Still Swinging - Joylene M. Bailey

To be perfectly honest, the prompt for this month stymied me. In fact, I must have blocked it entirely from my thoughts because here I am at 10 pm the night before my deadline, trying to come up with something about my process in reviewing my goals.

But I can't. 


If you'll remember, I'm the one out in the middle of that swinging rope bridge, hanging over a gorge. 


No goals to review. No process. 
Just quiet. Just listening for His voice. Just cutting out the busyness.

Oh yes, God was serious when He asked me to do this. Because every time something would come across my line of sight - a great webinar on marketing, a request to help at a conference, a creative writing course - I'd sense that halt in my spirit and be reminded: no busyness, quiet, listen.

I'm not even attending Inscribe's Fall Conference this year, which is still a shock to me. However, that directive was made clear to me in more than one "God-wink", as Bobbi Junior likes to call them.

So, if quietness, listening, and non-busyness are the goals, then here I am reviewing them:

In my quietness, am I showing up regularly at my writing desk to write what God wants me to write? That depends on what "regularly" means. It's not as regular as I'd envisioned, but a lot more regular than it used to be. 
Progress.

Am I showing up in the opportunities He places in my path to Love God and Love People?
Yes. 
It's amazing, actually, how much easier it is to notice people when one is not busy. So, I get it, Lord.  I get that You needed me to stop and see. Not just see others, but see how I so easily fall into the trap of stress and busyness, because DOING is so much a part of our culture.

Perhaps my productivity is not something that can be measured in this season on the swinging bridge - not by human standards, anyway.

So here I stand, in the middle of this swinging rope bridge, hanging on to the One who asked me to cross it with Him. It hasn't been scenic and lovely all the time. There have been some jerky, scary spots along the way. But I must say, I'm so glad I trusted Him. 

Who knows what awaits me on the other side.

Joylene writes from Edmonton where she lives with her husband, daughter #3, and a cat named Calvin. You can find her at Scraps of Joy.

SaveSaveSaveSave

On Writing: Dreams to Reality by Rohadi

Anybody and everybody has ideas. Ideas to make things better. Ideas to make a million bucks. Ideas to write that book.

Ideas are the easy part. It takes a special kind of person to turn ideas into something real. The piece that stumps most people from completion (or even starting) is usually fear. Fear of rejection, fear of change, fear of risk.

"I could never be an entrepreneur (or writer), it’s too risky," one might say.

Although it’s not true, at least not entirely. Entrepreneurs are risk-averse. We find all the data before making the leap to ensure the idea has the best shot to succeed. Entrepreneurs may differ from artists and writers since the latter has a wild card in the equation — sometimes you just have to write that book — and there’s no other explanation than something inside you says "go".

In my view, this innate drive to create is a good enough reason to start, but it's hardly enough to finish. A good plan is necessary to turn haphazard dream into nuanced creation and eventual completion.

There are many models for both personal development (I’ve used http://businessmodelyou.com/), organizational development, and creative projects. Here’s just one of many to help clarify direction and turn ideas into reality.

This model flows like this: Vision --> Objective --> Goals --> Strategies --> Tactics --> Cost

Here’s a brief introduction of each stage; follow along by jotting down some notes with your own project in mind.

Vision. Begin with a clearly articulated vision (you don't have to start with a clear vision, going through this process may help refine what you have in your head). This might take some time to muse over. You want to create something that’s inspiring and sits way off on the horizon, you can see it but can't reach it just yet. Vision/dream describes the place if you ever 'made it'. A vision could be: “become a published author”.

After Vision, create 1-2 Objectives that are just out of reach, attainable in 1-2 years, that support your vision. Objectives could be:

1) build an author platform;
2) complete 1 manuscript for publishing;
3) complete a book proposal.

Next comes 1-3 measurable Goals for each Objective. We need to know when we've arrived, and if we didn't, why.

1) Build an author platform
  a) Open and engage audience on platforms on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and Pinterest
  b) Start collecting emails for a newsletter
  c) Create list of prospective agent or editors.

2) Complete 1 manuscript for publishing
  a) 2000 words a week
  b) first draft by quarter 1

Etc.

After measurable goals it's time to describe practical Strategies to help meet each goal.

1) Build an author platform
  c) Create list of prospective agent or editors.
   i) Get the Writer’s Market Guide and find niche publishers.
   ii) Collect favourite related books and research the editors.

Tactics are simply the actions you do for each strategy. Cost is going through your model and connecting a cost of money or time to your project. You may discover you don't have resources to achieve your vision and an adjustment is required. Or, you may discover your dream is well within reach.

This may seem boring, and it is, but it’s the necessity attributed with creating that leads to ultimate completion. It sounds like a job because it is. If you want to publish (using that as our example dream), then you’re going to be treating your craft as job.

I’ve found I need to layout some kind of activity plan before every new project, and then return to the plan at least every year (but in reality I will reference weekly). Having a clearly articulated and concrete plan helped me turn my adult colouring book Soul Coats around in 3.5 months rather than 12. Now, marketing the book, that’s a whole different kettle of fish, and yes, more planning….

The early stages. The creation of Soul Coats has an important narrative. This is the original storyboard! #create #coloring #color #coloringbook #colouring

A photo posted by Soul Coats | Coloring Book (@soulcoats) on Feb 2, 2016 at 8:13am PST

--------------

Visit Rohadi on his blog on church development.

Three Easy Steps - Tracy Krauss

I'm a big nerd when it comes to goal setting and making lists, so I was kind of excited about this month's topic. Yes, I'm one of those people who look forward to making New Year's resolutions. I also create very lofty 'to-do' lists each summer. And, come fall and the beginning of the school year, I re-organize my goals to line up with all my other commitments. You could say I'm a goal setting junkie.

There are tons of tools out there and even more pieces of advice on how to set and then actually reach your goals. You've probably seen the S.M.A.R.T. acronym which encourages the creation of goals that are: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time Sensitive. This is good advice, but to be honest, I usually don't bother to work out the details in this way.

After coming at the topic from many different angles, I've come up with a simple plan that seems to work for me. It includes three different 'lists':
1. Yearly goals
2. Monthly 'to-dos'
3. Daily tasks

To start off,  I keep a fluid list of things I wish to accomplish each year. It includes WIPs I plan to finish, publishing goals, marketing goals etc. I revisit this list often, adding and subtracting as I see fit. In fact, I have lists going all the way up to 2020. You could call it my 'five year plan'. The key to my system is the word 'fluid'. I stopped beating myself up a long time ago if I didn't get everything stroked off my list. I just roll it onto the next year's list and I'm back on track!

My monthly 'to-do' list is just as fluid, but I add such things as church and community commitments, Inscribe commitments, blog commitments, (like writing my post for this blog, for instance) and other things that I know need to happen in that particular month. My yearly list is never far from my mind, so items from that list get added to the monthly 'to-do' list when I see the opportunity. Once again, if it doesn't get done, it just gets rolled into the next month's list, guilt free.

Finally, I keep myself on track by having a list of daily tasks. For instance, I didn't get around to writing this post until the 14th (yesterday) because I was busy with the beginning of the school year. I usually try to schedule my posts further in advance to avoid any pressure. Somehow, this month slipped away. When I realized the date, I added 'IWO blog post!' it to my tasks for September 14 and voila - here I am!

I used to make written lists on paper and then switched to word documents. Now I don't bother with either. I use two amazing tools on my phone and/or tablet which sync so that it doesn't matter which device I'm using. My lists are always there! They are: Evernote and Wunderlist. Evernote is an app that has so many uses beyond writing lists which I won't go into here, but it is where I keep my yearly and monthly lists. I recently discovered another app called Wunderlist and it is a list maker's dream! I keep my 'daily tasks' list there as well as all my shopping lists.

This three step system may not be perfect, but it works for me. I've found it to be a very simple way to stay organized and productive.

_________
Tracy Krauss is a secondary school teacher as well as an artist, author and playwright living and working in northern British Columbia. Visit her website: tracykrauss.com 

Just How Amazing is the Bible? By T.L. Wiens

How hard is it to write a book? There are aspects of the task that come easy while other things are not so easy. Getting all the dates right and keeping facts straight is one of those things that I find hard. And while logic would say writing non-fiction should be easier in this sense, that’s not always the case.

The time chart of the Bible is one of the aspects of the Bible that convinces me only God could have written this book. Here’s a book that spans hundreds of years and used the writing skills of many human authors but it all flows. There are no mix ups with names or dates. The timeline of Genesis agrees with Revelations. That amazes me.

If I leave a manuscript for a year, I forget details. There are four hundred years between the New and Old Testaments. Yet, the author didn’t miss a beat. And I doubt there were many edited copies of the epistles to fix any author oversights. It all just works together.

I read a book which was made up of four novellas that used the same characters with each novella focusing on a different main character. Each was written by a different author. And you could tell. The little things were out of place like different dialogue styles. I don’t find that in the Bible. While I can identify different writer’s style, I don’t find the story itself varying. The Moses of the Old Testament is the same as in the New Testament. God is always God.

For me, there is no doubt that God and only God could be the author of the Bible. I believe what He wrote is true, not just stories. The miracles happened, the conversations happened and through these lives we can find the path to bring God into our own lives. The Bible is truly an amazing book that no matter how many times I read, I find something new, a plot that transports me into a different place. A living book that changes the lives of its readers like no other.