Justification

Ex. 23:7 Keep thee far from a false matter; and the innocent and righteous slay thou not: for I will not justify the wicked.

After reading yesterdays post, this one is going to be about justifying my actions. Just like when I drank and thought, ‘It’s okay, I don’t have a problem.’ I DID have a problem, one that needed nipping-in-the-bud. (pun intended here) After all, it made Bud wiser?

Well it made me wise enough to know that alcohol is poison that enters your system and your body fights to restore the normal flow, a defense mechanism, if you will, yes after one sip. No different than a bee sting, a mosquito bite, or snake bite. Your body goes right into fighting to get the poison out of your system. That is why after too many drinks, you throw up, your body knows poison when it enters its system.

Being of sober mind not only means, no alcohol; nowhere does it say, ‘one drink and you’re okay’, in my warped mind. Keep in mind, as a RECOVERED alcoholic, one drink is a fall, a fall I’m not willing to take because we live in a society where everything goes! Everything is justifiable!

I’ve come across a blog that shares what a sober mind is and it’s worth a read. Not about alcohol at all!

Home Living

This post isn’t about alcohol and its poison, it’s about justifying your actions. Yesterdays post about web addiction, and admitting it, was my first step of releasing the poison the web dishes out, and nipping the problem before it gets out of hand.

I DO mostly use the internet for writing and research but too often I find myself straying into social scenes like facebook, and giving too much playtime to my web interactions! Maybe you all are content with that, but I’m not. As I search within myself for a better day-to-day living, something needs to be trimmed so that I realize my full writing potential! I’m not bored with life; I’m in awe of it and think it needs some TLC! I don’t think I have enough friends to even care if I’m away awhile. So no, they WON’T miss me… Maybe two or three, but they’ll have others to cling to and stalk. I’m a mere afterthought; I guess that’s better than no thought at all right?

Social playtime has to be trimmed to posting my blog post, maybe a spirit-filled post, here and there, but just not a continuous flow of posts throughout the day. I think the twitterfeed is set, so that’s a good thing when posting my blog. The only tabs open will be my dictionary/thesaurus, RhymeZone, and MS Word, where I write!

I always seem to get in a reflective mode as the season changes. It’s like Fall is a call to put old baggage to rest; to prioritize; to let the leaves fall where they may, and pile them in a slush pile so winter can do the cleaning of my soul that is necessary.

We can all justify our actions as a means to feeling good about ourselves, but justification is just a warm blanket we carry around like Linus, it’s our safety net. We hide under the blanket masking our true identities. Something gets lost along the way, your vibrant soul! God is my only safety net and justifying my actions is in a sense a betrayal to His plan for my life.

In a world where tuning into the net is full of the news of the day; killing, fires, floods, tsunami’s, hurricanes, and then there’s the lovely political hate filled posts, it’s enough to make you shudder and want to retreat back to bed, there certainly is another way of facing the world’s tragedies and faults, and that is certainly not by justifying the pebbles you ripple across the lake. Those ripples affect EVERYTHING, so choose wisely.

I just want to write!

Too Much Knowledge?

Psalm 45: 1 My heart is inditing a good matter: I speak of the things which I have made touching the king: my tongue is the pen of a ready writer.
***

Can one ever read too much?

Boy I really had my mind going last night. I wanted to know if one can ever read too much and I didn’t get surprising answers.

I expected to hear, “One can never read too much.” Just so you know, I wasn’t referring to fiction, writer’s. I was referring to the books on the craft of writing. I personally don’t think you can ever read too much, in the way of fiction but really, you can over educate yourself to the point of blank pages that are in front of you waiting to be written on.

What does one Writing book have that is different than the other 500 hundred that are out there? If you have your hands on one, and it clicks in your brain. You move onto writing and utilizing what you’ve learned.

You read ten, fifteen books on the craft and your mind begins jumbling all the knowledge like a juggler in the circus. All the ideas are up in the air, one lands solidly in your hand, then *whoof* it goes back up in the air and you wind up never really grasping the idea you began with.

Maybe some people like to read and read and finally write, but then it doesn’t come out so well and they wonder what all that reading was for if they’re not gaining any insight to the craft and artistry of writing.

I think I’ve said this before, writing is not a learned craft. You can not educate yourself to the point that you become a wonderful writer. Writers are born with the intuitive craft inside them. They learn grammar in school, learn all the prepositions and adverbs, then they write little ditties for the school assignment. It is at this point you will either feel something naturally, or you won’t.

You’ll continue to try and please the teacher with words and with every, “Great job,” you’ll believe your the master writer God had intended you to be. But now keep in mind, it is your teachers job to tell you that you did great work, it is your parents heartfelt duty to resound the trumpet and pump you up in esteem. It isn’t the writers job to tell you that, “You’re an awesome writer!” It is, hopefully, their job to help you along in your writing and when they see something not quite right, they gently point it out to you. By all means, when they see something right, they point out that too because it worked for them.

A keen eye keeps the writer writing and growing. An overly educated writer keeps his/her head in the books and never really writes. A writer knows the balance. In life and in writing, we need to know the balance between reading, writing, learning and educating. Don’t over do it or you’ll lose sight of who you are, and that is, a WRITER!

Writing from the Spirit

Genesis 37: 24 And they took him, and cast him into a pit: and the pit was empty, there was no water in it.
***

Truth in poetic form or any form is the only way to write. When I write poetry I feel as if a small surge of energy flows through my veins. I can sense it moving until it reaches my fingertips and urges me to write.

This is what writing should feel like to you. When you sit down to write, if you’re not feeling the surge of the spirit, you will not only write gibberish, you’ll put up a brick wall and you won’t be able to write anything.

When sitting down to write, clear your mind of all of the outside distractions. This is probably the hardest part in writing and that is finding the quiet space and time to get things down on paper. Having access to a computer helps but remember the pen and paper was around before the keyboard.

If you’re drawing a blank on your story, maybe try working on the character you have in mind. Flesh him/her out and fill in the blanks of who they are and what your plans are for them.

Maybe write a synopsis of what your story is about. Just a short general idea of what you plan on accomplishing with your story and characters. Note who the antagonist and protagonist are and flesh them out a bit.

Right now I’ve got too much on my mind to even think of writing anything of useful content. So I’ll allow you to peruse what I’ve already written in two years. Happy New Year...may you get some writing done! And whatever you do, Write Right!

Just Words?

WORDS

Words are what make a sentence. They are what we use in the human language to convey what we want, what we think and by everything we do, we use words.

Now words placed together like a string of pearls, become just that, a gem. Place them in the wrong order and they become unintelligible thoughts. But as we make a necklace out of our words, they become a writer’s dream. A fluid and well defined thought.

I know a few folks who say, “Hey this writing thing is for me. How do I do it?” Well let me tell you, you can’t just sit down and write and think it is publishable for one. You need to study the craft for quite awhile before you become familiar with what is right, what is acceptable, and what publisher’s will actually publish.

You’re not looking to be published? Well then write away. I think journaling is your thing.
What was that? You WANT to be published? Well then you better get off your tush and start learning the art form that takes place in writing.

No one likes learning and diving into knowledge. (Well most people anyway) Most people like to take the easy way to getting things done. I’m not one of those people. I like to learn and drink in knowledge like a good cup of coffee. On our journey to learning the craft of writing we get sidetracked. Someone said that they start to write and then forget what the point was that they were trying to make.

You’re trying to make words into sentences that make sense, that’s what you’re trying to do. Let’s say you have an idea for a story. Be it a novel, a memoir, or a short story. It is advisable to write an outline of your ideas FIRST so you don’t get sidetracked. Just a simple outline of points you want to touch on, or a character outline so you know the character before you write one word.

Words! They’re not just letters put together you know. The letters form words and it’s up to you to make sense of what you form. We’re not abstract artists here. I like to think of writer’s as the Thomas Kinkade’s of a story. We create beautiful works of art out of simple words. We’re writer’s!

Now lets get those words in order! Learn what to do with them once you have them put together! Workshop with other writer’s! Get busy!

Lesson: She asked if it was going to work.
Look at that sentence. Does it make sense? NO! Who is ‘she’? And what is ‘it’?

Donna asked if the car was going to start.
Now we know who and what.

Asking the who’s and what’s (or why, when and where) of each sentence will tighten up your work.
Can you see? Now act on the structure of writing and get to work!

Writer's Block

The wall that we hit as writer's is called Writer’s Block ~Repeat after me...I will not write, I will not write. Your mantra for when you suffer from WB.

We’ve talked about inspiration, motivation and all of the good stuff that makes your writing flow, but we haven’t touched the brick wall that writer’s hit in their writing routine.
Writer’s block isn’t just merely a hindrance in your writing it is a sudden blankness that covers you like a wet blanket adhering to your skin. You try to shake it off but it clings not wanting to give you any mobility

The old Block comes when you least expect it. You’ll be on a roll writing your heart out and one day you sit down and the vacant page stands up shouting out to you like a humongous abysmal billboard. It screams for something to be on it, yet you drive by glancing at it with your head out the window like a lost puppy with his ears flapping in the wind.

You begin daydreaming of what you should be doing (and that’s writing) but nothing comes, so you sit and stare hoping for some inspiration. Writer’s block can last a day, a week or sometimes a month! (YIKES) As you can see I’ve had it once or twice myself. I’ve never had it as bad as Mr. Henry Roth, author of Call it Sleep, whose block lasted for sixty years!

The day begins in anxiety and ends in frustration. I have a little trick I’ve tried and told a friend about who tried it and it worked for BOTH of us in overcoming the block!

First I relaxed my mind, I started the day by cleaning the house and not thinking of writing at all. I told myself the little mantra, "I will not write, I will not write." As I was cleaning, I had to dust the desk and keyboard. I gazed at it like a one-eyed cyclops, "Nope, I’m not writing!"
I continued trudging along with my day like not writing was nothing new, ignoring all the pings and pangs of anxiety, I just released all the tension through scrubbing and vacuuming. Boy did my place shine that day!

The next day I had nothing to clean, so I sat at my keyboard and blank screen. Did I write? You betcha! I couldn’t STOP writing! I went on and on about how my house cleaning went. Then I wrote about my elderly neighbor who was walking her dog again, and I wondered what her lonely life must be like being a widow, living alone in a big old house, how she must feel facing everyday without Henry, her husband.

Before I knew it I had a short story of almost 3,000 words or more!

Mind over matter can be a strange thing. You can trick your mind into believing something so absurd as, "I will not write." And before you know it, your talent licks you in the face, yup like a puppy again, and you’ve freed yourself from the imprisonment of The Block, Writer’s Block, (not the cell block.)