I've started sketching...

Our family went on the Covered Bridge tour yesterday and this was the sketch that turned out best.

Of all three of these sketches, this is my favorite one.

There are a couple of things I've learned doing this one: 1) There are more than just a few colors in pictures and 2) grass takes a really long time to draw.

Free Writing

I'm going to start doing something known as 'free writing'. A friend of mine sent me a couple of lists of words that she used before and I've always thought it sounded like fun. All you do is pick something from the list (I'll post it below) and write about it. Just write whatever you want. It doesn't have to be perfect--it's practice. The list I'm posting below is one of the lists that I've gotten ideas for several of my descriptions over the past couple of weeks.

I haven't done just "fun writing" as much as I'd like to, but it really is a welcome break from plots and everything else that goes along with a story, even though I greatly enjoy those as well. Hopefully you all will have some fun with it as well!

Writing Ideas List:

1. Introduction

2. Complicated

3. Making History

4. Rivalry

5. Unbreakable

6. Obsession

7. Eternity

8. Gateway

9. Death

10. Opportunities

11. 33%

12. Dead Wrong

13. Running Away

14. Judgement

15. Seeking Solace

16. Excuses

17. Vengeance

18. Love

19. Tears

20. My Inspiration

21. Never Again

22. Online

23. Failure

24. Rebirth

25. Breaking Away

26. Forever and a day

27. Lost and Found

28. Light

29. Dark

30. Faith

31. Colors

32. Exploration

33. Seeing Red

34. Shades of Grey

35. Forgotten

36. Dreamer

37. Mist

38. Burning

39. Out of Time

40. Knowing How

41. Fork in the road

42. Start

 43. Nature's Fury

44. At Peace

45. Heart Song

46. Reflection

47. Perfection

48. Everyday Magic

49. Umbrella

50. Party

51. Troubling Thoughts

52. Stirring of the Wind

53. Future

54. Health and Healing

55. Separation

56. Everything For You

57. Slow Down 

58. Heartfelt Apology

59. Challenged

60. Exhaustion

61. Accuracy

62. Irregular Orbit

63. Cold Embrace

64. Frost

65. A Moment in Time

66. Dangerous Territory

67. Boundaries

68. Unsettling Revelations

69. Shattered

70. Bitter Silence

71. The True You

72. Pretence

73. Patience

74. Midnight

75. Shadows

76. Summer Haze

77. Memories

78. Change in the Weather

79. Illogical

80. Only Human

81. A Place to Belong

82. Advantage

83. Breakfast

84. Echoes

85. Falling

86. Picking up the Pieces

87. Gunshot

88. Possession

89. Twilight

90. Nowhere and Nothing

91. Answers

92. Innocence

93. Simplicity

94. Reality

95. Acceptance

96. Lesson

97. Enthusiasm

98. Game

99. Friendship

100. Endings

Piano (description)

Light glistens white against the black polish on the piano. It looks alone in the middle of the stage. Dark blue velvet curtains hang limp on the sides of the stage and a single spotlight illuminates the area.

I ascend the steps to the stage, my heels clicking against the stairs and the peach dress swishing around my legs. The auditorium sits in silence as I walk across the stage. The clicking seems to reverberate off the walls. 

My palms start to feel sweaty and I play with the sheet music in my left hand, sliding the pages back and forth against each other.

After what seems like hours, I reach the piano. Taking a deep breath, I slide the bench out and sit down. The cushiony seat bounces a little. Hands shaking, I spread out my sheet music on the music rack of the piano and lift the lid covering the keys. I smile and brush my hands lightly over the rows of ivory and black.

I take one more breath before placing my hands on the keys. The hammers strike the strings on the grand piano as my fingers fly over the keys. The music sounds rich and deep and I grin from the sheer enjoyment of it.

All too soon, the piece is over and the audience is cheering. Shaking, I stand up from the bench and grin. The audience stands and applauds and I curtsy before awkwardly making my way off the stage.

Encourage one another!

The other day, a friend of mine made this comment, "Boys are just all stupid!". While I tend to agree with her on most other things, this comment somewhat concerned me. So, I decided to do what any writer does and write a bit of a rant about it.

Feminism is so prominent in our culture now. Women are now saying that they can do just the same things as men and that men are dumb animals. Instead of letting a man be a man, he's now belittled and sometimes teased or not taken seriously when he does something manly. By acting this way toward a man, women are discouraging him from stepping up and taking the lead!

Eric Ludy says in his co-authored book 'When God Writes Your Love Story', "when a woman says something to a man, it stays with him forever and can change him."

Ladies, we not realize it, but our words have SO much power. If all we ever say to our brothers or fathers or male friends is, "Oh you're just a guy, you're so dumb," they'll act like it. Nothing else is expected of them but to be a big meathead, so why on earth would they strive to do anything better? 

However, on the flip side, your words can be used for encouragement and so much good! Thank a guy when he opens a door for you and he'll feel more motivated to do it again. Encourage your brother when you see him step up and take the lead and he will want to do it again to impress you. The comment of a woman stays with a guy forever, whether it be good or bad. Pick your words carefully and use them to help, and not harm, our brothers in Christ. 

We're called to be encouraging to each other and this applies not only to our brothers and fathers, but also the guys around us--our brothers in Christ. So ladies, next time you're tempted to point out something that's annoying and condescending to a guy, rethink it and consider what effect it will have on him. Instead, encourage him towards Godly manhood.

Let no corrupting talk come from out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.--Ephesians 4:29

Cricket night (description)

I lay back on the hammock and push off with my feet. It sways side to side slowly and I close my eyes. A cool breeze blows through the pines around me and I inhale the fresh scent. Crickets chirp all around, their chorus almost deafening. The soft hum of an engine can be heard in the distance and I open my eyes. A plane flies overhead and I can barely make out its lights through the tree branches.

The breeze starts to blow stronger and I wrap my jacket tighter around me. Pine needles  click against each other above me, adding to the cricket’s chorus. A owl hoots in the tree above me and I open my eyes wide, trying to catch a glimpse of him. The light from the full moon reveals his silhouette perched high at the top of the tree. I can barely see his head turning from side to side as he searches for prey. Silently, he launches himself from the branch and glides down into the grass behind me. 

Weekly Description--Cold

Cold wind whistled through the ice-covered trees. The branches clinked together, sounding like hundreds of little wind chimes. I shivered and wrapped my arms tightly around me, trying to keep out the cold. The flannel coat I wore for protection did little more than give my hands something to grab. Snow drifts covered the ground and were lit up with the blue light from the moon. A dark shadow passed over the ground. Gasping, I whirled and looked up, only to see a solitary owl silhouetted against the moon. I watched as he flew further into the trees until I could see him no more. A sharp squeal came from the direction he had flown and I knew he’d found his prey.

Trudging forward, I stumbled on the slick surface. Ice covered most of the snow, making it nearly impossible to walk on. At least my feet are somewhat dry. The forest began to get more and more dense as I walked forward. Soon, I could no longer see much light. Little beams let their way through the tangle of ice covered branches. Occasionally, the light reflected off several ice covered limbs at once, making them look like Christmas lights. 

This might be going into a short-story-turned-novel-that-needs-planned that I'm working on for an English class. No, the assignment is not to write a novel. I'll submit a short story and probably turn it into a novel afterwards. I have trouble doing short things. :P

The muse I need...

I've decided this would be an effective way to actually get something written:

Now if only there was a drink or something labeled 'inspiration' or some medicine called 'anti-writer's block'. Ah well. 

Is a day really a day?

For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day.-Exodus 20:11a

There are many theories about how the earth was created, when it was created and how long it took. The Biblical view of Creation states that God made the world in 6 literal 24-hour days. Evolution theory says there isn’t and Intelligent Designer and the earth came to be by a huge explosion (that’s a topic for a different post.) Other people believe that God did indeed create the earth, but there are varied opinions on how He did it. These theories include Theistic Evolution, Day-Age theory, Gap theory and others. I’ll only be discussing the Day-Age theory this time.

The Secular view of Creation

The Biblical view of Creation

The Day-Age theorists believe that the earth was created by God, instead of 6 literal 24-hour days, each day stretched on for millions of years. Genesis 1 is the entire story of Creation. Each day for 6 days, God created things and then rested on the 7^th (that’s where we get our week). The Hebrew word used in this chapter is ‘Yom’, which is always in conjunction with a number. Whenever the word ‘Yom’ is placed with a number, it always means a literal 24-hour day; ‘and there was evening and morning—the first day (Yom)’—Genesis 1:5a. If each day had been millions of years long, there would have been death before sin. How then, after each Creation day, could ‘He saw all the he had made and it was very good’. (Genesis 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25 and 31)

Genesis 3 deals with the curses God places on man and woman after sin. It also records the first death (Genesis 3:21). Instead of the fig leave coverings that Adam and Eve attempted to make for themselves after they ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, He used animal skin to make garments. ‘‘By the sweat of your face, you will eat bread, till you return to the ground. Because from it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.’—Genesis 3:19. If there had been death before sin, this curse wouldn’t have been placed upon man. There already would have been death in the world.  To quote Answers in Genesis:   “In a secular worldview, there has always been death. So, the Christians try to incorporate secular history of millions of years into their theology, two main questions arise. Was there really a change when Adam and Eve sinned? And what will heaven really be like. . . ?”

It’s interesting that Genesis 1 is the only place the days are attacked. For example, nobody questions the fact that Jonah was a big fish for three days, it rained for 40 days during the great flood or the Jesus rose from the dead after three days. Why is it that Genesis 1 is such a big issue?

Think about it logically. How can you believe the rest of the Bible if you don’t believe the beginning of it? Genesis is the foundation for everything in the rest of the Old Testament, New Testament and our world today. In Answers in Genesis’ video Millions of Years, the speaker puts it this way, “The church in America is just worried about the cross. Sure the enemy may be hitting the foundation, but as long as it doesn’t hit the cross, they don’t care what the attacks are on Genesis.”   

The issue here is really an authority issue. It’s a problem that has gone on since the Garden of Eden and a problem that will continue until Jesus returns. In the Garden, the serpent tempted Eve and twisted what God had said. In the same way, the devil is attacking a literal interpretation of Genesis by twisting what God has said.

 “And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”—Genesis 2:16-17

Pretty straightforward. However, look at the exchange between the serpent and the woman in Chapter 3:

[The serpent] said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

“Why does it matter?” you may ask. “Isn’t it enough that I simply believe God created the earth? Does it matter what I believe about how He create it?” If you think about it, taking Genesis literally really is a big issue. If the foundation of the Bible—God’s inspired word—isn’t believe, what’s to say the rest of it should be? Jesus Himself quoted the Old Testament many times and clearly showed that He took Genesis literally (see Mark 10:6, which is referring back to Genesis 1:27). So, if the Son of God took Genesis at face-value and believed what His Father said, why shouldn’t we?

(Graphics belong to Answers in Genesis. www.answersingenesis.org)

Weekly Description

I'm going to start posting a description from things I've written. I will post it once a week. The description could be short or long...one paragraph or several. Hopefully, this will help me stay a bit more motivated to actually write (yes, I admit I've not been the best at my writing time lately) and try to come up with a good mental picture for things. When I went to the One Year Adventure Novel  Summer Workshop, there were several speakers who talked about description. It's really important that you describe things in your novel so that your reader has a clear mental picture of what you're thinking of. If you neglect this, then either they'll come up with their own idea or the story won't feel real to them. Another thing could happen (especially so with character descriptions). If you don't show how a character looks until the end of Chapter 1 or beginning of Chapter 2, the reader has already formed their own idea of what they want the character to look like. When you finally do get around to describing that, it makes it harder for the reader to switch to what you pictured in your mind.

Anyways, moving on with the post now. Here is description number 1:

The lights that still worked flickered. All of the fixtures were dusty and covered with spider webs and dead bugs. Mildew stained the floors and the walls certainly looked like they’d seen better days. Graffiti covered most of them, proclaiming profane statements and some things I couldn’t even read. Remnants from the spray paint accented the floor. A cold, musty smell filled the air.

--Excerpt from Chapter 2 of a futuristic/sci-fi/dystopian/young adult collective novel.