Writing for the Love

My first live story, "Little Angel Helper," is complete. Phew (wipes brow). What an experience. For 17 days in a row, I wrote between 600 and 3,000 words. Thank you, Dunesteef hosts (Big and Rish), for the writing prompt and the inspiration to put a story out there for all to see (scary!) as I was writing it. They both finished their stories as well, and I believe the fourth participant, Katherine, is still going on hers. When they first presented the prompt ("Despite being warned about them, someone plays a claw vending machine game . . . and wins big"), and suggested the event begin the following Monday, I spent the weekend coming up with a detailed outline of the story I wanted to tell. I think that helped me a lot in terms of not writing myself into a corner, which happens to me frequently as a pantser (one who writes by the seat of their pants, not an outliner). The idea had been floating around in my head, and the prompt solidified what I wanted the sto...

UPDATE 12/20/14: Little Angel Helper has been published in the Kindle Store and is no longer available to read on my blog. Click HERE to view it on Amazon. Original blog: I'm happy to report that I've done lots of writing lately. My focus has been deep editing two different novels ( Livinity and Sprinter ). I've gotten about 70,000 words edited (including added scenes) in the first book of Livinity , and anticipate that after about 30,000 more, I'll be ready to start the submission process again. Send, receive rejection, repeat. All while working on the second book. I changed the opening for Sprinter once, and I may do it again, so that novel is hard to calculate word-wise at this point. Every once in a while, I'll write and send out a short story. When I get a rejection (not if), I'll edit the short story and send it out again. Currently, I have about five stories submitted. Over at the Dunesteef Audio Fiction Magazine , a podcast where one of my s...

Last week during Life Group (read Bible Study), we were in 1 Peter talking about pride and humbling oneself. I had a post earlier this year about humility. The Lord continues to reaffirm that message to me: humble yourself, because the alternative is to be humbled (read humiliated). In our group, we talked about athletes who made a touchdown, a basket, or a home run and immediately lifted a finger to heaven or audibly praised God. That takes humility. It's saying, I made the touchdown, but God made me. He's the reason I'm blessed. Not everybody likes to see that, adding to the humbling experience beyond simply redirecting praise. In writing, there's not a standard "score" to keep. Each individual has different goals and measures their successes differently. When I'm humbled, I measure each forward step as a success, and I credit Christ first. But I'm not always humbled. It's something I still have to work on every day. I have two upcoming p...

My writing weekend was a great success. Saturday, I dedicated to Livinity edits. Sunday, to completing the first draft of Lance & Ringo Tails: O Brother, What Art Thou?  I also outlined the next story and began writing that first draft. Then I returned to Livinity edits, which continued into Monday. I probably got through about eight chapters instead of ten, but that's okay. I still feel great about how far the story has come. The hard part was stopping at 11:30pm on Monday night to get enough sleep for work in the morning. I did allow myself one break to watch Downton Abbey with my best friend, but other than that, all writing. Not only did I meet the majority of my goals, I received an email acceptance on a short story reprint. Thank you, Lord! It uplifted and encouraged me so much. FICTION on the WEB accepted "This Is Hollywood" for online publication. The short story reprint will appear on their website Jan 27, 2013, and it's free to read. ht...

I'm happy to announce that my short story, "The Wheels Must Turn," made it into this year's FWA Collection #4- My Wheels . Praise the Lord! This is the third year in a row that I've gotten a story into the colletion and I'm still excited about it. Publication doesn't really get old. The sci-fi story is about a young narrator coming to grips with the death of her father. On to other topics that have been on my mind. For some reason, I can't seem to write about my writing more than once a month. I'm not sure if it matters or not. I write on my running blog, The Anti-Running Runner , more. I write on my fiction novels and short stories WAY more. Which is probably the reason why. I listen to podcasts a lot (another reason why?), and I was introduced to The Roundtable Podcast from the guys over at The Dunesteef Audio Fiction Magazine . If you are a writer, published or not, I highly recommend adding Roundtable to your iTunes subscriptions (it...