Real life has definitely been getting in the way of my writing life lately. Big time. There’s just stuff happening…like crazy. And because I think it’s pretty important to put real people before fictitious people, the novel and I have not spent so much time in each other’s company lately. Has absence made my heart grow fonder, you ask? I’m …
Learning to see.
I’m not a photographer. Sure, I get lucky every once in awhile and catch a good shot. (Like the photo to the left. I took it in Sioux Center, where I used to live, on a beautiful fall evening a couple years ago.) But I’m really not a photographer. A real photographer, a good one – whether skilled by natural …
Conflict: Can’t live with it (in church), can’t live without it (in stories)
So yesterday…I’m sitting in the office of one of the pastors at the new church I’ve been attending. (Well, new to me, that is. This church was actually established way back in the late 1800s in Des Moines…one of the facts I learned during the class I’m taking for new attenders interested in learning more about the church. See, despite …
For the love of stories…and cousins.
I think it was last Thanksgiving that one of my awesome young cousins asked me some random question about grown-ups. I honestly don’t even remember what the question was, but my answer was something like, “Well, what about me? I’m a grown-up?” Her answer: “You’re different. You don’t act like a grown-up!” I knew coming from her it was a great …
I cannot write because of you, Ted Dekker!
When I was younger, it used to really bug me that I couldn’t name my favorite author. I could list off four or five (okay, 20-some) authors I really loved and read regularly. But I couldn’t pinpoint a favorite. No one quite fit into the “untouchable” category. But I really wanted to have a favorite. After all, I was the …
If Anne can…
Two of my favorite movies ever – ever, ever! – are Anne of Green Gables and its sequel…the ones made in the 1980s by a Canadian production company and played on PBS once a year or so. I don’t know how many times I’ve watched the two movies, both of which clock in at over three hours, but I can …
The Reluctant Blogger, or, "See, this is how serious I am about the writing thing."
I can be awfully slow to join in on things. Like, tail-end slow. Example: Lisa Frank. Any female my age must remember Lisa Frank. We’re talking a top designer here…albeit, a designer of school supplies. Folders, pencils, trapper keepers (remember how cool those were?), pencil boxes…there wasn’t an item to be had in the school supply aisle that Lisa Frank …