On Writing

Yes, You are Creative–Watch This!

~ Bev Parker ~ Leave a comment

Happy Valentine’s Day to You! My Daybook, Friend to Friend, is now available on Amazon–get your paperback, hardcover, or e-book and start every day with good thoughts and inspiring words!

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The Third 3rd Day Meeting–Tomorrow at 3:00!

~ Bev Parker ~ Leave a comment

WEDNESDAY, MAY 15 IS YOUR CHANCE TO JOIN IN VIA ZOOM! 3:00 MTN.

Tomorrow’s the day!  At 3:00 p.m. Mountain Time join our little group via Zoom:  

https://us05web.zoom.us/j/82224451524?pwd=NmK5aCuaiu5JHX68JMFiyeCYsnkesh.1

I am learning how to go about this, so bear with me, and we’ll figure it out.  Please join in if you have any interest in writing anything!  

I’ll be sharing a bit from my experience two weeks ago at the Northwest Christian Writer’s Conference (best conference EVER), and how a little child can lead you in your writing journey.

I’ll also ask you to be thinking of sharing from books that impacted you as a child–this in the June 3rd Day meeting, which will be June 19.  We do hope you can join in!

Uncomplicating Your Writing

~ Bev Parker ~ Leave a comment

My daughter just made homemade bread and added herbed butter and garlic, and served it to me with love. This, Dear Reader, is REAL bread. If we compare the practically spiritual experience of deeply enjoying such bread, to consuming a piece of fluorescent white stuff baked in a factory last week, we can see that making things complicated, expensive, difficult, and FAKE is not the way.

Perhaps I could liken this to writing. When we forget about the joy of simply writing a story, and attempt jumping through the publishing world’s hoops, things can get complicated. It begins to seem as though every time we try to write a bit, there are little gremlins gnawing at our ankles. They’re growling, hissing, whispering and snidely saying the likes of: What about the meaning of your story; what if it’s all a waste of time; you know you don’t know much of anything about anything you’re writing . . . Oh, and have you forgotten about the requisite social media following?

If you’re not having fun yet, consider with me the following requirements from a writer’s conference regarding pitching a novel:

  1. Effective Hook
  2. Describe Book
    1. Title, genre, word count
    2. Protagonist/Main Characters
    3. Setting
    4. Plot
    5. Tone/Feel
  3. How is the novel unique?
  4. How does the book fit into the marketplace-research cited?
  5. Marketing Plan
    1. The size of the writer’s social media platform
    2. Blog/Website promoting book with size of following
    3. Podcast or YouTube channel, number of followers
    4. Email list/number of contacts
    5. Plan for guest posting on blogs, speaking engagements.

First problem for me: my book doesn’t neatly fit into a genre–first ankle bite. Next is I neither know nor care how it fits into the marketplace, and have no inclination to find out. I just want to write–is that so wrong?

The size of my social media platform? Uh, well, can we just skip that for now? My Blog/Website promoting the book with size of following? First off, can anyone tell me again the difference between a blog and a website, and why that matters? My e-mail list? Well, it’s pretty long, but you should know that many of those folks listed are no longer using the e-mail address I’m using.

Ah, but my plan! I do have a plan, and I think it’s a good one. And I’m sure I can get someone super famous to be my guest, and then they’ll ask me to come and speak and everyone in the HUGE crowd will buy my book.

Actually, I have no problem believing that last paragraph, and I actually do have a plan. But until the book is written, all these concerns are complications, aggravations, and creativity killers. They make me want more coffee, more Kombucha (golden pineapple perhaps, with lemon and lime wedges) and if all else fails I’ll get a Haagen Daas bar and eat it at the lake just up the road.

And then I’ll remind myself (and you Dear Reader) how absolutely pathetically impotent complaining makes us all (maybe I’ll have an absolutely pathetically impotent character in my book, and maybe someone with say clever and sarcastic things to him), and I’ll get on with the business at hand (it might be writing, or ice cream, or writing with bites of ice cream now and again.

But for the moment, here my video offering in case you want a bit more convincing and help about ignoring all the noise, confusion, and complication, and just doing a bit of writing:

3rd Day Writers Video–for the writer in you!

~ Bev Parker ~ Leave a comment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_a30dxgeW0

Salty about Authentic Writing and Decor, and about Joy!

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Your Favorite Love Song, Please.

~ Bev Parker ~ Leave a comment

Hi,

I’m coming right along with the improved and expanded edition of The Maker’s Marriage (please don’t order from the picture here on the website, as I still haven’t managed to delete it ) and I’m wanting to add beautiful love song suggestions, as music is such a power tool in getting our hearts right, and attuned to love.

So, if you have a favorite love song or songs, or indeed just any favorite beautiful and uplifting music, would you mind sharing via comments, or by simply e-mailing to me at: bevparker@rocketmail.com.

‘I need a song for every chapter (there are thirty something chapters right now) and I don’t want to limit my readers to my tastes only. Also, if you want to include a few lines about why this song is special to you, that might be helpful as well.

Please remember my promise to have this very good (if I do think so, myself) book finished by John’s and my 30th anniversary–October 12, and be ready to buy a copy or several to share.

Thanks very much!

Bev

P.S. If you know how I can delete my current pic of The Maker’s Marriage, I would really appreciate knowing if you can spare a minute or two to share.

~ Bev Parker ~ Leave a comment

Week One of my Zero For Six adventure is over, and here are some conclusions and confessions.

ON NON-ESSENTIAL SPENDING

I tried more than once to buy makeup and skin care, and finally settled for ordering the ingredients to make skincare at home (from Vitacost.com) and a tube of lipstick and some foundation, both Mineral Fusion. This after I trashed all my old (some 14 years old!) cosmetics and was completely out of skincare. I was using Vaseline.

When I say I tried more than once, I mean I filled my cart with some very impressive products on the Net, and then just couldn’t spend all that money, so gave it up. The next morning I drove to a department store to see if there was one of those cool specials where you spend $35 and get a promo package worth $150 of stuff you mostly want and will use. Nothing doing, plus they were blasting cruddy (non-relaxing, non-uplifting, non-melodious) music and I’m just so over going into stores where the customer is obviously not that important.

So, one of the morals of this story is that frugality can either be deprivation, or it can be an open door to creativity, often resulting in a better quality and healthier outcome. And of course, there’s that lovely smug feeling that comes of spending less and getting more. How smart are we? Pretty smart.

ON NON-FATIGUING FOODS

I dropped the ball here a little, both at The Sugar Mouse tea house on Thursday in Laramie, Wyoming, and then again Saturday night, when I made chocolate no-bake cookies (they had peanut butter, so that makes them real food, right?). But then this morning I read Honey, God’s Gift for Health and Beauty, which caused me to sweeten my blueberry muffins with honey rather than sugar, and to give my leftover no-bakes to my son, who has no belly fat and a great love for no-bakes.

From there I researched benefits of drinking vinegar and honey and went to town for organic (with the mother) apple cider vinegar. I already have raw honey, so upon finishing this post I’ll make this amazing elixir and partake!

As to coffee, I actually went to a coffee shop and ordered herbal blackberry tea, iced. Delicious! I didn’t have any coffee at all, all week long, until a very tiny cup (1/4 cup of coffee, 1/4 cup of heavy whipping cream) today, telling myself that I will allow myself one cup per week. So, we’ll see how that goes.

ON WATCHING

I scored A++++++ on this one. There are so many other marvelous and fun and creative things that get done when the TV/laptop/phone is off. I love it. Yes, there were a couple of times when I wanted to watch something, but it was only when I was thinking of eating something fatiguing . . . As I’ve said before, these habits, for good or for not-so-good, go together.

It was helpful that I didn’t take a martyr’s stance, that I checked my thoughts before speaking them. I might have thought a few times that it would be nice to sit down and take a load off, watching something totally fun, such as Decoy Bride, or that it wouldn’t hurt to watch whatever John was watching. After all, it was Friday night . . . But I didn’t speak it, didn’t talk about it. Instead I settled in with a stack of books, my journal, pens, and highlighters, and read old favorites such as The Shape of a Year by Jean Hersey, and Candy Paull’s Abundance. I prayed as I read from the Psalms, and also had a couple of lovely phone conversations. Best of all, I did some some very in-depth listening to my beloveds as they shared their hearts. This simply doesn’t happen when you’re glued to the tube.

Determined not to be even a little bit tempted to watch an episode of Poirot tonight, I made a library visit and came home with Francine Rivers, Victoria Holt and of course, Agatha Christie. I was completely surprised by the ending of By the Pricking of My Thumbs, and I keep marveling at the mind of Agatha Christie, and wondering when my non-watching time will become writing time. Fiction, I mean–the writing that stretches me, calls me, eludes me, and won’t leave me alone. As my daugher Rebekah said when she was little and things didn’t go smoothly, “Oh, sigh.”

ON SPEAKING GOOD WORDS

I noticed and noted that I don’t need to worry about the negative words of others–I have plenty of my own. I read Lindsey Roberts’ free booklet, The Company You Keep and among so much rich and uplifting information, I focused on the idea of being good company to me. I really enjoy myself when nothing but faith, thanksgiving, and great expecations come out of my mouth.

And of course, what you fill your heart and mind is what comes out of your mouth, and then what becomes your life. So, maybe out of all four of my Zero For Six quests, this one of is most important of all.

Writing and Home and Good Advice

~ Bev Parker ~ Leave a comment

May 6, 2020

I asked my daughter Rebekah  to join me on the balcony this morning.  “I need your advice,” I said (among the many rewards of homeschooling is wise children).  I made LaVazza in the French Press and brought her a San Pellegrino, then sat down with my journal. But before I, the Great Meeting Instigator, could present my thoughts, she began reading from 52 Hebrew Words Every Christian Should Know by Dave Adamson.

I wanted to talk about me.  Sigh.  Patience.  Wait, what was that?  About His mercies being new every morning?  The word is rachum.  I remembered why we were on the balcony.  Because not only was it morning, but it was a beautiful, shining, May morning.  A robin was worm hunting beneath us, and another one was pecking a bedroom window  for reasons unknown.  Perhaps he thought his reflection was a possible Mrs. Robin, and extremely attractive.  Perhaps, like me, he thought it was all about him.

Rebekah continued to read and I waited.  Quietly.  Surely I am smarter than that robin?  Finally, I talked.  “Shall I write fiction or non?”  What about this, and that, etc.?  Her answer brought a flirting, flittering thought from the back of my mind to the fore:  “Write what’s in your heart and hold nothing back.” 

What is in my heart?  Home.  Jesus and Home.  Home.

My fiction is about home, and my non-fiction as well.  Write both?  Then where to begin?  It’s Springtime.  Resurrection.  You don’t have to begin, merely resume with vigor.  The whole world’s all about singing a new song, and doing a new thing, and out with the old and in with the new.  And that’s marvelous.  Sometimes.

But sometimes it’s marvelous to go digging through all kinds of old stuff – barely begun stories and mostly finished manuscripts, journals, forgotten thoughts and notes, highlighted portions of old books from friends’ hearts.

They’re friends I’ve never met, but who wrote from their hearts unto mine, holding nothing back.  “Father, help me, direct me, anoint me, to write like that.  Even as you spoke to Rebekah’s heart and she passed it on to mine, speak to my heart so that I can pass it on to those who have home in their hearts.  Amen.”

That’s pretty much everyone.

Thanks for joining me.

P.S.  But what about that “hold nothing back” part?  Yikes.  That sounds quite messy.

When I Write a Book . . .

~ Bev Parker ~ Leave a comment

I picked up Alice Hoffman’s The Third Angel because it was recommended in Fearless Writing.

I have a like/dislike relationship with this book, but I’m keeping on with it because it keeps redeeming itself, keeps pulling me along with unexpected delights.

I am not delighted with a woman who is marrying a man she knows to be selfish and flawed, but I am carried away with the answer to her own question:  How do you love such a person?  You just do it.

I am delighted when a book reminds me of the truths in my own life, how love is an act, a sacrifice, a looking like God.  Love is God and I am becoming more transformed into His image when I “just do it.”

Like the character in The Third Angel, I find myself unmoved by the flaws in those I love, even blind to them, when I get on that love train and we both start going places.  Life becomes an adventure of raw discovery, flaws become idiosyncrasies, differences become intriguing – even delightful, and life is good.

There is language in The Third Angel.  If not, the editors would probably say to the author, “This is London, you must have language, no one will believe it otherwise.”  But if I write a book, the strongest language will begin with “sh” and end with “it” even if the plane is crashing.

Wait.  No planes crashing in my book.  I will, as they say, write what I know.  Spaghetti sauce in a favorite antique bowl slipping out of my hand as I swipe it out of the fridge, breaking and splattering spaghetti sauce all over the kitchen.  Living and moving and breathing spaghetti sauce.  Everywhere.  Little faces astounded at the crash and even more at Mommy saying that word.

But then I would forget about a broken bowl and a messy kitchen because there is a much larger issue:  tender and bare feet.  I would shoo them away and clean every last speck – not perhaps every last speck of spaghetti sauce, which I will be finding this time next year, but every single last speck of glass.

Because I know these feet are going to be with me forever.  I know what is real and good, and that is the life of my children.  Life.

I don’t know if Alice Hoffman knows life is good, if her book will end as a good book must, with a satisfactory and victorious ending (a love ending).  I do know if I write a book, it will be filled top to bottom, end to end, and side to side with “Just do it” love.

Amen.

P.S.  Don’t miss The Homefront Show Fridays at 2:00 MTN.  Go to 1360am.co and join the fun!