Sins of Our Fathers | Author Blog

It’s funny. I pretty much put the final touches on, Sins of Our Fathers, a number of months back. Well, what I consider the final touches. I’m certain that once I can convince an editor to adopt my baby, that the editor will likely want me to retool some things.

Since then I’ve been focused on my current WIP (work in progress). Which is a non-fiction book idea. I’ve written four chapters of it and am editing those chapters. Once that’s done I’ll be sending them to an editor I ran the idea by at this year’s FCWC.

So I’ve been rather focused on that WIP, but it’s funny to me how some of the main characters in, Sins of Our Fathers, keep popping into my head. Once given life I guess they want to continue to occupy my thoughts. Which is okay, they’re characters I like after all.

I guess at some point they will be wanting some more plots to play with. I’ll have to see what I can come up with for them. Maybe that’s why they keep popping in and saying, “Hey!”

Of course they need to realize that they aren’t the only characters desiring free range on the page. Too bad there’s just one of me and 24 hours in the day.

Just one.

I’m running behind today. Okay, truth is that is the normal state of my days.

I think I try to pack more into each day than is possible. Maybe I should pack my days using those Space Bags. You know. The ones where you use the vacuum cleaner to suck out all the air and scrunch everything up for storage.

That would be nice to do with not only my days, but the mess of my desk.

That’s as far off the path I was setting, that I wish to go.

Anyway, I was going to post just one little reason for joining a writers group.

Encouragement.

That’s it. Encouragement.

Yesterday I met with my monthly writers group and we went over the stuff we brought. I left very encouraged as a writer.

In part it’s because of the commonality of us all. We each have a desire for words and a desire to use those words to share the passions that Jesus placed in us.

And it is also because of the great feedback I got on my writing. By that I mean help to improve it.

So if you’re not part of a critique group. Find one. If you can’t find one, make one.

Okay. I’m a writer. And oddly enough, I appear to be human.

This duplicity often times leads to stress and frustration. The writer in me wants to write frequently and repeatedly. Yet the human in me often finds the storms of life troubling and burdensome to the body, mind, and soul. When that happens the writer just can’t seem to think clearly enough to string more than a couple of semi-coherent words into more than mere pixels on the screen.

That’s where I’ve been during the last several weeks. Stressful things happening in my own life and the life of my church family.

The writer wants to write, but the human that finds it necessary to eat, live, and breathe needs to scrape together some pennies. Not only that, but being a warm body with a pulse means there is a need to work in fields that God asks me to tend with my time and hands.

The good thing about these times, these storms, is that they are fodder for the writer to draw upon when the writing time is available.

That said, I guess there really isn’t a duplicity at work here.

I’ve been reading from Psalms almost every day and I so love that book because it so sings of being a human in love with the Lord God, a human fallen in nature, struggling in life under all kinds of pressures and stress, but still able to recognize and praise God.

I try to start my mornings with those scriptures. I take the date, for example today is the 5th, and I read that Psalm. Then I add 30 to that number and read that Psalm which would be 35. Add 30 and read 65, and so forth until I’ve worked through the entire book.

It’s a wonderful way to start the day.

Well, I’ve got some time, so I’m going to try and write for the next hour or so.

Until next time.