A Vacation Day

I took an unscheduled day off serious writing today. It was a gorgeous day with bright sunshine, blue skies and temperatures in the forties for the second day in a row. After the cold and gray of the past week, it was glorious!

I spent a couple hours browsing dozens of electronic images of horses looking for just the right one to use for my first large colored pencil painting in quite some time. After two hours, I got it narrowed down to twenty-eight possibilities! I also found a dog or two that looked interesting and a cat, believe it or not!

Writing for the day was limited to journals and writing lessons for the most part. Last night, I downloaded three archived workshops from the American Christian Fiction Writers web site. In lieu of working on my own story, I started the first lesson last night and finished it up this afternoon. The workshop is about character development based on Proverbs 15. The lessons I’ve done so far have been very interesting.

Saving Grace is taking vacation, too. I awakened this morning with the very clear thought that I’m standing in front of a closed door, hammering away like a Fuller Brush salesman at a house where no one is home. The salesmen among us will be quick to realize the only thing to do in a case like that is move on to the next house!

So that’s what I did.

The first thing I did for the story was to give it back to God and to seek the patience to wait for the discernment to know what I should be doing. Neal suggested I keep knocking and I did consider that, but I also thought it would be a good thing to step back for a while. Since I’m not omniscient, though, I also left room to write if I’m suddenly overcome with some idea, plot twist or anything else that absolutely, positively HAS to be written down. So far, it’s been a quiet day in that area, so I’m confident this was the right thing to do.

Other than that, I’m keeping myself busy with eBay, housekeeping chores and anything else that comes to hand and mind.

I even thought about a trip through the Flint Hills. We have yet to make our first Flint Hills trip and all the bright sunshine is whetting my appetite for those sweeping landscapes and the animals that populate them.

Recent wet weather requires we wait at least until the mud dries, though. The Buick doesn’t much care for mud.

Come to think of it, I don’t much care for washing the mud out of the wheel wells, either. Once was more than enough!