Think Awful Thoughts

Shop Talk: I got my last assignment back from my instructor the other day. I had to write a story featuring a character I developed in the previous assignment. In a nutshell, my instructor thought the piece was 'nice' but that the stakes for my character weren't high enough. She actually said I should 'awfulize' things a bit more. You know, instead of saying a boy broke his arm jumping off the rocks into the pond, maybe he should hit his head and DIE! Yeah, that's awful. I think I'm unsure about how awful things can get in a children's story. I find that as a mother I definitely have a tendancy to try and cover the awfulness of life. They'll figure out soon enough that things aren't always peachy. And maybe as a writer I'm tending to do the same thing. So for my next assignment I have the choice of writing a non-fiction piece - which is what I thought I wanted to do (remember Ghana?). Or revise the story from the last assignment. I want to get it right, so I'm revising. Revising is hard. It's like aerobics for your brain. Word count is an especially difficult part of revision. But before I even get to counting my words I need to think of the awful things that will happen in my story - ARRRGG! Ideas are rolling around in my head and I've begun a rough outline. I'm feeling a bit intimidated at the moment so I'm finding lots of excuses to keep from working on it.

In other news: Did I mention that we are going to Florida in the fall? We will be going with Ed's entire family. That'll be 17 of us all together; 8 adults and 9 kiddos! Notice I said Florida and not specifically Disney. We will do Disney a couple of days but we want to do other things this time. I'd like to drive to the beach, I've never been to the beach in Florida, which is amazing considering how many times we've been there! I'd like to expand our horizons a bit this time. We're not even staying on Disney property! There are beautiful resorts all over the place and we found a couple of four bedroom townhouses that we'll stay in for the week. I'm thinking I may share some Disney/Vacation travel tips I've acquired over the years periodically between now and our trip. I LOVE planning vacations!

How to put your life in perspective...List five words or phrases that describe your life right now. For example: Busy - chasing after kids, keeping house, fitting things in. Or Joyful - Hearing the sound of giggling children fills my heart with pure joy. Do this for you. You don't need to share it with anyone unless you want to. It's just an interesting way to see where you feel your life is right now. We did this at our bible study and it was very cool. Try it.

Ending With Scripture:

Proverbs 16:24 - Pleasant words are as a honeycomb, sweet to the soul, and health to the bones.