Carrie | January 30, 2010
I had hoped to have the Saving Grace snowflake finished by this time, but that didn’t happen. Even so, it was a great week for writing. Today, I worked on Step Eight, which is listing the scenes. It’s less of a creative process and more of a sequencing process at this stage because the story [...]
Carrie | January 29, 2010
Its’ that time of year when one day is like spring and the next day is definitely not! Wednesday was a very mild and pleasant day, with temps in the 40s and spring-like (for those of us in Kansas, anyway!). Yesterday dawned cold with a gusty wind out of the north and a winter storm [...]
Carrie | January 26, 2010
It doesn’t matter how carefully a first draft is crafted or how well the foundation is built, there are changes between the drafts. Loose ends to tie up. Redundancies to eliminate. Plots to tighten. Dialog to clarify. Sometimes names and locations get changed, too. In other words, everything is subject to change. With a first [...]
Carrie | January 25, 2010
I’m amused by a comment I heard someone use in explaining how they ended up somewhere they weren’t intentionally going. As I recall, the comment was, “I came to a fork in the road and took it.” A road can be as winding, twisting, turning, double-backing and up-and-down as it wants to be and it’s [...]
Carrie | January 22, 2010
I was reminded between Sunday School and morning services two weeks ago this coming Sunday that Ash Wednesday is February 17. The person who reminded me is the same gal with whom I work on Lenten devotional books for our congregation. We also worked together with an artist in the congregation (no, it wasn’t me) [...]
Carrie | January 19, 2010
At some point in every story, there comes a time when writing, plotting, character and story development stops and stock taking begins. It could be a day spent pondering plot dilemmas in the middle of a first draft or it could be a couple of weeks spent brooding between drafts. To an interested observer, it [...]
Carrie | January 16, 2010
In taking a break from second draft work on Saving Grace this afternoon, I read selections from 2009’s Daily Writing Exercise and scenes from a cozy mystery I started last year. The Daily Writing Exercise was a year-long challenge that began with a desire to write a minimum of 700 words of fiction each writing [...]
Carrie | January 15, 2010
With the beginning of the new year, I decided to get ambitious and give myself a goal of writing 1.25 million words this year. I’m counting everything. Writing, personal and painting journals; every word written that has anything to do with any of the stories; even the words I write on this blog and the [...]
Carrie | January 13, 2010
Sometimes life is easy. Sometimes life is hard. The same goes for painting and for writing and for every other human endeavor. I remind myself of that principle every time I hit a snag in anything. I also tell myself that if something was easy, everybody would be doing it. I’ve had to remind myself [...]
Carrie | January 11, 2010
To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power [...]
I've been an avid looker-at of books since I was old enough to sit on her lap and listen to the stories she read.
The oldest complete manuscript I have was written when I was in the eighth grade.
Throughout grade school and high school, I read every horse story I could get my hands on. Walter Farley was a huge favorite and I still enjoy reading the adventures of the Black Stallion and Flame and all the rest. But Marguerite Henry, C. W. Anderson, Thomas Hinkle and anyone else who wrote a story about a horse was on my to-read list. I couldn't get enough of them.
Then I found Agatha Christie and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and discovered another world; the world of mysteries!
More recently Dick Francis has combined my love of horse stories with my love of mysteries with his series of books.
In the early part of this century, I was introduced to the world of Christian fiction and in July of 2008, I took my first ever writing workshop. The workshop covered several aspects of writing from a Christian worldview and an entirely new vista opened before me.
I am, as yet, unpublished. I write every day, maintain painting and writing blogs, painting journals, writing journals and a number of other writing endeavors. Along with other members of my church family, I've written devotions for Advent and Lenten devotional booklets. For a time, I wrote a monthly column for the Newton Kansan newspaper.
I still enjoy a good horse story but I also enjoy a good mystery or cozy mystery, suspense and a little bit of action here and there, as well as literary works. I hope, Lord willing, to try my hand at each of those genres.
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