July in Pictures

"Die knowing your life was my life's best part." - Keaton Henson

"I hope that someday when I am gone, someone, somewhere, picks my soul up off of these pages and thinks, 'I would have loved her'." - Nicole Lyons

"I feel like we're all just aimless nomads in a perpetual, never-ending search for something great & magnificent."

 "In beauty there echoes a speck of our source." -Ryan O'Neal

"I love people with curious minds and stubborn hearts who simply can't do small talk." -Bridget Devoue

"You are worth more than you will ever know, and I love you in ways your crumbling heart could never fathom. Come to me in pieces and exist inside me whole." - Christopher Poindexter

"We are torn between nostalgia for the familiar and an urge for the foreign and strange. As often as not, we are homesick for the places we have never known."

"We drink the poison our minds pour for us and wonder why we feel so sick." - Atticus

"Life without revision will silence our souls." -Ryan O'Neal

"And I'll run the risk of being intimate with brokenness." - Ryan O'Neal

What has your month been like?

The World is Burning

The world is burning
-My world is burning.
I see the flames from where I am.
The smoke lingers in the air
Like some unwanted word,
Some castaway feeling
That's strong enough
Not to go very far.
My hills have all turned black,
Black like a night.
Devoid of any color.
Devoid of familiarity.
What were they before?
Mine, always mine
Till now, till the flames came.
They came and stole my hills away.
My hills slept soundly
Beneath the dry golden,
But they were still there,
And they'd wake back up
In springtime when the moisture sank
Deep beneath the hardened crust.
The hills will - would come awake
With the colors of a dream,
The colors of some other world,
Surely not this dying desert,
But my hills have been stolen.
All the colors torn away
Right beneath my watching eyes,
Right beneath my guardian's gaze.
The flames steal my colors,
My colors and my hills,
And I cannot get them back,
And so the world burns
-My world burns.
I see the flames from where I am,
And I know.
I just know it will never be the same.

Blessed as Opposed to Privileged

These days the word 'privileged' gets thrown around a lot. So much that when I hear it, I automatically grimace. In many ways it has turned into an insult. "You don't get to hold such and such an opinion because you're privileged, and if you should hold it, you better just keep your mouth shut because you don't understand because you're privileged."

And, in most eyes, I'd suspect they do see me as privileged. I was raised by two parents in a loving home surrounded with brothers and sisters and extended family who all loved Jesus. I always had clothing to wear, food to eat, some place to sleep. We lived in a safe neighborhood. I'm as white as they come (pretty much as white as a vampire) so I never had to experience racism. Or any persecution for my beliefs. I was given a good education and have had no shortage of opportunities should I wish to continue my education. People would probably think I'm some sort of privileged to still be living with my parents and not having to spend money on all those little (or not so little) expenses yet.

I'm exactly the sort of person the word 'privileged' would be used for. The two things keeping that insult from being full-blown is the fact I'm a woman and I don't live in some two-story house and have a car my parents bought me.

I don't like that word, however fitting it may seem. It's probably just because of the way people maliciously use it, but the cringe is still there and probably always will be.

Here's the thing: I know I've got it incredibly good, but I don't view myself privileged. I view myself as blessed.

Privileged is the word used for people who have been given much or seemed to have been given much in life. There's no reasoning to why they have more in life. It's just the way it is. And so you should feel guilty. You should feel guilty for having it better than other people. And that guilt drives you to do things for other people.

Viewing yourself as blessed is different because when I think of myself as blessed, I have a clear idea of who I have been blessed by.  I don't have all these things to be thankful for and no one to be thankful to. I know who the Giver of all good things (EVERY. SINGLE. THING = Friendships, family, pets, trees, houses, beds, soft blankets, hot chocolate, gardens...) is. I know everything of worth in my life has been given to me, not because I am someone wonderful or someone deserving of this 'special attention', but because He is gracious and merciful.

When we are blessed, we don't help others from guilt, we help them because we have been called to. It's part of the reason we were given what we have been given. It's not something to separate us from others who don't have everything we have. It's part of our strengths so that when we all come together, we show each other some different part of God's character and love.

Just because someone is blessed or 'privileged' in the eyes of another doesn't mean they are without understanding. Or trouble or worries or sorrows. Or compassion.

Frankly I don't understand why I have been blessed. I don't know why other people don't get these things that I have been given. These are the wonderings that only God knows the answer to, but having been blessed, I am left small and humbled and overwhelmed because 'for unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more' (Luke 12:48, KJV).

What do you think?

The Early Writings Tag (from Abbiee's Blog)

I decided I would do a tag this week that I found here. If anyone would like to do it, feel free. I'm supposed to tag 5 people, but I'm breaking that rule for now. Without farther ado, let us dig up some embarrassing ghosts out of my closet.

1. Untitled

I don't even remember when this story came into being, but it was my very first. My aunt brought over these (very ugly) notebooks for us, and I was instantly enchanted by the blank, spaced pages. I might have been driven to write because something just had to be written. It's still an issue with me.
I didn't actually finish this book. Essentially it was about a bazillion big families, and I couldn't keep any of their names straight (One of the dudes was named Miguel which I took straight from a show on PBS I used to watch on occasion at my grandparents - the only time I ever watched public television growing up) or which family they came from, and then a stranger shows up out of nowhere, and it turns into a mystery. I'm pretty sure Eileen was the MC (maybe cause that's one of my middle names - seems like so many books of mine end up with a character whose name is one of my middle names).

What I learned:

*Not all families have to be big. I must have been so scarred by this story because it took many years before any of my MCs actually had siblings.

*You don't have to end every chapter with an exciting incident.

*Names can be more original (no offense to all the marys, toms, and anns of the world)

*Punctuation could maybe be kind-of good.

* If you have too many characters in a story, it's gonna be super, duper hard to make them sound different.

*Writing mysteries isn't for me. Well, it took this book and two others (one called The Black Shadow...)

My bro drew this as a 'cover' for my book. Heh.

2. Untitled

A long, long time ago when I was a mere ten-years-old (maybe older, but for embarrassment's sake, let's just say ten), my best friend (aka, one of my big brothers) started enjoying computer games a lot which was really boring. I would sit next to him on a stool, and I began to write for entertainment. So I wrote this story...without a title, and I finished it (though, I don't always mention this being the first book that I wrote) at 31 pages. It was my first Fantasy, and I'm actually surprised at how well-thought out some aspects were. It was about these kings and queens with supernatural powers who had gone missing years ago. This young boy was told the legends of them, and it turned out he was the 'chosen one' who would save the day. Interesting twist, after being left disenchanted by the kings and queens, he almost chose the bad guy's side, but in the end, everyone lived happily ever after, including the bad guy (these were the days when even the bad guy won).

What I learned:

*The importance of getting The Chronicles of Narnia and Lord of the Rings (at that point, though, I had only heard my bro's version of Lord of the Rings) out of my blood.

*The importance of story world! I have never done as much story world plotting as I did for this story. I drew maps, wrote out histories, 'invented' languages and creatures, and wrote songs.

*Not to rip-off other people's creatures. Sure, they might have had different names, but we all know what those small 'humans' actually were :P

*One does not necessarily have to know the entire universe of one's story world. Nor does one have to write out stories about every single event that occurred in one's world, especially when the story world only grows bigger and bigger as portals are installed.

*Not every piece of clothing has to be described.

*You don't have to be super original with names because they'll end up sounding weird (Ha. The complete opposite problem as the other. Never a medium here). However, I did come up with the name 'Sananora' which I used as my blogging identity for many years back when I first had a blog, and that isn't half so bad.

*It's better not to show your writing to other people at first. Usch. (Of course, I took that to the extreme and never showed anyone my writing till the last couple years).

3. Untitled

This one is actually something I might want to pick up and rework some day in the future. It's an unfinished story about Edith Aadland, a girl from a big, poor family. She was sent as a paid companion to three elderly sisters who lived in a large manor in some moors. Her simple life is somewhat disturbed when she comes across a man playing a piano in a small graveyard. He takes her to visit an older woman (not sure if he was related to the older woman or not). And sometime a dragon was supposed to pop out of nowhere. I'm pretty sure it was a Jane Austen/Jane Eyre type mish-mash... but with a dragon.

What I learned:

*The unexpected is the best - hence the dragon. Doesn't that just spice up the story?

*Romance of any importance in my writing = Bleah (And I'm pretty sure I only wrote one scene with her and the random piano playing man).

*It's best not to try and write intelligently about something you haven't researched :P

4. Beyond the Border

This was the book I first purposefully titled. And it's the book I claim I first finished (April, 2011) with a whole 75,000 words. It was a Fantasy novel about a young woman of some fortune named Bethclaire whose lonely life was disrupted by the reappearance of an old friend. Unbeknownst to her, he returned through a portal specifically to persuade her to come back because she was the daughter of a king in the place beyond the portal. Ends up that her friend dies after betraying her, and everybody hates her until they don't, and then they decide that she'll be a perfect Queen.

What I learned:

*How to outline a novel, and I decided I would never do that again. Not to that extent, anyway.

*How to finish a book! (One of reasonable size).

*That I actually could feel some emotion towards my characters and their situations.

*How to consistently write day after day after day. I did 500 words per day by hand.

*Writing was actually something I wanted to do seriously.

*You go a long way with a cheerleader and someone who asks you about your progress.

*It isn't going to be perfect the first time around.

*How to incorporate the more human aspect into my writing - through conversations, emotions, problems. I don't think any of my writing before that really held any emotion.

For the longest time, the only good thing I did with writing was write, but honestly, I think that was the best thing I could do, and I don't regret any time spent or words written. Time is truly the only way writing works, and I'd encourage anyone to spend the time first. Later on you can pick up craft books, but now just let yourself write.

Are you planning to do this tag? Did you write any of your novels by hand? How many years have you been writing?

I'll Take You to the Mountains

I'll take you to the mountains,
And there, I'll make you fall in love
With every little thing
And me.
You won't understand how
Or why it even happened
When you're so lost among the trees.
You'll forget about your life-
The one that no longer included me
-As we explore and become lost
In each other's shadows and the towering trees.
Your hand will reach out toward mine,
But in a secret sort of way,
And we'll never say a word,
Even though we both know
You'll never leave.
I know you never meant to stay.
It was never your intention.
I was not enough to keep you,
But it's this place,
These smells, this enchantment
That has engraved their mark upon your heart,
And so I brought you here.
I took you to the mountains
Where I made you fall in love
With every little thing
And eventually me
Because I knew this would steal
The notes right from you heart
And replace them with something sweet
-Something to remind of here
As if you did belong.
These are my hills,
And these are my mountains,
My perfumes, my enchantment,
And if you came so close to them,
How could you not fall in love with me?

Come with me to the mountains,

And there you'll fall in love

With every little thing

And finally me.