Becoming a Writer by Michelle M. Brown

It took until after I had written the first draft for me to research the different methods that are used by various authors, in writing a book. I know I put the cart before the horse, but I had been explicitly encouraged by God to write my story. The thought of there being a process, more than just sitting down and writing, was unknown to me. I was amazed at the undertaking that is implemented in the planning stage of writing a book by some writers. The meticulous effort that is utilized in defining the topic, writing a proposal, creating an outline and setting up a work schedule so deadlines can be met.

My process for writing a book consisted of much less time and task management and more “go with the flow”. I sat down every morning with my bible, my devotional for the day and spent time with God. I then started writing. My time with God was my planning stage. Not for the book, but for me being in the right frame of mind to tackle the task God had assigned me. I wasn’t sure what direction the story would take or even what my message was. It was God’s story of my life, and I allowed Him to tell it through me. I didn’t need a plan because God had one.

It took me three months to write seventy thousand words. Some days I wrote for twenty minutes and other days I wrote for two hours. It was an emotional process that I allowed to ebb and flow as dictated by my ability to deal with the content. There was no schedule or order that I can pinpoint. Just God and I detailing a life shaped by adversity and circumstance. It was a journey of healing old wounds and discovering forgotten strengths.

The research for process came after I completed that first draft because it was time to edit what I had hammered out on my keyboard and make sense of it for other people to read. This step is slow and painful. Not because of the content, this time, but because my writing skills leave a lot to be desired. It is where I fall short and where I have decided to learn, 45 years after I entered the school system, so I can continue on this journey to be God’s writer.

I have recently been reading 50 Women Every Christian Should Know: Learning from Heroines of the Faith by Michelle DeRusha. Fifty, courageous, Godly women who stepped out in faith between the years 1038-2013. Most were writers, all were called, few felt they had the ability, but all were willing to listen to God’s calling on their life and face opposition, ridicule, imprisonment and death. They genuinely are heroines in God’s army of women.

God called me to write, but he never said it would be easy and I wouldn’t have to work for it. Putting myself out there in this position of vulnerability has been challenging to my pride and often my self-esteem. In the end, though, I realize that God never calls us to do what is easy. He calls us to do what He needs, and with that comes its own blessing of being an obedient child that is pleasing to her Father.

"...for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable." ~Romans 11:2

---

Michelle M. Brown was born and raised in British Columbia, Canada. She has a background in Marketing & Design. An avid hiker and adventure junkie she has embarked on a journey to conquer 50 adventurous activities in her 50th year.

A Writer's Book of Days, A Review by Brenda Leyland

A Writer's Book of Days
A Spirited Companion & Lively Muse for the Writing Life

By Judy Reeves
New World Library, CA © 1999, 2010

Who among us has not had a season or two (perhaps even three) in our writing lives when we've needed to rely on a Writing Prompt to help us get our pens or keyboards started as we faced that blank page... or a blank mind?

Such a tool is invaluable, also, when starting out as a novice writer, for the regular use of prompts can help to establish the habit of writing. And, what a treasure when a writing prompt of a single word, a short phrase, or a picture becomes the delightful catalyst for hammering out new ideas or producing worthwhile material that can be used for a current or future work in progress.

That's why I recommend A Writer’s Book of Days by Judy Reeves. The author has compiled a valuable source of interesting prompts (one for every day of the year), inspiring exercises, and practical suggestions, not to mention good advice, literary anecdotes, and ideas gleaned from the author's own writing experiences -- both personally and as a long-time workshop leader.

Divided into monthly chapters, each month focuses on a specific guideline. For instance, September's guideline is Write Specific Details, October's is Write What Matters, and November's is Read Your Writing Aloud.

Even though the material is broken into monthly segments, you can jump in anywhere as each section can stand alone. You can use the current day's prompt to kick start your writing session for the day, use it to practice your writing skills (as a musician would practice her scales), or use the book to establish a regular habit of writing by following it for a year or even a single month.

First written in 1999, the book was revised in 2010 and has been named one of the five hottest writing books by Writer's Digest. 

You can check out the author's website for more information. Do take a minute to watch the inspirational trailer for A Writer's Book of Days. After you watch it, you might even feel 'prompted' to go find the book for yourself. It's available in paperback or e-book.

Brenda Leyland, long-time InScribe member, happily blogs at It's A Beautiful Life and is currently working on her first non-fiction book, a memoir.

InScribers Review: One Smooth Stone (Marcia Lee Laycock)

 

 

Book Review by Bonnie Way

One Smooth Stone
by Marcia Lee Laycock


One Smooth Stone (Castle Quay Books, 2007) is the story of Alex Donnelly, a young man who has spent the last five years hiding out the Yukon Territory in northern Canada, trying to escape his past, the police, and God. But with the passing of his twenty-first birthday comes an inheritance from his parents… money they left in trust for him before they died when he was a child… money that came from the lawyer’s settlement in a court case against a doctor for failing to abort Alex.

When the lawyer shows up at Alex's cabin in the Yukon, he isn't happy at being found. But his questions about his past cause him to return to Seattle to find out more. He isn't prepared to meet the lawyer's daughter, Kenni, who both intrigues and confuses him. Just as they start getting to know each other, Alex discovers that his mother wanted to abort him and runs back to the Yukon.

Marcia Laycock writes a grimly realistic tale of one man’s struggle with his past and with God. Alex was raised in foster homes, abused and mistreated, and the memories of those days still haunt him. He is angry at God for letting those things happen, angry at those who abused him, and just wants to forget about them. But God is after him, and uses even a blizzard and a grizzly bear to get Alex’s attention.

About the Author

Marcia Lee Laycock grew up on an island in Lake Huron. She attended Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, before "running away" to Alaska and the Yukon. She became a Christian in 1982 and with her husband went to Briercrest Bible College in Saskatchewan in 1985. Since 1988, she has lived in central Alberta. She and her husband have three daughters.

Marcia began writing as a child. Her devotional column was published for over a decade in various Alberta newspapers. She is the author of three devotional books, The Spur of the Moment, Focused Reflections (devotions for specific occasions), and Abundant Rain (a writer's devotional book). Her short stories have appeared in various anthologies, including A Second Cup of Hot Apple Cider, and several are available for free at Smashwords. She is a member of Inscribe Christian Writer's Fellowship, The Word Guild, and American Christian Fiction Writers.

About the Novel

One Smooth Stone (ISBN 978-1-894860-34-5) won the 2006 Best New Canadian Christian Author Award from Castle Quay Books. It was also nominated by the Ontario Association of Christian Librarians for their "One Read" Award in 2009 (the award went to the Hot Apple Cider anthology, which included two pieces by Marcia Laycock).

Best-selling Alberta author Sigmund Brouwer says of One Smooth Stone, "Laycock delivers an engaging and imaginative story so effectively that it's difficult to believe the novel is her debut. I'm looking forward to more!" Most of Laycock's readers are also looking for the sequel; A Tumbled Stone tells the story of Alex's hunt for his sister and was published in 2012.

To read the first chapter of One Smooth Stone and more reviews, and to view the book trailer and discussion questions on the novel, visit Marcia's website at http://marcialeelaycock.com/.

InScribers Review: Heaven's Prey (Janet Sketchley)

 

 Book Review by Bonnie Way

 

Heaven's Prey
Author: Janet Sketchley
Publisher: Choose Now Publishing, 2013

One of the topics of my recent fiction class was the "occasion" or "destination" of a novel and how to keep the reader reading if they know what's going to happen. As I read Janet Sketchley’s novel Heaven’s Prey, I thought she illustrated this perfectly. We know the novel is about redemptions—presumably Ruth’s physical redemption and Harry’s spiritual redemption—but we read to find out how that happens. How does Ruth survive being kidnapped by a serial rapist? How does a guy as dark as Harry move toward redemption?

Ruth is an ordinary middle-aged woman living in Nova Scotia who has been praying for Harry Silver since he kidnapped, raped and murdered her niece. Prayer has helped her find healing, but it has also caused a rift with those around her—including her husband—who don’t understand how she can pray for a murderer. She’s on her way home from her weekly prayer meeting when she runs into Silver himself. Now, all her faith is put to the test as Harry kidnaps her and plans to make her his last victim…

I appreciated the fact that, even when Janet was writing about Harry’s crimes, she never made it graphic. We are given enough detail to know what happened but not so much that the crime is sensationalized. Yet these scenes never felt like the author was intruding by withholding information. Ruth talks about reading crime reports, about the horror she experienced in learning about Harry’s crimes, and her fear and disgust towards him gives the reader a bigger picture of Harry. At the same time, Ruth’s faith allows her to see Harry in another light.

Janet’s novel reminds us that even those we hate and despise are still human—and still loved by God. Harry is truly dark and despicable at the beginning of the novel, but Janet slowly takes us into his past, into the pain of his childhood, his pornography addiction, and his racing career, and we see the path that led him into darkness. It doesn’t excuse his crimes, but it helps us to understand him. I think it takes a truly skilled writer to make Harry neither so evil that he’s past redemption, nor so redeemable that we don’t believe he could have raped and murdered nine women.

To get a taste of the story, you can check out the Heaven’s Prey Blog Chase. At each stop in the chase, you’ll get a short “prequel” of the novel, some insight into what happened before Ruth encounters Harry. You can also drop by Janet’s website to read interviews with the characters and with Janet.

Janet Sketchley is a long-time member of Inscribe Christian Writer’s Fellowship; she served as acquisitions editor of FellowScript and wrote the fiction column for many years. She is passionate about fiction, but also has a nonfiction story in the award-winning anthology A Second Cup of Hot Apple Cider. She calls herself “a Christian growing in faith, trying to balance relationships and responsibilities.” She is currently working on the second book in her Redemption’s Edge series.

Carolyn Weber Shares From Her New Book

 

 

What a delight and honour to have Carolyn Weber as our Guest Blogger today.

“There is no greater joy than reunion,” I once wrote, based on a wise woman’s words to me. In returning to Canada as a believer, and as a faith writer to boot, the phrase now brings joy so alive as to stun me with gratitude. What a delight then, and a privilege, to join all of you here at the site of InScribe, Canada’s longest serving Christian writers’ organization. For me, it is a circle of grace indeed, a sort of homecoming.

In my conversion memoir Surprised by Oxford, I chronicle how I became a Christian during my first year at Oxford University in England. As someone who did not grow up in the faith, and who then travelled widely and lived in various places before returning to Canada a few years ago, I have been given the gift of seeing “home” again with new eyes.

As a result, I would like to share with you today, then, an excerpt from my new book Holy is the Day: Living in the Gift of the Present (InterVarsity Press, 2013) that may particularly resound with us more northerly folk.

I wrote this latest book as a kind of prayer walk, as a way of working through how we are called to a second, deeper calling as believers. In the every day, and every day, we can keep converting, we can keep turning toward Him. By choosing to be in God’s presence, by grasping on to Him and refusing to let go, we indeed experience any moment as holy.

I hope you will enjoy! And I wish you every blessing, new friends.

Carolyn

Excerpt from Holy is the Day: Living in the Gift of the Present

Growing up in the Great White North, I remember hearing stories about pioneers who had to run a rope or clothesline from their house door to their barn or shed, so they could find their way in the blinding snow to tend to their animals or reach a firewood supply. In these wintry furies, the streets are a mess: traffic halts, letters sit on a mound of snow inside the mailbox, indoor pipes freeze. No matter what you do, the snowy onslaught keeps coming and you can’t stay on top of it. Everything shuts down. Existential angst builds as you shovel and shovel without effect, much like a frostbitten Sisyphus pushing a great snowball up the hill only to have it roll back down, and over you.

How do we find our way in the chaos?

I considered hanging a clothesline from my bedroom to the nursery for those nighttime trips resulting from the demands of newborn twins.

But it was the inner, not the outer, weather that most terrified me. Being cut open literally caused the inner me to pour out. Even as Christians we can lose our way. We all lose our bearings. How to find God in the snowstorm? I found myself wondering.

Countless snowflakes whirling outside the window mirror the dizzying effect of our daily addictions to the opiate of busyness. And then there comes that pause . . . when the snow stops swirling and the wind dies down. When you open your back door, or rather, push and push on it until you can shimmy a small wedge into the dune of snow that has accumulated. And then you stand in a small triangle of space, the heat of the house on your back and the cold of the winter on your face, and you hold your breath at the settling.

Suspended.

For a moment, seeing—sensing—how white does indeed hold all colors at once.

For, if you are not still, if you do not stop and listen, you will miss the hush of newly fallen snow. The sight of it powdering the ever- greens. The delicate icing of branches so that the barren trees are given life renewed and stretch their glistening arms in a nudity blown from glass.

I look at my sleeping babes with the same willing suspension of disbelief.

Part of the glory of swirling snow, I think, is that you cannot possibly count all the snowflakes. Yet we know that each one has its own distinct pattern, a personal fingerprint. Not everything that counts can be counted, said Albert Einstein, a man who lived intimately with numbers, and science, and wonder.

Irreverence begins in not paying attention. And yet, I think, it can also stem from counting too often and too closely. The eternal cannot be insisted into a measurement. The snowstorm reminds us of this. Eventually, it pricks our want for clear sky, our ache for the star by which to mark our journey. We crave the wisdom of settled clarity, especially from within the flurry of beauty that startles and quiets.

  

Carolyn Weber is an author, speaker and teacher. Her recent academic positions include associate professor of English literature at Seattle University and visiting associate professor of English Lit. at Westmont College, Santa Barbara, California. She is also the author of Surpised by Oxford, a memoir about her doctoral studies at Oxford.  Carolyn and her husband share the joy of parenting four spirited children in London, Ontario.

Self-Editing - Shirley S. Tye

Since my writing budget is small, writing workshops and hiring an editor or a proofreader are not possible. Therefore, I try to learn on my own from text books, reading the type of stories I want to read, and listening to other writers discuss the craft of writing.

One of the best books on editing that I’ve read is Self-Editing For Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King, and published by Harper Perennial in 1993. It’s educational as well as humorous with checklists and exercises at the end of each chapter. For a small paperback, it covers a lot of aspects of writing; the difference between showing and telling; characterization; points of view; dialogue; et cetera.

There are many little details to consider when editing; making the story flow smoothly; creating an interesting plot; building strong believable characters; writing natural speech. One lesson about dialogue covers the unnecessary use of adjectives to explain a character’s emotion when the dialogue clearly conveys the emotion. For example, there is no need to write “he said with astonishment” if the dialogue reveals the character’s astonishment. Another lesson taught that, in most cases, the best word to use to indicate someone speaking is ‘said’. It’s not always necessary to use speaker attributions such as; he frowned; she sniggered. To write “I’m sorry”, Mary apologized is not necessary because her words express the apology.

An interesting chapter is about beats; a few small actions throughout a scene, such as a character pacing a few steps or scratching his or her head. Beats help readers picture the scene and can help reveal a character’s personality.

Well, I think I’d better go back to “glass” and review this book.

How do I Develop Necessary Skills in a Writers' World? - Janis Cox

Bell clipart
from Clker.com

"School is never out for the pro!" Those were the words that Brenda used to motivate us this month for our posting.

She is right. I think I have learned more in the past 10 years than I did in my first 50. Yes it has been an uphill climb but very exhilarating at each of the peaks. Of course, the slides down are not too much fun. But God knows that we have our ups and downs.

Brenda asked:

"How are you developing and growing your skills as a writer?"

Well right now I am trying to grow my skills as a marketer – or promoter. Or somehow find an audience.

My Learning:

• Write! Canada – Thomas Umstaddt’s course. Opened my eyes to social networking. So I have been busy learning more about blogging, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. That’s enough for me at the moment. But there is Pinterest, Digg, Google, and on and on.

• Using Google as Search Engine - Every time I have hit a wall and think I can’t go any further – I Google for the answer. I always seem to find something that works. Thomas said to Google 50 times a day. Well I don’t think I have hit that number but some days I am close.

• Set up a self-hosted Word Press Blog. This was a big learning curve. Setting up the blog wasn’t too hard. But finding the right pluggins – that is harder.  

• Publishing and Marketing a book - And the other learning curve is working on edits and preparation for final publishing of my book. When I self-published a few copies it took lots of time. But now when I am working with a real publisher I have to work with others – it seems to be taking longer. I say, “patience, Jan, patience.”

Some Interesting Resources:

Twitter Ideas by Ruth Snyder

What is a Platform? by Chip MacGregor

How to Create a Twitter List in 4 Easy Steps - by Author Media

How to Launch a Self-Hosted Wordpress Blog in 20 Minutes or Less - by Michael Hyatt

Janis Cox

Janis, a former school teacher and small business owner, found a new passion in writing in her retirement.

She has published a couple of devotionals and a number of articles. Her Bible study is available in PDF.

As owner of Under the Cover of Prayer and A Better Way, she writes often.

Her children's book, Tadeo Turtle, is scheduled for release in September. Email her at Janis or visit her at www. janiscox.com.