Back in the fight

Ok I thought I had given up. I was so tired of emailing agents just to wait around for a negative response or no response at all. It was depressing. I really thought I was done. It has been a full four years since The Sureshot came out and I have not found a publisher for my second book. It makes me want to give up. Then someone encourages me and I get a second (or third, or fourth, or tenth) wind. Again it was students. I sold a few books to them after some were interested and they really liked it. Of course they did. I have had very little negative feedback. Normally I would question their sincerity but with teenagers I have no doubts because they rarely spare anyone's feelings. One said I looked like Hitler today. Still it is tough shaking the feeling that all my effort is in vain. They are really excited about a story I was working on this summer, but I think it is because they all want me to create a character based on them. Tonight's goal…send more queries, and pray someone takes an interest.

Not Giving Up

It was a tough summer for me in regard to writing. I did not land an agent yet and it is bothering me more than it should perhaps. I almost gave up. About a week ago I was sitting at my computer ready to write my resignation letter. Then I was encouraged by my students. Some of them told me that they loved my book and couldn't wait to read more. This was all I needed. I doubt sometimes as I have not been blessed with endless confidence in myself, but when I am reassured by others I can keep going. Perhaps it is a character flaw, but what can I do? Nevertheless, I still feel like I have enough talent and potential to be a successful writer. I need to hone my craft, and learn to market myself better, but ultimately I still believe that I will get there. Where ever "there" is. Ultimately I know that it takes faith more than anything, and I still have some. We'll see where I am in a few more months, but until then I am going to wake up every day with the mindset that my future is in writing. That's where I'm at, and that's where I'm going. For better or worse.

Dress Up

I am an amateur psychologist. I am especially interested in child psychology having three children and being a high school teacher. They are a fascinating breed, both the little ones and the not so little ones. One topic that I am interested in is the nature v. nurture argument that I imagine will never be settled. Like most people, I think that there are strong elements of nature in children, but they are amazingly susceptible to molding it seems so I cannot deny a nurture component. When it comes to the genders I am highly opposed to the idea that we as parents and a society instill basic gender roles on our children. To further my understanding of the topic, I am conducting an ongoing case study in my home. Here is one piece of evidence.

My son is a warrior. From birth he has been different from his older sister who is a mere 18 months his senior. There is something in him that compels him to hit things, throw things, smash things and build things. Few of the toys his sister had held his interest unless they could be fashioned into something that could be used for the afore mentioned purposes. It is fascinating for me to watch. For instance I have seen him put on one of his sister's princess dresses. Naturally his older sister wants to play dress up, and since he was not really at the dress up age yet he had none of his own. Instead he came around the corner in a princess dress. Seeing my son wearing a dress, I had a serious decision to make, and one that could heavily impact the nurture side of the argument if I were to respond poorly. I chose to act as though it were perfectly acceptable because I figured he was far too young to be embarrassed about it and punishing him seemed completely idiotic. I let it be as the Beatles song goes. It turned out it was the right choice. Once dressed up, his sister handed him a magic wand. Not a magic one like Gandalf (Lord of the Rings) would have, but a princess wand that one might associate with, well…fairies. I was slightly more concerned but had already committed to seeing how this would play out without my interference. I watched…admittedly nervous. Would he twirl and spin? Would he sprinkle magic fairy dust on things? Would he hope a prince saved him and gave him true love's first kiss? The outcomes were unnerving. Alas I was spared the more controversial results. With a princess dress on and a magic wand in his hand, my son proceeded to try and whack his sister with the bejeweled wand as though it were not a wand at all but a club instead. I sighed and smiled. His sister ran in terror afraid of the savage attack. He chased her making crashing sounds with his mouth as he pretended to club her with his wand. At that moment I saw the scene from a different point of view. I no longer saw my son in a beautiful, elaborate princess dress accessorized by a jeweled wand, I saw a savage warrior in a kilt wielding a club and engaged in a primitive battle for survival. He has not changed my image of him one iota since that day. Score one for nature. You can put a dress on a boy, but he still wants to smash things.

All You Need is Love

Just a little poem for anyone interested.

To not have to worry about money or wealth,
To never have problems with sickness or health,
If food was free, and there was plenty for me,
If the world was at peace, and there was oil in the East,
It would be nice.

But everything is literally uncontrollable.
It is a nice dream, and an immense goal.
It’s not something that will change overnight.
Hopefully someday we can live in an utopia,
But until then we must survive,
And keep our hopes alive.
So to walk down the long and winding road,
All you need is love.
Everything else is lace on the tapestry of life.

Book Review: East of Eden

Besides spending time relaxing on vacation for the first time this summer, I have been doing a little reading. I just finished East of Eden by John Steinbeck. Let me say first that I love Steinbeck. Although he has radical tendencies sometimes, and I do not always support some of the statements he makes with his writing, he is an excellent author. In this book he built an elaborate story around the creation story, but more so the story of Cain and Able. On this theme he compared and contrasted the brotherly dynamic and their propensity to sin, and their desire to be loved by God or their father in this case. It was amazing how he used believable and deep characters to retell the story so many people are familiar with, while adding his own commentary about sin, religion, family and people. I loved it. It was of course very dark as a bit depressing as his writing often is, but still gripping. I am not sure I will add it among my favorite books since Tortilla Flat also by Steinbeck already resides there, but I definitely give it a thumbs up.

Summer Time

Summer is here and I was disappointed to count out the number of weeks I had off and come up with a paltry 6. I know I sound selfish because very few other occupations allow you that much time off, but still I was hoping for more. Besides that, this is the first summer in which having kids is going to use up much of my time. I wrote The Sureshot while watching Madelyn, Sureshot 2 with Madelyn and Elijah around. But with Madelyn, Elijah and Olivia, and them all getting older and more demanding of my time, things might be different. I am not sure what I wrote last summer except for a bunch of lessons for my world history class, but this summer is definitely going to be a struggle. So far we have filled our time with Vacation Bible School, summer reading classes for Madelyn at Fresno State, and karate (both mine and Elijah's). Next week there are swim lessons, and more reading classes. We actually made a calender and posted it in the kitchen so that we could keep up with all the things we needed to do on a daily basis. It is a bit exhausting. Still I have managed to nearly complete the Christmas play and I am way ahead of schedule on that. After that I think I will put a bit more polish on Sureshot 2 then move on to another writing project. Which one is any one's guess. I would love to write the third Sureshot story, but it might serve me well to work on something different. I have loads of stories I summarized and feel I can dive into. Maybe I will create a survey and let people help me decide what to write. That would be fun, let people help me choose the next story. I am passionate about so many things that sometimes I cannot even choose which to pursue. Anyways, I hope you all are enjoying your summer, and hopefully it is not as busy as mine. Ciao.

Monopoly

I don't need to say any more than....I dominated. There was a brief discussion over which game was more impressive to win at. I suggested that monopoly was the best because it represented business smarts. Then Brandi reminded me that I can't spell, so I stopped arguing. Still....dominated.

Scrabble

I suck at scrabble. The other night I suggested that Brandi and I play because I was tired of watching TV. It had been a while and I do not think I have ever defeated her at the game, but if I remembered correctly the last game was surprisingly close so I took my chances. My Scrabble woes are multi faceted. Firstly I am a poor speller. I feel like I am getting better but when I was in the midst of my foreign language studies I could hardly construct an English word properly. This stems from the fact that I was learning to write in other languages, and the fact that Slavic and especially Serbian has an alphabet wherein every letter makes only one sound. It is brilliant really and if there was a vote today on switching to Serbian as a primary language I would vote yeah. I can't stand the letter C for instance. C is the most irrelevant letter in our alphabet in my estimation. It makes either an S or a K sound. When combined with other letters it manages a new sound like CH but we could make a new letter for that sound, or adopt (as in the case of Serbian) C for the CH sound. I digress.

My other problem with Scrabble is that I am creative. When I get a word in my head (and I am apt to create large words) I find a way to make it work. A creative way. I will scramble letters until I find a way to make a word that I want. It may be by dropping a double consonant, or by changing vowels so that the word still sounds the same phonetically. To me that is all I want. I want the word to sound the same, even if it is not technically correct. Brandi disagrees. She insists that I spell the word correct or she penalizes me and makes me remove my word. Harsh I know. So after the third word I had rejected, I gave up, threw a bit of a tantrum and called quit. It was disgraceful really. I should have done the right thing, continued to play even though I was getting smashed, and taken the loss like a man, but I overreacted when my third word was revealed to be a non-word. All my frustration came to a head when I was trying to spell the word ghost. When I typed it just now I had no problem spelling it, but on my board I did not have an "h". So I tried to improvise by spelling it goest. Why not? It sounds right. Ultimately I knew that it was incorrect and Brandi was nice enough to confirm that before I embarrassed myself further by trying to lay goest down as a word. So then I tried to throw down the word geist as in poltergeist. I accidentally switched the center letters however spelling giest, which brought an objection from Brandi. I lost it. At now my third incorrect word I could not handle it and quit after a bit of a tirade. I admit it was childish.

So, I suck at Scrabble. Next time I am going to suggest Monopoly. Now that is a game.

Getting an A

I did a border line unethical thing. Ok it is definitely unethical and I am sorry, but in the grand scheme of things it is much better than having a relationship with a student or being drunk on the job or something like that. I wrote a sonnet for a student. I know! I shouldn't have! It was wrong! If you can find it in you to let me explain, then perhaps you can see your way to forgiving me.

There is an English teacher on campus with a reputation for being hard. He teaches seniors only and gives them a lot of work. One day a student in my Econ class was complaining because she felt like there was no way she could write a sonnet. I dismissed her complaint by stating that sonnets are not all that difficult and that I had written several. She persisted and explained how there was a pattern to them and that each line had to be 10 syllables. I reiterated my position that there were not that hard, but she did not back down and we were at an impasse.

To settle the dispute she issued a challenge. She said that if I was so good, I could write a sonnet for her. I, being a writer and confident in my sonnet writing skills, did not back down. I said that I could do it no problem. Having accepted the challenge I asked the class for topics. Hotdogs, spam, and pirates, were among the topics that made the list. I chose pirates as my topic.

I assigned my students their work for the day which involved them reading then responding to some questions about trade or something, and sat down to write a pirate sonnet. Armed with the Shakespearian sonnet pattern I began. In fifteen minutes or so I was finished. I grinned confident that I had won the challenge. I feel as though I wrote an excellent sonnet and announced to the class that I had finished. Many did not believe that I had actually created one in such a short time span having spent hours on their own. I then read it to the class. There was applause and I smiled widely brimming with pride. The girl who issued the challenge asked repeatedly if each line was indeed ten syllables so I gave it to her to verify. She did so and the sonnet was intact. There was more adoration. Then I was put in an awkward position that I myself walked into. The student wanted the sonnet.

I did not intend to actually do work for a student, but she had challenged me to write her a sonnet with the implied intention of turning in the work I produced. I did not want to allow it however finding it unethical and to complicate the situation further there were more students who then wanted me to write them a sonnet. Students were petitioning me for sonnets immediately and shouting out topics while my head spun. In the end I chose a middle ground. I gave the student the pirate sonnet and declined to write any more.

I was then anxious to know what I got on the sonnet. It had been ten years since a poem of mine had been submitted for evaluation. Eventually she told me that it received an A, but to make things more uncomfortable, the teacher took her aside to compliment her pirate sonnet. I debated telling the teacher, but did not want to put everyone involved in an embarrassing position. The student would likely have her work erased, I would have to explain the whole situation and risk damaging a relationship with a respected colleague, and the teacher would potentially be embarrassed for praising her, or rather, my work. So I kept quiet.

It was wrong, I know, but I am still rather proud to have received an A. It was like being in senior English all over again. Here is the controversial sonnet for your judgement.

 

Pirates swinging in the rigging up high

I'm deafened by the loud booming of guns

Cannon balls and debris falls from the sky

Battle raging on, had only begun

 

Swords clinging and clanging, wanting to run

All around the ship, is nothing but sea

Death all around me my body is numb

My efforts are vain with nowhere to flee

 

Brave sailors all dying shown no mercy

The ship over taken, the battle lost

The pirates laugh and cheer with evil glee

One handsome and tall, apparently boss

 

Captured and made a pirate captain's queen

Together we sail the oceans wide and green

Getting Older

May was a busy month. My daughter turned 5, I turned 29, my wife turned...well...she had a birthday. I was rejected by another agent (3 total), we suffered two plagues (swine flu, and bubonic plague) and I guess I worked somewhere in there. I managed to do some writing. Mostly I continued to polish Sureshot 2, but I also worked on a new project.

As I get closer to thirty I take stock on what I have accomplished and I am not ashamed. I have done a lot in 29 years. I would love to add best selling author to the list, but so far that remains on my list of things to do. Still I have studied 3 foreign languages while serving 5 years in the army. I have been married 7 years (nearly 8), and helped create 3 beautiful children. I have had a book published and written another. I finished a bachelors in arts, and the teaching credential program. I have taught history and economics for two years, as well as Sunday school. I have written 3 Christmas/Easter plays, and am working on 4 and 5. I have served as a deacon, and brought a few people to Christ. Over all, not bad for 29 years of life. I have more to do, but I am trying to be patient and keep things in perspective.

Here's a toast to life, more birthdays, and more accomplishments. Prost!

Wimp

I realize I’ve something lacking.
You say it is my gut relaxing.
I believe it’s my mind still turning.
That stops my heart always burning.
If you lose patience and move on,
I cannot blame you for your action.
I’m a wimp and a coward at that.
All I’ve done so far is sat.
But please remember my lack of time,
That I’ve invested in women divine.
For surely I will come around.
I just pray that when I do it’s you I’ve found.

In Flight

More old Poetry

Flying,
through the dark black sky.
Soaring,
over the tiny world below.
Gliding ,
across huge, crushing, currents.
Sailing,
with the endless wind.
Darting,
past great flashes of lightning.
Skimming,
the thin atmosphere.
Floating,
on the tranquil white clouds.
Living,
everyday, one at a time.
Changing,
with the unpredictable weather.

It will take you where you want to go.

Calling All Agents

As I mentioned in an earlier post I am looking for an agent. I was so enthusiastic after The Sureshot was published with relative ease that I thought I had my writing career moving. While I still think that is true, I am faced with a few new realities. The first is the real possibility that my book is not as good as I think it is. This is hard to swallow, but I am comforted knowing that it is my first work and I am young enough to polish my writing to hopefully reach a level more impressive. The second is that the world of literature is much tougher to succeed in than I thought. It seems it is not enough to write well. You need to write well, find an agent who agrees that you write well, then improve the work you already spent hours on, then your agent has to convince a publisher that you write well. Then, I think, you have made it as a write, but to be honest I am not sure yet. I definitely should not have sailed this ship with a wife and three kids aboard. As it is however the ship has sailed and I do not want to turn back yet. So I am looking for an agent. I really need an agent because I don't know what I am doing when it comes to publishers. I need an editor. I need a book deal so I can invest more time into writing. I am torn however because I do not want to settle for any agent but really want to find one who knows what the heck they are doing. I signed up for "the Writer's Market" again so I can search lists of agents and find their contact information. This is helpful, but realistically there are only about 10 to 20 agents that I think could represent me. What is they don't think my manuscript is worthwhile? Should I give up? I don't know if I can. I know that so far this has largely been a poorly rewarded use of time, but I love it anyways. (Sigh) If only I could be compensated for loving something. So…know a good agent?

Why Fantasy?

I am in the process of finding an agent if one is willing. It is a laborious and slow process full of frustration and disappointment. All that and I have only been rejected by one agent thus far. I am not looking forward to doing this for long and I pray that I will find the one right for me soon. In this process however I was forced to reflect on my manuscript. One agency I scouted had an interesting page of information about why it is that they choose to represent writers. Their words were strong (in more ways than one), but made me think about my own work. I reflected on The Sureshot. Firstly I rethought (as I have a thousand times) whether it is a worthwhile piece. I still think it is. Then I thought about why I chose to write fantasy. Was it because I was young and into Dungeons and Dragons? Was I influenced by movies I watched? Was it because of some unfulfilled need deep inside me? Or was it something else? In the end, I think that fantasy offers the writer and the reader something that is hard to find in regular fiction. I believe that fantasy allows for the fantastic (hence the name). It is not constrained by reality. In fiction there is always a challenge making something believable. I read Kite Runner and although I thoroughly enjoyed the book, I was a little suspicious of the events leading to the climax of the book as they spiraled into an ever more elaborate tale. While it is natural that odd or unusual stories make up the bulk of fiction, sometimes it seems to go too far. In fantasy it is a challenge to go too far. It is possible mind you, but when you are not limited by human constraints or natural laws, anything is feasible. That is what I love about fantasy. What I don't love about much of the genre is the lack of humanity. I believe that fantasy needs to be human at its core. Good fantasy says something about mankind at its core. That is what I want to accomplish in my writing. My first goal was to make The Sureshot interesting, the second was to help the reader to identify with Durbar (the main character). It was not enough for me to entertain—I want to make a statement, or at least an observation. That is what I believe about fantasy, and that is why I write in the genre. What I need to do is show agents and then publishers that I am capable of this, and I am sure that they will find it worthwhile to work with me.

Going Down

Another poem. I would love to have something else to post right now, but aside from spending a lot of time shuttling my kids around and trying to get a few things of the Honey-Do list, I have been writing a novella for use in my World History Class. So...another poem...

A soft sweet rain falls on my face,
I never want to leave this tranquil place,
A breeze blows coolly through my shirt,
My damp pants are covered with dark dirt,
The sky is lifeless with gray clouds,
My bones cleaned eagerly by cows.

Sunk deeply in the thick clinging mud,
My salty tears form a small puddle
On my cheek, roots entangle my body
Turning my skin to a fine light sod;
Not yet! I climb from my hole,
You will never get to take my soul.
Too hell you will be sent to burn,
And sit there you will for eternity,
Giant rocks weigh you down,
A fate fitting for a social clown,
Still I walk amongst the living.
I will never go down without fighting.

Dear Olivia

Today I sat at the table and watched you. You were wearing a cute baby blue sleeper with multi colored polka dots. I had put some of your hair in a pony tail which stuck up on top of your head and spilled over on top like water from the blow-hole of a cartoon whale. The hair at the back of your head curled up in little wisps.

You were exploring. You crawled into the playroom and spilled multiple bins of toys—sifted through them like treasure, examining pieces that fancied you, but in the end discarding them all.

Dissatisfied, you crawled over to the basket your mother filled with items to be taken upstairs. You stood at the basket and removed things one by one. Occasionally you talked to one of the items—babbling in your baby language that only you and the angels understand.

You found your tiny shoes—more like moccasins really, all leather pink with flowers. You held one of them up to show me and told me about them. I pretended to understand and said they were beautiful shoes. You were proud of the shoe but tossed it aside so you could pick up something else. A few more items and the basket was empty. A job well done.

Looking for something else to do you scurried off clicking with your tongue on the roof of your mouth as you went. I clicked back, and you turned to me clicking a few times just to please me—you know how it warms my heart when you click to me, like it is our own special language.

You smiled and went back to work. I smiled too, wide, and felt tears forming in my eyes. I held that moment as long as I could, not wanting it to end.

The tears evaporated before they could fall, but I knew they were there. When I see you playing, babbling, smiling, clicking, I love you more than I think I can bear.

Book Review: Fahrenheit 451

This book was pretty much what I expected. I figured it would read like many of the books of the time that warned of totalitarianism (one of my favorite topics). I was a bit unique I suppose in that it focused on the society at a micro level. One of the things that interested me was the interactive TVs. His wife was obsessed with them and spent hours in the "parlor" watching or rather interacting with whatever it was that came through the screens that were as large as the wall. I was interested in this because it turned out to be prophetic. We now have tvs that are as large as walls and we also have very interactive entertainment through computers. I imagine it will only be a couple of years before the two meet. The end was a bit weak, but the theme was challenging so I am not criticizing too much. I doubt I could write a better ending. Still the story speeds up only to end abruptly. It is almost the ending that my dad advocates for: "then the sun went supernova and destroyed the world." It is worth the read—reinforces concepts of free speech and the need for literacy.

Book Review: Anthem

I read Ayn Rand because she is supposed to be an amazing writer, or at least thinker who started her own movement. I am also into the genre of writing that emerges after WWII. The challenge in reading Rand is that her two major pieces, Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, are upwards of 1000 pages. I for one do not read enough nor do I read fast enough to warrant taking on a 1000 page book. I know few who would do so, and I imagine that those who do take a certain amount of pride in themselves which only feeds into Rand's ideas. So I did a little research and found that all of her work is essentially the same in theme. So I took the easy way and read Anthem which is not even a novel but more like a novella. I bought it and read it in the car while I waited for my kids to get out of preschool. It is that short. It is an interesting piece, similar to others in the same genre including one of my favorites 1984. The thing that set it apart from other works including the afore mentioned Orwell work is that the protagonist succeeds in overcoming totalitarianism. He flees and is oddly not stopped in his flight by authorities. He meets up with his girlfriend and they find a cottage. There he teaches himself to read which is great and gives himself a name because as he declares, all people should name themselves (they all were given horrible communist type names with numbers attached). *Spoil alert* To me there is a flaw in the work that I believe was unintended. At the very end, after naming himself and explaining that it is important for people to name themselves (as Rand had) he names his girlfriend. Why did she not get to name herself? There is a chance that she slipped it in the book to suggest that the pattern would continue, but based on what I know of her, I think she slipped and showed the flaw in her philosophy. She is, to me, not really about rugged individualism (or hedonism as it sometimes appears) but about superiority. She feels that the brightest people are above others in more way than one, as she clearly thought about herself. In the end I am not wholly impressed with Rand and will not be tackling her other, heftier works.

Near Death Experience?

I consider myself a strong person, if not through physical feat, through health and resilience. I am not on any medications, do not get frequent headaches, have no known allergies, I’m in good shape, never broke a bone and aside from feeling the need to take daily naps, I feel as though I am healthy as a horse as they say. Until this January. I began to feel ill during Tuesday evening. Thinking it was gas or some other sort of minor digestive problem I pushed it from my mind and didn’t mention it. Wednesday I went to work with increasing pain, now sharp at times. I coached my soccer team to a victory and by the time I got home was in enough pain to complain. I told Brandi about my condition and was spared from taking the children to church for their Bible night. I made a complaining call to Directv and when Brandi came home she saw me wincing as I descended the stairs. She claimed to have seen the face I was making on many children with appendicitis. She asked me some questions then poked my abdomen and I nearly cried. She immediately told me that we were going to the hospital. I did not like the sound of that but trusted that she knew what she was talking about being a nurse so I called for a sub and took shower. Brandi called for someone to stay with our kids and we went to the hospital.

Once there I was subjected to much prodding and many questions, which were repeated by each new surgeon, nurse or doctor who came to see me. I was in ever increasing pain, and finally they put me on morphine. I imagined that it would take all my pains away but in reality I still felt horrible. I scan was finally done which confirmed that my appendix needed to be taken out. Some of the doctors and medical personnel were concerned because I exhibited some of the signs of an appendicitis, but not all of them. For instance I did not have a fever, but then… my appendix hurt. Neither did I feel noxious, but again… my appendix hurt. My white blood cell count was not elevated either… but one more time… my appendix hurt. Finally after being in the hospital for 11 hours, they removed my appendix.

I felt like I experienced date rape because I was merely lying on a bed writhing in agony... then they told me I was all done. When I became more aware of my environment I realized that I was in a new room all together. I was pleased notice that my appendix no longer hurt, but concerned that my pants and boxers were missing, my tummy on down was shaved, and my business hurt. All were of course natural and necessary things, but I could not help but feel a little violated.
As for feeling young and healthy, I had to embrace the fact that at age 28 I would have died had it not been for modern medicine. Praise the Lord. I was having trouble with that except that I have already produced 3 beautiful children and two manuscripts, served my country and finished college. Not bad. There are plenty of people older than me who haven’t done anything except smoke a lot of pot and drink a lot of beer, so I won’t complain if I am to die. Of course I would be dead so I imagine it would be hard to die. And after all, Dick Cheney has had four heart attacks, and still managed to serve as vice president. Doctors can probably keep me going for a while. I like my chances.

Rejected

I sent my second manuscript to a publisher which I would love to see publish my work and I was rejected! It hurt a little. I have faith in my work. Several people I trust to be honest and subjective affirmed its worth to me, but alas, rejection. Sometimes I feel like it is good. After all it is really only a minor setback. Some authors have been rejected many times. My next move is to look for an agent. I am not really excited about that prospect, but apparently that is the way to do things in our modern world. It might work out well, but I am nervous. How do I know if the agent is looking out for me? Are they working for me or I for them? Too many questions. I guess I will just have to trust that it will work out. Here’s hoping…

As for being rejected, I’m a big boy. I am reenergized to reread once more in an effort to improve my work. I also have written a few chapters of the Sureshot 3. After that I have to begin serious work on some of my other ideas, or I will have a list of projects that will never get written. It is good to be reminded that I have not yet arrived and that it is not about me, but what my work can bring to the world, and more importantly to God. I have committed my writing to him… and it is good to remember that. It cannot be about me or it will not work out. That is where I am at.