The Year of Living Dangerously by Connie Inglis

If I had a year of financial freedom to focus on writing, I would have two goals: to improve my ability in writing poetry and to compile more character and cultural information to continue a novel that I started five years ago.

To reach my first goal, my dream would be to be mentored by a well-known poet--to study their work and to sit under their tutelage for a semester. It's not the drumming up of poem ideas that I struggle with, it's the feedback in knowing what is good, what needs work and what is just plain bad. In other words, I would seek someone who would critique my work to make it publishable. It would be fun to do this in a city I've never visited because I find travel inspirational--Europe for instance. Since I'm dreaming, I'll dream big.

My second goal involves travelling to Burma. I started a novel based on the life of a young woman who we trained to help in the translation project for her people, the Shatikha of northern Burma. I also spent time teaching her English and she spent many weekends at our house learning all our wonderful colloquialisms. Her story is one of sadness but also of freedom and joy. I have many questions to ask her--more details about her perspective on life as a child but also many questions about her village, her family, her day-to-day existence and cultural expectations. For that I need to visit her home area, something I have not yet done but that I've always wanted to do. I want to share her story to raise awareness of her struggle as a second-class female but, more importantly, to share how she was released from that bondage when she found Jesus. It's a beautiful redemption story.

Along with that, I want to write poetry about the lives of the Shatikha people--to write about the children in this photo, for instance, who are learning to read and write their own language for the first time. Each of these children have a story to tell. I want to tell it and tell it well.

I titled this post, "The Year of Living Dangerously," because my desire is to live dangerously, not from a physical perspective but from a spiritual perspective. A year like this would give me the training to be a voice for the underprivileged and a voice to proclaim freedom in Jesus. It would be a fight of a different kind but, oh, how I would LOVE the opportunity.