Skip to main content

Prayed for patience

Been trying to keep the spiritual warfare at bay. At random moments, I’ll start to panic or feel depressed and I’ll have to stop and pray. It’s been a constant battle against these emotional attacks, and surrendering myself to God over and over again. I am so tired and frustrated.

But I did pray today for trust and patience, so I must be making spiritual headway. I know God would not have put this desire in me to write if He didn’t intend to do something with it, and although I may have to learn patience (how I hate that word, LOL), I am hoping He will allow me to write full-time someday. The thought of working (especially at this company) for another year or two is depressing, but I have to trust God’s plans and timing, and pray for deliverance.

Yesterday I started reading Maass’ "Writing the Breakout Novel." It’s been very enlightening and motivating. He lists ways to make the novel more dramatic, more colorful, more enticing to a reader. It’s basically the same tenant Swain writes about, but in more useful detail. I am excited to try to lift my suspense manuscript to the next level, even though that entails going back to the drawing board again. Right after I left it to start writing! LOL.

I’ve also read some rather bad books lately. Do some of these multi-published authors dispense with critique partners? It just seemed that a good crit partner would have caught some of the repetitions, redundancies, and illogical actions of the characters. Note to self: If I become multi-published, make DOUBLY SURE I have several honest crit partners to look over anything before I send it to my editor.

Writing: Since yesterday was Sunday, I didn’t work on my manuscript, but I did cheat and write the Real Life Q&A and two (related) writing articles for RubyZine.

Diet: I already mentioned the rib roast for dinner last night. Topped it off with caramel popcorn from my sister in law. Hers is sooooo good. I only get it once a year. I’m still having some of those weird stomach cramps, maybe from too much acid in my stomach, maybe something else. Anyway, today I haven’t eaten anything so far because my stomach hasn’t been up to it. Hopefully I can stick to a healthy diet today and also remember to do my weight training, minimal though that is.

Comments

Popular Posts

Poll for the title of my book!

Captain’s Log, Supplemental Blog book giveaway: My Thursday book giveaway is The Wedding Caper by Janice Thompson . My Monday book giveaway is Thanks for the Mammogram! AND Reconstructing Natalie , both by Laura Jensen Walker . You can still enter both giveaways. Just post a comment on the blog posts above . On Thursday, I'll draw the winner for The Wedding Caper and post the title for another book I'm giving away. Pick my title! The Zondervan Marketing Department is torn about which title would be best for my debut novel. So you guys get to weigh in! Here are your choices: Solo Sushi Sushi for One Single Sushi Solo Sashimi Leave a comment about which you prefer and WHY. I’ll run this poll for a couple weeks to figure out which will be the title for my new book! TMI: Writing: I posted another "Health and the Writer" post at WriterQuotes , and an agent post at my Story Sensei blog . And in case you missed it, my review of The Guy I’m Not Dating by Trish Perry is ...

Mansfield Park (BBC 1986)

Captain’s Log, Supplemental Blog book giveaway: To enter, go to the blog links below and post a comment there. Valley of Betrayal by Tricia Goyer It Happens Every Spring by Gary Chapman and Catherine Palmer Jane Austen miniseries I love Jane Austen. She’s my favorite classic writer, and I even bought audiobooks of her novels and listen to them again and again. I also love Amazon.com and visit my Gold Box every day (not that I buy that often). One day I had a deal for the entire set of DVDs of miniseries produced by BBC of Jane Austen’s novels. No, I didn’t buy the set—but it made me curious, and so I put the miniseries on my Netflix queue. The miniseries are all rather old. I just finished Mansfield Park . I’m quite divided on it. Costumes: score 4. They were mostly really rather nice, appropriate to the character’s background and income, and not too flamboyant, although there were several places the women’s headgear was just way over the top. Acting: score 4. I l...

Got my books!

Captain's Log, Supplemental Okay, I'm still at the library and Captain Caffeine sent me these pics since I wasn't home when they arrived: MY AUTHOR COPIES ARRIVED! Wow, that's just so cool. And I'm so glad Captain Caffeine sent me pics!

Mon afghan

Captain's Log, Stardate 02.24.2009 I am extraordinarily proud of this. For Christmas, I wanted to knit something for my parents that would be really cool and personal, and sort of an heirloom. So I took the five family crests I had for my family (in Japanese, a family crest is called a “mon”) and graphed the designs on knitting graph paper so that I could knit intarsia panels of the mons. I knit 5 intarsia panels and 4 plain panels and then sewed them together to make an afghan. In Japan, family crests are carried by both male and female, so I used mons from both my parents' sides. Traditionally, mons are passed down from mother to daughter and from father to son, but there are sometimes cases of a son taking a mother’s mon or a husband taking his wife’s family’s mon and things like that. I know we have more than 5 family crests, but we’ve lost some of them. My mom tried to find them all several years ago, but could only find these five. The fans mon was actually...

Grace Livingston Hill romances free to read online

I wanted to update my old post on Grace Livingston Hill romances because now there are tons more options for you to be able to read her books for free online! I’m a huge Grace Livingston Hill fan. Granted, not all her books resonate with me, but there are a few that I absolutely love, like The Enchanted Barn and Crimson Roses . And the best part is that she wrote over 100 books and I haven’t yet read them all! When I have time, I like to dive into a new GLH novel. I like the fact that most of them are romances, and I especially appreciate that they all have strong Christian themes. Occasionally the Christian content is a little heavy-handed for my taste, but it’s so interesting to see what the Christian faith was like in the early part of the 20th century. These books are often Cinderella-type stories or A Little Princess (Frances Hodgson Burnett) type stories, which I love. And the best part is that they’re all set in the early 1900s, so the time period is absolutely fasci...