When I was a young girl, I loved to accumulate new spiral bound notebooks. They were clean, unmarked, fresh and empty, full of waiting and expectation. I would begin to fill them, stringing words and sentences to together to form... what I now read as pathetically hilarious regurgiations of Little House on the Prairie or Janette Oke (remember her?) style literature: full of flowing dresses, prairies, hauling buckets, and braids wrapped in pretty blue ribbons blowing in the wind.
I have always loved to write, and to read. I have come to appreciate the way this blog has created a place that allows me to discipline myself to write, to express creativity with pictures or words, or the flushing out of a life.
Speaking of life, mine has taken paths I never dreamed it would, or that I always hoped to take, or that I wish in some ways it would not have. Sometimes I still wonder why I didn't follow those early inklings of journalistic tendencies, or love for graphic design. But here I am, with a bachelor of science in theology, a brood of growing children, living in a foreign land with a man who loves me undeservedly, trusting and hoping in the God who sustains us in spite of and through it all. And though I am not holed up in some ideal cabin in northern Maine, writing my heart out, or traveling the world writing novels about who knows what, I am here, with the life I have been given, and it is enough.
-The Writing Life by Annie Dillard
-Soul Tells a Story: Engaging Spirituality with Creativity in the Writing Life by Vinita Hampton Wright
-Writing Fiction for Dummies It's strange that I found this helpful... generally I look down my nose at these books, but I was humbly surprised to find it was helpful to me, a dummy, and particularly it helped me to see the stages of a writer... and the need to not only have an ounce of natural talent, but a willingness to learn the craft.
-Anything that tells you to write, write, write, and keep writing.
-Writing clubs; a place to be inspired or humbled, to be safe and encouraged, to be motivated and sometimes with fear and trepidation...critiqued.
A few other writing places:
catapult magazine article "Home is {not always} Where the Heart Is
A Short Story {The Eighth Year}
Writing Senses: Colors
{book}worm wednesday
If you like to write, you probably like to read. Once in awhile I do a post called {book}worm wednesday, where I list books our family is currently reading and maybe give a short review. I am always grateful to hear what others are reading too, so feel free to share!
