Real Life Reflections

Who inspires you to do what you do? A reporter asked me that question this morning in regards to writing. I was stumped at first. There are so many authors whose work I admire. How to narrow it down? I even had a little over twenty four hours to mull it over, but I still fumbled around when it came time to answer. I finally got it narrowed down to four: J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis for their creativity, Elizabeth George for suspense, and Astrid Lindgren (of Pippi Longstocking fame) for plain old silliness. I'd never thought much about who/what inspires me. Have you? Without inspiration, would we still be reading our books by candlelight or traveling across the U.S. in covered wagons? What inspires me will likely do nothing for you and what inspires you is probably meaningless to me. What is it inside of us that connects to an external who or what and gives us that jolt, that motivation, that passion to go further, to reach higher, to persevere? I don't know the answer to that,...

I'm thrilled to announce that I'm going to be published - for real! Two anthologies have accepted my work: Chambers of My Soul (a poem)will be published in Parent Blessings ; and four out of five of my entries to the mid-Missouri writers contest will be published in Well-Versed 2009 : Chambers of My Soul, Raymond, The Best Prize , and Snow's Whisper .

My husband is a youth pastor. He's not your typical twenty-five year old cool, hip dude hangin' out with kids. No, he's a middle age father of a twenty five year old, and he loves teenagers. Every March, he (along with a large crew of volunteers) hosts a weekend retreat for the kids. This year the theme was "Dreams" - not the kind that come to you nocturnally, but the kind that stir in your heart and your thoughts; the kind that put longing in your soul for something more than what you've got or who are at present. In preparing for the retreat, he searched our personal archives for evidence of his own past dreams. In other words, he went through our storage room, digging through box after box. He didn't find everything he was looking for, but he did find a few things that he wasn't looking for - some of the first stories I ever wrote. I've been a bibliophage for as long as I can remember. It was this love of reading that planted the dream-seed of w...

The Cloth There were no plants. No flowers. No lights. No people. No music. It was dark and empty save for a single, rough-hewn cross-illuminated by a single light. There is no trace now of the hopelessness that permeated the air just two days ago. I walk into the same room that isn’t the same room at all. There is life here: potted plants, some six or seven feet tall, beautiful, pure white calla lilies, white cloth airily cascades across the ceiling, colorful lights create a stained-glass effect on the walls. But these are only the background. I am entirely taken by the cross that stands in the front of the sanctuary. My heart squeezes within me. My eyes swell with tears. I cannot avert my gaze though people jostle me as they hurry to get a seat before the music begins. I am drawn as a diviner’s rod to water. The cross stands exactly as it did two days ago, but it is not the same. It is no longer barren. It is no longer desolate. A single sheet of cloth is draped over the cross as if...

Jessica Burkhart . She's a tween author. That is she writes FOR tweens. She's not a tween herself. Although that's just about when she began her writing career. I attended one of her sessions at the Missouri Writers' Guild Conference this past weekend, and I walked away feeling like I had somehow missed my own wedding twenty five years ago. She's twenty-two (yes, 22) - my son's age. She's had hundreds of articles published and is in the middle of an eight-book deal. Wow. Check out her blog . After I got over my own sluggish debut into the writing world, I realized that she's been able to get this far because she actually sends out queries ALL the time. She doesn't sit back and hope for an answer from the one editor she sent one query to. She has mulitple queries out - according to her, 30 - at any one time. You can't get published if you don't get yourself into an editor's hands! I know. Brilliant. My favorite part of the conference was ...

Conferences, they're all over the place. There's a conference for every profession, hobby, and support group. Don't you wonder what happens at some of these conferences? I've heard that there's a conference for mail men (mail persons?). I can't imagine on what topics their main speakers choose to wax eloquent or what their breakout sessions might include: How To Dress Dog Bite Wounds, Tips for Smooshing Large Packages into Small Mailboxes, or maybe Creative Places to Put Packages that Don't Fit in the Box (even after you've tried smooshing them). I head out tomorrow for the Missouri Writers' Guild Conference. I don't have a clue what the itinerary of the weekend will be. I just know I'm supposed to register between 3 and 6pm. I attended the Columbia Chapter of the Missouri Writers' Guild conference back in October. It was my first writers' conference. Typically, writers tend to be introverts rather than extroverts, right? That's p...