Month: December 2021

So, this is my third attempt at writing the latest blog post. I keep changing my mind on what topic to cover. Initially, the topic was that this is the first time I can remember when my wife and I have been alone on both Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day.

All three of our kids are grown with kids of their own and some of those kids are grown as well. For Thanksgiving, our two daughters and their families went to Kansas to be with one of our granddaughters. My son and his family planned to go to Nevada to be with another granddaughter, but one of them got the covid virus and they stayed home. Then for Christmas, there were other plans to travel with one daughter spending Christmas in Durango, so we could not all get together again. We held the family Christmas on the Sunday before Christmas Day.

The next topic concerned the week before the family gathering. There was a severe windstorm on Wednesday of that week. It blew a large tree limb onto the roof of our house. With wind gusts of more than 90 mph, it also downed trees and powerlines around the city. Just after the branch fell on our roof, we lost power which meant we were without heat. We managed to spend the first cold night at home but went to a hotel for the next night. Fortunately the power was restored Friday morning.

However, my daughter who lives two blocks away still didn’t have power on Friday. She was scheduled to host the family gathering but could not. My other daughter graciously agreed to host, and we had a great time. Though I think my son was still without power. I wrote two blog posts based on the events of that week but scrapped them.

Today’s post is about Christmas. I love Christmas. I do enjoy Christmas music just not nonstop for weeks on the radio. Fortunately, one of the Christian radio stations in the area interspersed Christmas songs with their regular contemporary Christian music. This year the Christmas song that stuck in my head is “This Baby” (“This Baby”: Steven Curtis Chapman Christmas Video – YouTube) by Stephen Curtis Chapman.

Though it is not a new song and I have listened to it many times before, this year it stayed with me throughout the Advent season. The chorus says, “This baby had come to change the world.” This baby was the fulfillment of the promise given to Abraham thousands of years before this baby’s birth. God told Abram, (Abraham), “and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” (Gen. 12:3 NIV)

CHORUS
But this baby made the angels sing,
And this baby made a new star shine in the sky.
This baby had come to change the world.
This baby was God’s own son, this baby was like no other one.
This baby was God with us, this baby was Jesus.

Later during Jesus’ adult ministry, he told Nicodemus,” For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” (John 3:16-17 NIV) This baby came to give us hope. The hope of a restored relationship with our loving heavenly father.

After the death and resurrection of Jesus, Paul wrote to the Philippian church, “Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross!” (Phil. 2:6-8 NIV).

I am grateful for all the blessings God has provided me this Christmas season. I am grateful for homeowner’s insurance to cover the damage caused by the tree falling; I am grateful for the financial provision that we might be warm in a hotel when the power is out; I am grateful for my family and that they have grown and matured, and that they are still fun to be around. But most of all I am grateful for “This Baby”, Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior. May you be blessed the remainder of the holiday season and have a happy and prosperous New Year.

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Today, it is exactly eight months since I retired. During that time, I settled into the routine I established. Most days I spend my mornings writing or editing my first novel. The current word count is roughly 77,000 for the first draft, which is basically complete. Now I spend most of my time editing and rewriting. Approximately one-third of the first draft has gone through the local critique group, ACFW Colorado Springs (acfwcosprings.com).

Once the editing of the first draft is complete, the second rewrite will start using the suggestions from the group. My original hope of completing the book this year is no longer realistic and next year may be difficult, but I plan to persist until it is complete. When I complete the second rewrite, I will need to decide how to proceed. Do I submit the manuscript for additional critiques? Do I use beta readers, or do I pay for a developmental/substantive editor? Perhaps the local writer’s group can help with that decision.

In the interim, I started outlining a second novel. When I started the first novel, I wrote strictly by the “seat of the pants” method. But about halfway into it, I got stuck. I needed help and purchased Writing Fiction for Dummies,Amazon.com: Writing Fiction For Dummies eBook : Economy, Peter, Ingermanson, Randy: Kindle Store, by Randy Ingermanson and Peter Economy. This helped get me unstuck, and some tools helped to keep me on track. Randy Ingermanson’s Snowflake, Advanced Fiction Writing, By Randy Ingermanson, The “Snowflake Guy”, method intrigued me, and I used some of his techniques to organize my thinking. But, since I was so far into it, I didn’t fully use the method.

So, when I started outlining the second book, I decided to try the Snowflake method from the beginning. To do this, I purchased Plottr, Plottr – Plan Your Books Like a Pro, software which has outlining and other developmental templates for the Snowflake method. When I have downtime from editing or rewriting the first novel, I work through the Snowflake method on the second. This has provided me with the start of a good roadmap with the characters and plot.

Some of you may ask, why would I dilute my time by working on another book when the first is incomplete? One of the tips, I picked up from the writer’s group I joined, is if people like your first book, the first thing they will do on finishing it, they look for another one of your books. If you don’t have another, they will move on to someone else. Every writer’s dream is to be a best-selling author, even if he is an old dog learning new tricks.

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