body into this bag, which they call a tumour. So the body did all the work. And now they come and they say "We need to do a needle biopsy." and pinch into this highly toxic tumour; which of course now explodes and pours all the poison into the body. And then they say "You have a very fast growing, very aggressive form of cancer." They GAVE it to you. They created it.

And most cancers disappear on their own anyway, because about 7-10 times, everybody has cancer in their lifetime. If you don’t become unlucky enough to fall into the hands of a medical professional and get a test done and they tell you that you have something bad going on; and the very next day, can start murdering you with chemotherapy, which is based on mustard gas. Mustard gas is forbidden after the Geneva Convention as a war chemical; they put it into your bloodstream and radiate you to death. Or cut you surgically – which always spreads the cancer." – Dr. Leonard Coldwell

"Cancer is not an illness – cancer is a symptom. These cancerous growths, the cell growths, whatever it might be, that we don’t want in our body, is a symptom; it is not the cancer. So cutting the symptom out does not resolve your problem, at all. And that's why it reappears. Or why they kill the entire body with chemotherapy for two years. Now, anything shrinks. Your organs shrink, the brain shrinks – and the tumour shrinks. Because they dehydrate the body. So now, at the same rate at your organs are shrinking, your tumour is shrinking. Now they say "It's working. The tumour is shrinking." It's [chemo] one of the biggest frauds ever." – Dr. Leonard Coldwell

Clearly - Grace Vanderwaal

You're Not Alone

Proverbs 11:2  “When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom.”

You're Not Alone

Today I am humbled. My Biblical email was once again aimed right at me. What do I gain from these emails? Insight, insight to the realization I’m not alone. 

I often think about the women who have gone before me on this journey of what I deem The Pink Parade. The journey of a patient who decided to trust in the chemo route. For years they were poked and prodded, sliced and diced, radiated and drugged, only to succumb to the battle in the end.

Then I think of the women who went the same route and survived, they are the leaders of the Pink Parade. Then there are the women who made it halfway through the chemo route and said no way, there has to be something besides the vomiting and sickness and weakness in their knees. 

In the back of my mind are the women who went full throttle into the Natural route. These women are struggling daily too but no one hears the murmurs. No one connects to the pain that they endure on a frequent basis. They’re out there alone, sometimes with no connections, friends, or family to help them along. It is to them I wish my voice to be heard. You’re not alone!

James 1:2-3 “My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience.”

After the couple of weeks I’ve had, of feeling so alone and isolated in a world overflowing with people, the Word steps right into my heart and soul in the strangest and most mystical of ways. It gives me the clarity that I am not alone and never will be as long as I hold His Word snuggled close to my heart. There is a purpose to all of this and quite ironically, it is finding joy in my suffering.

I am humbled when I think of all of the women out there struggling, fighting, winning or losing, defeating or claiming victory, they’re out there, just moving on! 

Only through my suffering can I convey a message of hope. Only through this journey of my choice can I find the patience needed to get me through just one more day of living, writing, telling my story. Some days I cry out to God and say, “Please no more. I just can’t!” He lets me know quite frankly that, “YES YOU CAN!” When He puts it like that, I tend to sit up and listen to Him. He wants me to write. He’s given me a talent and if gone unused then I have wasted my life and His time but trust me, none of us are a waste of His time. 

James 1:22 “But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.”

I’ve put a hold on scanning mounds of websites that hold information on this Natural Path I’m walking down. I found part of my struggle with this illness was due to too much information, then contradictory information that shrouded me in uncertainty. It then went on to cloud my judgment with a dose of paranoia. That had to stop. 

While I want to reach out and help all of the people I can, I need more time for healing myself right now. My research is now leading me to discover if my supplementation, my arsenal, has run its course and do I need to bring about a change in course. It’s a slow learning curve but heck, I have time to jump back in and research to save myself.

There are certain vitamins/herbs in my regimen that won’t be changed and mainly Vitamin C, D3, magnesium, selenium, quercetin, curcumin, turmeric, and of course my B12’s. I may add some vitamins A., B17, E, and K but research is still ongoing for those. I love learning but I love healing even more and with every passing day, my patience is tried and tested but I just keep moving on, day after day.

With these few passing weeks of a setback, I realized that it is not much unlike a derailed train, it takes time to get back on track, and no swift kick in the butt or change of cars is going to make it a speedy transition. Time, patience, humility, and determination will see that the train gets back on track.

While we live in a NEW generation of toxic exposure, some may feel that glyphosate, Round-up, GMO’s are not going to have an impact on their lives. My how wrong they are in that assumption. If your children or grandchildren were born in the seventies and eighties, I can guarantee 100% those toxic exposures are impacting their lives, their children’s lives, and YOUR life. We live in a generation now where we have a great percentage of our population addicted to drugs. The pharmaceutical industry has impacted your life! Drugs are toxic, plain and simple. Autism, ADHD, MS, autoimmune disorders are all at an all-time high. All of these diseases are impacts of the toxic generation.

Taken from the site Autoimmune causes: 
BOTTOM LINE:
Researchers don’t know exactly what causes autoimmune diseases. Diet, infections, and exposure to chemicals might be involved. 

Read that and listen loud and clear, the 21st century and we STILL don’t know the causes but they expect us to be led like cows to slaughter and just accept what it is, a way of life. *I* will not accept my disease as a way of life! That is what’s happened over the years, people have had their heads buried in the sand, or now their iPhones and no longer look up to see the reality of death that is consuming the world and their very own families.

I AM NOT ALONE! YOU are not alone! There are thousands of people like myself who have lifted their eyes and see the world for what it is, a toxic wasteland, just as it is in the movie Wall-E. I can’t just turn a blind eye to the brunt of the truth before me. My grandchildren, my nieces and nephews and their children are all going to be living in this wasteland and we’ve done nothing to stop the invasion of garbage except just leave everyone alone, mind your own business and just live! Accept it as 'it is what it is'.

The way I see it [life], we all got a raw deal! It’s what we do with that raw deal, like change it into a banquet of blessings for the future generations or stick your head back in the sand. Life will go on for generations to come. Some will get to see the New Earth some will be too busy trying to get their heads out of the sand. 

Isa. 66:22 “For as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, shall remain before me, saith the LORD, so shall your seed and your name remain.”

Rev. 21:1 “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.”

This mornings dawning of a new day! 

GOD BLESS ONE AND ALL!

The Ten Commandments to Kill The Toxic Invader

Ps. 9:2 "I will be glad and rejoice in thee: I will sing praise to thy name, O thou most High."

The Ten Commandments

To Kill The Toxic Invader

1) Open a vein and look inside the window to your life. Observe yourself and all of the past open wounds that have been seeping all of these years. If you feel scarred, you will feel glass separate you from your inner self, the you in your past. Look deep within your relationships, go back in time to nurture, face and heal those intimate sections of your life that might have been buried. Look at what shames you and causes you to turn your head if people were to know the truth that you’ve burdened yourself with. What guilt do you carry around with you that has kept you from healing that part of the child, the teenager, the woman? Look at the stress and all of the ugly pain associated with that part of your life. Number one will be the hardest thing you face in this healing journey. You know what they say, ‘One is the loneliest number.’ 

2) Be honest with yourself. If you’re going to stand and look in the window and see a perfect person, who knew no sin, then you are the toxic invaders next victim! Honesty is a healer. It can slowly stitch up the severed portion of your skin so it can begin scabbing over and healing completely with no scar left behind. Yes, that’s right, no scar left behind! Be honest in your healing, the non-truth will only hurt you. You’re the one that needs to heal.

3) Change… the norm! Change your fears, change your shame, change your diet, embrace a new you. There are going to be many challenges and changes in every way, shape, and form, literally. Two years from now you’ll look back at this time and wonder who you are right now. You won’t be staring in the window of a traumatized person, you will be looking into the face of a healed wounded soul. Change your way of thinking. Change your food, change your water, change everything from pots and pans to the soaps and shampoo you use. Now is the time for change…drastic change!

4) Pray and meditate! To whatever you believe in, now is the time to pray. My earnest faithful prayer is toward God in heaven. If you’ve ever read any of my blog posts, you will know, God is first and foremost in my life. Without Him, I would never attempt alternative treatment. If Jesus isn’t everything to you, then He is nothing to you. If healing is taking place in you then you know what it feels like to touch the hem of Jesus’ robe. 

Meditation also brings the healing to the surface as it slowly simmers the blood in your veins. You face what has leaked into your body to cause the cells damage head-on, you face the trauma in you with the One and only healer. I cannot attest to any healing taking place if you believe in nothing. All the diet change in the world won’t save you, it might be able to help you deal with chemo, but that is NOT an alternative route to healing this disease.

5) Just say no! We all have the power to say no, but we all know that sometimes we can be weak and never say no to anyone or anything. Take for example our food choices, we know they’re no good for us, our doctor has warned us, you’ve read about the dangers but you still reach for tempting, heart-damaging, health ravaging toxins. Say no to chemo, so no to oncologists that only believe in the almighty dollar. Believe in the power of real healing and you’ll begin to feel a real healing taking place. The only way to accomplish that is Just Say No! 

6) Research. Research your heart out. You might feel overwhelmed with information but then you’ll need to surround yourself with supportive like-minded individuals. The more research you do, the more empowered you’ll feel in your fight against naysayers who think you’re crazy. The more empowered you feel the more doorways to healing present themselves and God Himself walks beside you allowing channels to miraculously open that you thought might have been closed off to you. 
As the months' pass, you’ll feel the best you’ve ever felt. Pounds will shed like dandruff, food will have an enhanced flavor, skin and hair will take on a new luxurious look. While other cancer patients are falling ill, vomiting, sick in pain, you’ll be feeling great and wondering why more people haven’t gone this route. Fear, they fear the stigma surrounding the diagnosis, not the disease itself.

7. Supplements. Your body has announced over the bullhorn to you that you're sick, something’s not right and the noise and static have starched you into attention. Your cells are screaming out that they’re damaged and need repair. The symptoms have been clawing at you year after year, your instincts have been poking you with an icepick for you can’t remember how long, you’ve waited and waited it out and the problem never went away. Now with your immune system shot, your cells are done, they’re dying. Unless you save them! SAVE the cells you’re blessed with! Wake up and take charge, seize the very moment you’ve been given. Your doctor might want to hand you drugs and you readily take them because after all, he is a doctor. If he/she has heard of supplementation, ask if they are willing to work with herbs and vitamins BEFORE the drugs. They will, of course, say they can’t because they don’t know enough about them. It’s okay, you know why? Because you have already read through number six and are now aware of more than when you walked into the doctor's office.

If it is a matter of life and death: like you’ve had a heart attack and they need you to take medication to live, then by all means, listen to your doctor. If he tells you that you have the Big C, that leads us right to number eight.

8. Never fear! The word cancer in and of itself conjures fear. WHY, because everyone has lost someone to this disease. They’ve never heard of or known that there was another way to healing, why? Because of fear. The doctors' race in with the fear tactic even when you’re stage one, non-invasive. Did you know there are four stages? Why would a doctor tell a young mother who has found a rice size lump that she is going to die if she doesn’t get that piece of rice slaughtered out of her breast? Then they’ll radiate her to make sure they got it all and more times than not, they NEVER get it all. That’s because the tests, the digging, the radiating, the chemo all cause the C cells to spread. They don’t tell you that do they? No, they sure don’t. They tell you they got it all, send you and your drugs on their merry way and if you’ve done nothing to change your life, I can guarantee the C will resurface. But because of the research, you did in number six, you no longer live in fear!

9. Repair. Do everything and anything, legal or illegal to save your own life because rest assured there is nobody going to do it for you. Everyone is out for their own selves in this dog eat dog world, so save yourself with the love and strength of God and most importantly keep the faith in healing. Repair the inside and outside of you with all of the above tools. Fight like you’ve never been in a boxing ring but are well prepared to go a few rounds. Come out fighting and believe you're winning!

10. Rejoice! This is one you’ll want to do every day that you wake up alive and get to look in your husband or son’s eyes. Another day to be with the ones you love who are there for you in your world, making your concern their priority. You’ll want to rejoice in your healing. Praise God for the opportunities in front of you. You need to REJOICE in the midst of doubt and fear; wash off the dirty sediment that fear tries to sling at you. Rejoice in being alive. You are HEALING! Live it! BELIEVE it!!!

God Bless You!

A rock God placed in my path! 

Sometimes I Just Need A Break From...

“Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.” Joshua 1:9 (NIV)

Sometimes I just need a break from…

… the disease

Apparently, it’s the disease ravishing the nation, running rampant through the bodies of millions, dripping from the eyes of everyone who is touched by the disease. Everywhere I turn the stupid word turns up. Cancer is taking over the airwaves more than diabetes, autism, or heart disease, the word is everywhere I look and is the very reason I won’t use it.

You’ll often read from me that I have this ‘crud’, or this disease, and maybe even call it ‘the C’ but rarely do I use the word cancer. Facing this mind-numbing illness by choosing to do everything non-conventionally I can’t help but see the word but I’ll be darned if I use it all the time. I don’t want to use the word out of denial or fear, oh no, I know this illness has me in its grips and is wrestling with the very cells of my being. I don’t use the word because I won’t own this parcel that has taken over my doorstep.

Sometimes I need a break from the disease that has taken over my body and will define the rest of my life partly I need a break because I’m drained from information overload. I wake every day and thank the Lord for giving me one more day and then I begin to write. As a writer, I dig into research before I place one word on my journaling pages and that can be more overwhelming than the diagnosis itself.

It has been six months since I was diagnosed and I have been working on healing myself inside and out. I didn’t allow the oncologist to drill in me their fear tactics of an imminent death sentence because I knew what attacked too many members of my family and it wasn’t the diagnosis that killed well over ten members it was the toxic chemical treatments. 

Research, research, and more research needs to be done for this battle to be won. The crud will not be the end of my journey. I have a rewarding purpose in life and defeat is not in my vocabulary unless I use it to say I am defeating the disheveled cells wreaking havoc on my body. But sometimes I just need a break from…the disease.

I know my extremely supportive friends understand if I don’t write every single day or if I sit silently as I scan my facebook news feed, they’re pretty awesome in understanding me. They tell me often how they could never do what I’m doing, or eat the foods I’m eating or even have the discipline to sacrifice what I do on a daily basis.

When I gave my life over to the Lord at the tender age of fourteen, my life took on a new shape a new meaning and pretty simply put became all about sacrifice. I’ve sacrificed so much over my life span and to me, it is all worth the journey because while many will die a fruitless death and be put into the cold ground to shiver their bones for eternity, I am promised eternal life. That for sure is my driving force as I’ve lived half of my life already.

If we as Christians are willing to sacrifice all for God, why are there many that won’t sacrifice lusts of the world, the cravings of their stomach, the feast of their eyes, the destruction of their souls? Why do they call me extraordinary when I am only doing my duty and being a dedicated servant to the temple entrusted to me to take care of?

Through my strength, I am shining a beacon of hope to those that might not have any. I am a pillar of brazen beauty flourishing in the road of turmoil. I am overcoming obstacles that were once thought impassable. I am showering the world with my faith and everything that holds me during these troubling times. May they see in me the God that I serve, the Spirit that dwells within me. I know my spiritual family will all understand if sometimes I just need a break from… the disease.

Matt. 6:20 “But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:”

Understanding Confusion

Mark 4:13 “And he said unto them, Know ye not this parable? and how then will ye know all parables?”

Have you ever felt like a stranger in a strange land? Have you ever felt like everyone around you is speaking a different language one that you don’t quite understand? I imagine that that is what many felt like when Jesus was out there speaking in parables and they just didn’t get the message.

I understand their confusion because that’s what gets me confused when I see fifty different translations of one verse in the bible. That is why I only read the King James Version because it is the most understood version by ME. Take for example the simple verse below:

King James Bible
For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints.

New International Version
For God is not a [God] of [disorder] but of peace--as in all [the congregations] of the [Lord's people.] 

Isn’t that basically changing the words of God?

New Living Translation
For God is not a God of disorder but of peace, as in all the meetings of God's holy people.

English Standard Version
For God is not a God of confusion but of peace. As in all the churches of the saints,

Berean Study Bible
For God is not a God of disorder, but of peace. As in all the congregations of the saints,

Berean Literal Bible
For He is not the God of disorder, but of peace. As in all the churches of the saints,

New American Standard Bible 
for God is not a God of confusion but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints.


There were too many more to list but you get my meaning, right? Why all of the translations?

Here I go digging and researching. I apparently am not the only one confused by so many translations, apparently hundreds of years before me there was confusion on the rewriting of the original bible.
http://www.greatsite.com/timeline-english-bible-history/

This link led me to more digging and understanding. Not that my brain can store all of this information but on some level, I’ve had it stored already for many years, go figure. I found it interesting that the original bible contained 80 books instead of the ones we’re fed, 66. 

“Up until the 1880’s every Protestant Bible (not just Catholic Bibles) had 80 books, not 66! The inter-testamental books written hundreds of years before Christ called “The Apocrypha” were part of virtually every printing of the Tyndale-Matthews Bible, the Great Bible, the Bishops Bible, the Protestant Geneva Bible, and the King James Bible until their removal in the 1880’s”

Not everyone was happy with the inclusion of the Apocrypha. Before my internet days I had read the Apocrypha and had no idea that they were part of the original KJV of the bible. I didn’t have the enormous amount of information at my fingertips as I do today. 

I found this paragraph most interesting from greatsite. Com:

“As Christians, we must be very careful to make intelligent and informed decisions about what translations of the Bible we choose to read. On the liberal extreme, we have people who would give us heretical new translations that attempt to change God’s Word to make it politically correct. One example of this, which has made headlines recently is the Today’s New International Version (T.N.I.V.) which seeks to remove all gender-specific references in the Biblend whenever possible! Not all new translations are good… and some are very bad.”

And this:
“Let’s be ever mindful that we are not called to worship the Bible. That is called idolatry. We are called to worship the God who gave us the Bible, and who preserved it through the centuries of people who sought to destroy it.”

I think people miss this point entirely thinking that the book is to be held as a sacred piece of paper even if it was a newly printed version of all that they believe in. That made total sense to me; we are not to worship the Bible we are to worship God alone. I think that is a fact many lose sight of in their search to be Christ-like and preaching ‘the Word’.

In conclusion I’ll end with this: We must decide whom it is we worship. Do we worship words, man or God? We are allowed free will so really we can worship whom we want, do what we want and believe what we want. But remember, your soul is counting on you to do the right thing whatever that means to YOU!

Do Your Research!

Research ~ Research ~ Research

Research is what you are going to do when you stumble upon something of interest in your story. By interest I mean something disputable.

Let’s say your character is a doctor. You will need to do research in the field of medicine if you plan on using any of the terminology that doctor’s use. Maybe your character is a florist, you may want to look up the different species of flowers so you can name them in your work like a pro.

This is the basis of doing research. You’ll sound (read) educated in the field or at least your character will come off as a wonder of knowledge. If you’re a car repair person and your character is a chef, he can not test the throttle of his whipped up eggs. He is going to have to speak like a real chef so that your character comes alive to the reader.

Now research is not only used in the creation or broadening of a character, research may be used in eras. To write about the eighteenth century you will need to delve into the world of pioneers. Travel on horseback and always use the right lighting and tools for that era. Technological terms will not be found in this piece of writing.

Maybe it’s music that you need to research. If you plan on using songs from a certain period of time research the music and make sure you have the copyright laws researched before using ANY works.

I sometimes even research what styles of houses in cities and suburbs have, all the way down to names of counties that are in the area. Stephen King likes to make fictional towns around his home state of Maine. With a fictional town you get the freedom of naming streets and having anyone inhabit the land that you deem fit.

As I write this blog, I’m always seeking information to give you as I dig into this "info highway." There is an infinite amount of material to sift through here on the web. When I can’t find it here on the net, I go to the library and dig through books or micro-film.

Research can be as much work as writing itself. But rest assured it pays off in the end because your work comes off as polished and well structured. And we thought our homework days were over? Think again! If you’re a writer, your homework has only just begun.

Now keep in mind that you’re NOT writing a research paper, you are digging for authenticity. If your writing comes off as TOO MUCH research and not enough fiction, you will wind up with a piece of work that reads like a Kleenex left out in the rain. Wet, soggy, and very loosely based.

As much as I like to tell fellow writer’s to Write! Write! Write! It is just as important to

Research! Research! Research!