writing

Thinking Places

~ Alina ~ 6 Comments

Last week my family and I got away for a few days together. We scampered all around Northern California, experiencing new towns and possibly discovering every possible way to become carsick on winding back roads. However, it was refreshing to get some quality time together and a change of scenery. A bit of vacation also proved good for my writing.

One afternoon my family sat on the shores of a jade-green lake (interestingly named “Trinity Lake”) and sat in silence, each member absorbed in a different creative project. I took the time to soak in the silence, slowing down after nearly a month of nonstop work (and almost no time for my novel). I scribbled out a poem, a first response to the beautiful place and the quiet moment of being still and noticing. It felt like a drink of cold Gatorade after a hard run or hike.

One of our stops was at the charming Blackberry Inn in the coastal town of Mendocino. Caressed by the foggy, temperate marine layer, lush with dozens of varieties of colorful flowers, and deliciously out of range of cell phone service, it was the perfect place to stop and rest and write. Our adorable little room looked like a life-sized dollhouse, complete with a sunny window and a pair of wing-back chairs.

In my home office, the writing time I eke out is often interrupted by the phone ringing, the dryer beeping, new e-mails, the front door. In this quiet room in Mendocino, I was cut off from those interruptions. Sure, there were all my usual mental distractions (read a book! what do I need to do tomorrow? oh look, a seagull!), but in a one-room enclosure with almost no technology, I found it easier to center down and blurt out eleven pages of new novel material, written longhand in a pink journal. It helped to sit at this old-fashioned wooden desk under a painting of a thatch-roofed English cottage. I felt a bit like Jane Austen or one of the Bronte sisters.

What I realized most was that my normal life is full of multitasking. It’s a skill that makes getting multiple mindless things done at the same time possible, but it really kills deep, original thinking. Writing is one way we mortals imitate our Father God, who breathed a world into being ex nihilo, out of nothing. That takes focus. When my attention is on fifty different things, it’s hard to get below surface-level maintenance writing and think of anything new. 

Creative thought, like a relationship with God, requires some periods of silence, solitude, and centering. (Hot tea, fuzzy socks, and a beautiful view don’t hurt either.) Sometimes it’s important to retreat from routine to create a nurturing environment where creativity can grow. For me, it was a time of peace and releasing the story within. It left me refreshed and a little readier to return to the daily world of multitasking.

Does the world of multitasking ever leave you in need of a retreat? Where do you go to refresh your creative side?

A Splendid Supply of Surprising Sweets

~ Alina ~ 12 Comments

The adventurous and interesting Tami Clayton invited me to play a game of letters (my favorite kind). The rules: reveal 10 of your favorite things that begin with a certain letter of the alphabet.

My letter (in case the post title didn’t give it away): S!

Ready?

Stories: Escape into magical worlds. Power to change the real world. What I want to spend my life writing and reading.

Spices: Cooking has never been so interesting!

Sliding ladders: Ohhh, I want one so much!! Or I could just move into a library that has them.

Shakespeare: The love of my literary life (minus the earring). The genius bard of the Western world. Themes as relevant today as they were in the 16th century. Need I say more?

Sunshine: Just one of the many great reasons to be living in California again!

Scotland: The windswept land of bagpipes and legends, monks and poets, caber tossing and lovely accents–my second-favorite place in the world (after home, of course).

Springtime: My favorite season of the year!

Singing: I like to shatter windows with the high notes. (Actually, I just like imitating Hayley Westenra in the shower, on my church praise team, and when I have the house to myself.)

Sincerity: One of the characteristics I value most in friends (and in literary characters).

Socks: These are not my feet. But I kind of wish they were. My favorite Tinker Bell pair got a hole in them, but I do have a pretty awesome pair of knee-high blue-and-green argyles.

What are your favorite S-things? If you have a blog and want to play the letter game, leave me a comment and I’ll send you a starting letter via Facebook or Twitter!

Confessions from a Home Office

~ Alina ~ 8 Comments
After almost 9 months of chugging away as a freelance writer, editor, and English tutor, I feel that it’s time to share my perspective on working from a home/office…er, home office. It’s often glorified as the ultimate work situation, but it’s certainly not free from challenges. 
After college, I moved back into the room of my childhood. The challenge was converting it into an office as well. Organizing the same amount of space to serve two purposes was a challenge. At first I just kind of put my work in a blender and watched it explode all over the floor. 
I eventually got a bit more organized, at least space-wise. But organizing time can be harder. I am my own boss, which leaves me accountable only to myself for time management. Sometimes I’m distractable and not productive enough. More often, though, I’m doing five things so efficiently that I multitask myself clean out of productivity. Trying to do too many things can actually keep my thinking so shallow that I’m not productive at anything, especially writing. 
Working from home can be hard to explain to others. Sometimes people think that because I stay at home, I don’t actually work. I promise–I do. But getting respect for that isn’t always easy. It can also be tough to guard my work time. Because I’m within earshot of the phone, the dishwasher, the oven timer, the front door, it’s the easiest thing in the world to get interrupted and distracted. Or to use home chores as procrastination stations. 
My job can be lonely. Sometimes I get to the end of the day overflowing with words because I simply haven’t opened my mouth to talk to a human being all day. My brain gets tired from juggling e-mails, flashback scenes, and semicolon placement, but there are no co-workers to socialize with around the water cooler. I’m learning I have to be proactive and intentional about spending time with people.   

But there are also some undeniable perks to the job. I love that my mornings aren’t dictated by a rush to beat traffic or catch a train. I really enjoy the quiet and calm of my own home atmosphere. It’s pretty nice to be able to grade papers while watching blue jays perch in the backyard birches or redline a manuscript while wearing my fuzzy slippers. And it’s been a special blessing to be available to help care for my grandma these past five months. 

A few days ago I wrote an e-mail to a friend who asked me what it was like to be a freelancer. My response was long. It’s a lot of work, and trust is a constant challenge as I have to keep surrendering my question-mark future into God’s hands. But I also realized that I love my work. I sure don’t feel like that every single morning. But overall, I’m so grateful to have this chance to pursue my God-given passions from a base of nurture and support.  I look back over the last nine months and realize that this time has not been wasted. In spite of the logistical snags, the isolation, the multitasking, the procrastination–I’m moving in the direction of what I was made to do. And that is a great feeling.


One of my goals this summer is getting my children’s novel ready to start the publication process! In the interest of productivity on that, I’m going to be cutting back to blogging once a week for the summer. Don’t let me slack off! The race is on! 

Island-Building

~ Alina ~ 12 Comments

When I was twelve, my family and I watched an island being formed.

The lava field on Hawaii’s Big Island looked like the surface of the moon. The black rock, brittle as glass, clawed at our shoes in a landscape where nothing lived. We stopped where the rock turned to a river: a slow ooze of hot lava, glowing dull red beneath its dark crust, hot enough to catch the tips of our walking sticks on fire. We watched it wriggle past our feet to the edge of a cliff, where it plunged into the sea in a waterfall of fire. There, beneath the waves, it was hardening, invisibly adding to the foundations of the Big Island.

Seven months into this freelancing adventure, I’m beginning to think about the cumulative effects of choices. The choices I make today don’t stand alone: they’re built on the choices I made yesterday and last month and last year. To move home after graduation. To pass up jumping for an immediate 9-to-5 job. To take seriously the gift of writing God has given me. All together, these choices start to form something: the new piece of land I am becoming.

Aristotle said, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” It is our cumulative, grace-guided choices that determine the people we will become. Making the right choices is easier when you have a precedent on which to build. It’s less difficult to see where you’re going next time you take a leap of faith.

But building a new island is difficult when you don’t know what you’re aiming for. When setting out in a new direction, the first choice (do I trust? Do I risk? Do I sacrifice?) is the scariest. Even the best of role models can’t project what results our choices will have. So when we decide to follow God’s call, to writing, knitting, homeschooling, ministry, or something else off the beaten path, it can feel like shooting off a cliff in a stream of hot lava, wondering if we’re actually going to build something new or just get swept away in the tide.

But, once again, when the first layer is laid, the next is easier–you’ve set yourself a standard to live up to.

A friend of mine demonstrated this a few weeks ago. She interviewed for two positions, the first less desirable than the second. After the first interview went well, she accepted a job offer there. Then, suddenly, she was offered a job at the second company. Instead of bailing out on her commitment to  #1, she turned down a desirable position in order to stick to her word.

Career-builders might scoff at her brave choice. But success is more than a ladder. In choosing to demonstrate integrity, my friend sacrificed immediate gain–but set a precedent for future choices and added another layer onto her island of character. When jobs vaporize and companies fail, that rock still stands.

Of course, there’s also a second way. It’s so natural that many people, especially those in my age group, opt for this one. It’s the easy way out. When faced with a tough choice to land a great job or keep your word, to indulge yourself or honor your family, to beat the established path or trust God to lead you in His way–many people just “go with their gut” and push the long-term implications out of mind. Like Scarlett O’Hara in the wonderful Gone with the Wind, we say “I’ll think about that later.”

But Rhett (always wise) comes back to her and says, “It’s hard to salvage jettisoned cargo and, if it is retrieved, it’s usually irreparably damaged. And I fear that when you can afford to fish up the honor and virtue and kindness you’ve thrown overboard, you’ll find they have suffered.” (ch. 43). It’s hard to go back once you’ve set a precedent of taking the easy way.

So what kind of an island are you building? If the choices we make today set a precedent, do you dare to take the leap, making choices based on vision, hope, faith? Will you start building from a blueprint you can’t see?

The Lucky 7 Meme

~ Alina ~ 10 Comments

Welcome to the Lucky 7 Meme! This is a bit of Monday fun where writers get to read and share bits of their unpublished work. This game was passed on to me by my witty friend Laird Sapir. Thanks, Laird! 

Lucky 7 Meme



The rules:
1. Go to page 77 of your current manuscript/work-in-progress (or page 7 if you don’t have 77)
2. Go to line 7
3. Copy down the next 7 lines, sentences, or paragraphs, and post them as they’re written.
4. Tag 7 authors, and let them know.

So here’s a sneak peek at my work-in-progress, a middle grades (ages 9-12) fantasy novel. It’s definitely still under construction…

Captain Daevin looked at them all and sighed. “I suppose we’ll start from the beginning.” He straightened his shoulders and raised his voice.

“All right! When I say salute, this is what I want to see!” He snapped his booted heels together. Then he tapped two fingers of his right hand to his left shoulder and flicked them crisply to his forehead. “I want two straight lines! Salute!”

In confusion, the children shuffled into two lines. Jude gently scooted Ellie a bit to the left. She tried to imitate the gesture Captain Daevin had performed.

“Not good enough!” barked the captain. “This is a military ship now! We must have discipline!”

They tried the salute nearly fifteen times before the captain would accept it as “good enough.” Then he brought out a crate and thunked it down on the floor before them.

“You are soldiers now! Our Enemy will not spare you because you are children. You must learn to fight back.” His eyes gleamed. “It is time to choose your weapons.”

The crate was only half-full and many of the things inside looked old and rusty. Broken pieces were scattered on the bottom. But Connor instantly dove in and pulled up a shiny metal object; a series of four rings with sharp points on them. He slipped them on his hand, where they gleamed like tiger claws. 

And now to choose the next Lucky 7! 

Compass Living

~ Alina ~ 8 Comments

Are you a whole person?

I’ve been feeling tired a lot lately. Not just I-didn’t-get-enough-sleep kind of tired. The kind of tired that sets in the moment you wake up and see another sunrise–knowing it’s another day of the hamster wheel, running as fast as you can before you drop.

It’s called burnout. This kind of tiredness dulls my mind, numbs my creativity, and makes me feel excited about nothing. It feels like growing old before my time.

Why? I’m young and healthy; I’ve got a family who loves me and some great friends. I’m doing work I’m passionate about. Furthermore, I know God loves me–I have purpose and significance in that. But I’m still tired.

A tough conversation with my ever-wise friend Audry shed some light on the matter. (She also just posted a great blog about fighting off creative distractions here.) Whether your work is knitting, writing, painting, composing, or delivering sermons, you know that being creative takes a great deal of mental energy. It’s a God-like endeavor: creating ex nihilo, allowing us to be little singers of the Song of God.

But it’s draining.

And more than that–it’s crookedly draining. Creating involves a lot of sitting around and thinking, squeezing those little gray cells to imagine things that no one has ever seen before. Sometimes to put in those long stretches of intellectual labor on our Works In Progress, we shut everything else out.

But we humans are like four-pointed compasses. Rene Descartes only had part of the picture when he said, “I think, therefore I am.” Thinking is part of our being, but we’re also more. Being human means we’re not only brains, but also feelings, bodies, and souls. And if we only exercise our brains, we start to wear down all on one side like lopsided erasers, while simultaneously feeling unfulfilled in those other parts of being.

Maybe this was why I was tired. So this week I set out to experiment with my routine. I decided to give myself permission to stretch and exert the other three points of my compass, in hopes of restoring my mental freshness and creative vitality–and enjoying my life.

There are some things you know by studying about them. And there are other things you know only by doing them. One of these things is physical exertion. No amount of doctor-talk about the health benefits of exercise can describe how flushed and vital you feel after coming home from a 30-minute traipse in sprinkling rain, your head full of ideas and your blood pumping to write. Better still–a hike in the hills, overwhelmed with the beauty of emerald grass and shifting sunlight, brilliant poppies and clouds traveling overhead.

Another such thing of such indescribable value is time with people, and with God. E-mails and Facebook simply are not a substitute for time with friends, family, and the Holy One. You’ve got to have face-to-face time, quantity time, especially if you spend much of your work time in relatively isolated conditions. I’m a schedule-bent efficiency junkie, but I’m realizing that not taking time to be with people will kill my energy and desire to meet the day–so I’m actually more productive when I spend time with people, away from work. More time than just exchanging “good mornings” in the kitchen. Likewise, hasty prayers are like IOUs with God that stack up–they don’t bring the soul-healing peace of extended times of contemplation and praise.

Trying these things this week has brought the life rushing back into me–joy, energy, creativity, and a desire to live the life I have. It’s easier to be thankful when you take time to notice what’s around you: the beauty of the world in spring, the humor and kindness of the people around you, the way your lungs fill with air and your eyelashes sparkle in the sunlight. It brings back the wholeness of being human–the way life was intended to be.

What do you do in your schedule to nurture wholeness in your life? What are your habits for fostering mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being? 

Why Work?

~ Alina ~ 2 Comments

I spent yesterday morning in a tax accountant’s office, summing up the last year of my life in terms of dollars and cents. A rather dismal prospect, I must say.

Not only did I realize that I am living on a starving-artist budget, but I also realized that I can only keep about 70% of it, because the U.S. government is automatically entitled to the rest. Depressing.

On the bright side, it’s a blessing to have taxes to pay this year. It means I actually have work! After earning a degree in English and entering an extremely tight job market, work is a huge gift. And it means that dividing my time between writing, editing, tutoring, and blogging is more than a pipe dream. This is my job!

Which leads me to the lesson I learned from taxes yesterday.

Work is not, cannot be, just about making money. Many times I’ve thought of abandoning the writing and going to work in something more lucrative, just to have a good, steady salary. But what then? The more you make, the more the government takes (the joy of income tax). If you work hard and work is only for the purpose of making money, then poof! You lose 30% of your year’s labor every April. It just vaporizes, gone.

All that was left when I departed the tax accountant’s office were the other reasons I work–so I was glad I had some. Why work, other than for money? I think things like job satisfaction, knowledge that you’re helping people, pride in the quality of your work, good relationships with colleagues, and belief that what you’re doing matters to God and the world are what really matter in a job. No government can tax this income.

And when I started evaluating my jobs this way, I was encouraged. So I’m making peanuts? So what? I’m working with what I love (words), spending time in an environment I like, and believing that what I do with my time each day is making a difference. I’m following the vocation to which God has called me and sharing the words He’s given me with other people. I was made to do this work, and I’m doing it! Praise God!

And to top it off, I read this verse, Deuteronomy 12:7 last night, reminding me of the joy of good, God-blessed work: “You and your families shall eat and shall rejoice in everything you have put your hand to, because the LORD your God has blessed you.”

So is there really more to work than making money? What do you think makes a good job? 

Versatile Blogging!

~ Alina ~ 4 Comments

Ooh, how exciting! This blog has received its first award (from my good friend, Angela Wallace: check out her blog for some interesting thoughts on writing, cats, and fantasy…)

This award comes with a catch: I must confess 7 random things about myself, and then pass it on to some worthy-of-note bloggers. Oh dear. Let’s give this a try.

1. I don’t own a single pair of white socks. In high school, I did a sock exchange by mail with friends and ended up with everything from Tinker Bell socks to electric-blue fishnet socks. My current favorite is a pair of knee-high, blue-and-green argyles.

2. Scotland is my favorite country in the world. I’ve visited twice, but I’d go back in a heartbeat. If I could tweak the ancestral records and make myself Scottish, I would.

3. I took two quarters of Biblical Greek in college and absolutely fell in love with it–especially because so much of English is derived from Greek. My family will tell you that I still occasionally break into raptures when I recognize a word…

4. Almost all my favorite authors are old dead guys (or gals). I think good authors are like good cheese: the older, the better.

5. I like to play with big dogs, cook with big knives, and read with big books.

6. If I could be any Disney princess, I would want to be Belle for sure. Brave, kind, enormous personal library, and how about that ballroom scene??

7. My favorite Shakespeare play is Hamlet. I’m a sucker for tragedy. Don’t ask me why.

And now, to pass this honor on to some wonderful bloggers!

1. Audry : Amazing photos, knitting stories (many of them about her own designs), artistic endeavors, unexpected adventures, and puppy antics.

2. Adelle : Sometimes funny, sometimes poignant, these are the writings of a boymom who loves God, shoes, and words.

3. Matthew : A witty New Zealander writing about writing, reasoning, and history.

4. Marcy : Though she’s already received this award numerous times, her insights on grammar and life through the eyes of faith deserve another nomination!

Even if you don’t keep a blog, what are the 7 weirdest, quirkiest, or funniest things you’d list about you? 

Setting a Course

~ Alina ~ 6 Comments

Hello again! 


2 weeks away from my blog feels more like a month and a half. So strange! I feel like everything I re-start after the holiday break is individually packaged in a fresh layer of brain fog. It doesn’t help that I am returning to my computer from one of the most beautiful, relaxing places imaginable: 

Ah, well. 
It is good to be starting a new year, though. I like the chance to break schedule during the holidays. Sometimes I’m so busy putting out the day-to-day fires that come up that I lose sight of my big-picture vision. It feels like a chance to pause, pick up the scattered pieces, regroup, and re-strategize about where you’re going in life. Then New Year’s Day arrives, and with it, a chance to turn a new page and do some things differently in life. 

As a rule, I don’t really make New Year’s resolutions. The jokes are true. Talk is cheap, and they’re made of talk. They’re flimsy; made to be broken. Besides, until this year, I was living on the school calendar and made whatever resolutions I was going to make in September. School offers a certain structure to the resolutions you make, too–study more (or maybe less). Invest in friendships. Get an internship. Graduate.

With the rigid frame of academia removed, though, I find that I am the only one responsible for setting goals for myself–for not letting life make my decisions for me. As you can tell by the size of the word “trust” in the sidebar, my process of direction-setting is one that involves a great deal of prayer and wrestling.

So this year I’ve made some New Year’s goals. The word resolution, in my mind, says self-reliance. That’s why New Year’s resolutions don’t last. I myself am weak. When I run out of energy to stay resolved, I give up, out of exhaustion if not lack of will. I think goals, however, are visions we lay before God for partnership. If my life direction has been submitted to Him for approval and guidance, goal-setting is an act of faith: setting a course and trusting Him for strength and courage to hold to it.

I’ll tell you what my goals are in a minute, but first I want to clarify that this is not just my personal mind vomit. I read a great blog post by Kathy Lipp this week that talks about goal-setting for writers. In her words, “public humiliation goes a long way to getting your book written.” Accountability goes a long way toward other things too: when other people are aware of your goals, the pressure to meet them rises–and you accomplish more than if they sit secretly moldering in your journal.

I also like a tradition my knitter friend Audry has instituted on her long-running blog, Bear Ears. At the end of each year, she sets goals, ranging from “knit a sweater” to “build a terrarium.” But she also reviews the results of her previous year’s goals. It becomes a neat cycle of tracking growth and watching how God’s plans sometimes completely diverge from ours. I hope that next December/January, I will be able to track those long-term patterns, too.

OK, so here are my top 5 New Year’s goals. I hope you will hold me accountable and share yours as well!

1. Get to know God better. To do this, my goal is to read through the Bible in chronological order in one year.

2. Have the second draft of my children’s novel completed and be ready to start looking at literary agents by June.

3. Take a 2-month class to learn more about blogging and social media for authors. I hope you’ll be seeing regular improvements on this blog from now through the end of February!

4. Buy a car (wings optional).

5. Read Gone With The Wind, Othello, and The Kite Runner.

What are your goals for this new year? 



Remembering

~ Alina ~ 3 Comments
The Old Testament is full of stories of forgetting. It was a cycle: the Israelites, God’s people, would witness a miracle and worship Him. Then, after a while, they’d forget and go chase after other gods. Then they’d suffer for it and cry out to the true God for help. And then He’d display His power to rescue them yet again.
His continual command to them is to remember. “Give thanks to the Lord, call on his name; make known among the nations what he has done…Remember the wonders he has done.” (Ps. 105:1,5)

The word “remember” appears 166 times in the NIV. It’s the antidote to many ills: dissatisfaction, self-satisfaction, discouragement, arrogance, pride. It keeps us close to God by reminding us of His goodness and the times He’s been faithful in the past.
As 2011 draws to a close, I want to remember the times that remind me of God’s goodness—the successes, the mountaintops, the glimpses of assurance. Some highlights: 
  • In June, I graduated from college, probably the happiest person to go through that three-hour ceremony in the baseball stadium.
  • In September, I sat down at my computer to start a blog and launch a career as a freelance writer and editor. It was a leap of faith: I didn’t really knowing where I was going, but was trying to obey God’s call and guidance. Today this blog has almost 1,200 hits (thanks to all of you)!  
  • In October, I started tutoring (now have 9 students) and had an article and a poem published on Associated Content (now Yahoo! Voices).
  • In November, I quit my babysitting job and started writing the second draft of my children’s novel (now up to 12,000 words!)
  • Two weeks ago, I received and completed my first professional proofreading project (I flinched at dangling modifiers for days). Now there’s another one coming my way!
These milestones remind me of God’s mighty power and tender love. Four months ago, I had no job and no confidence that I could make it as a writer. Now the elements of a writing career are sprouting up around me like crocuses. It is amazing to watch, because although I planted the seeds and watered them, God has worked (and continues to work) the miracle of growth.
I also want to remember the tough times of this past year, though. In between the milestones, there have been many dry days when I was too tired to write, had no income, wondered if I was doing the right thing at all, or if I should go out and get a “real” job. When I’ve felt sad and alone and sorry for myself, though, is when I have most desperately turned to God (just like the Israelites). When all other support crumbles, when the music dies and you’re alone in the quiet, it’s then that you really understand that God is the Solid Rock, all-sufficient and very present in trouble. Deserts are testing times: for growing and learning to depend, to rely, to trust. It’s in the book of Deuteronomy:
“Remember how the LORD your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands.”

It’s in the times of dryness that we learn if we’re really walking by faith, not sight. Sometimes you can’t tell until you experience blindness.
The main thing is, I don’t want to forget. I don’t want to forget the lessons learned in the desert. And I don’t want to get deluded and think that I worked the successes for myself. God gave me the gift of words and has called me to use it for His glory and others’ blessing. He has opened doors of opportunity and given me fortitude to face the giants. And through it all, He has been incredibly faithful.
So I close the year with a prayer from the Psalms:
“Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name be the glory, because of your love and faithfulness” (Ps. 115:1).

What do you remember as you look back on this year? 


A few quick notes:
  • No blog post next week: I’m going out of town. See you the first week of January!

  • I’ve signed up for an online blog class that goes through January and February. I’m excited to learn more about blogging, so keep an eye out for updates and improvements throughout the next couple of months!