Part One (of many) I could probably blog about Jon Acuff’s book “Quitter: Closing the gap between your day job and your dream job” for a solid month. The basis of the book “Quitter” is finding a way to reach your day job, without sacrificing financial security or blindly diving into something that will leave you and your family ruined. Jon Acuff has the experience – he went through eight jobs in eight years and is now able to merge his dreams and day job. Don’t Quit…not yet The very first chapter is “Don’t Quit Your Day Job.” This jolted me a bit, as I was expecting the book “Quitter”...
You have to jump
“You need to jump off cliffs all the time, and build wings on the way down.” Anne Dillard This past weekend, I attended the Oregon Christian Writer’s One-Day Conference in Eugene, where best-selling author, James L. Rubart was the keynote speaker. He spoke a powerful message about going for your dreams by your ACTION. We must stop with the excuses and actually use the talents God has given us. Rubart’s best-selling first book, Rooms, was written in 20-minute increments a day. Who can’t make time to write 20 minutes a day? No more excuses. Write that novel. We all have fears holding us back, but it is jumping off the...
Going back to the beginning
Thanks to a spring cleaning kick I’ve been on the past month, I’ve done some digging, prioritizing, rearranging… and then some. When I stumbled upon my stack of old writing notebooks, I couldn’t help but smile. Just look at that handwriting? Bear in mind, I was in the 9th grade at this time. This got me thinking: What was it that drove me to fill notebooks upon notebooks with blue or black ink? What drove me to spend my free time in another world and then force my dear friends to read it? Because I needed to. And I loved it. In these busy days, it is easy to forget...
Are you living a good story?
While writing a script based on his memoir, Blue Like Jazz, author Donald Miller took a good hard look at his life and the story he was living. If only we all had moments like this to make us look at our lives the same way. Fortunately, Miller wrote “A Million Miles in a Thousand Years” and shares his experiences and forces you to consider: What story are you living? Are you living a good story? A boring story? “If the point of life is the same as the point of a story, the point of life is character transformation.” – Donald Miller It isn’t hard to see change in...
Experiment Results
There came to be a flaw in my experiment parameters: that I could actually escape email and other responsibilities. I instead interviewed a source for an article and spent lunch time with my sister. Overall a great day but not very productive. Perhaps I’ll try again. I’ve worked in a few chapter edits here and there of my current manuscript so I’ll keep up on it!
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