Hope.

Sometimes there are certain words that seem to pop up more than others. It's like something is lurking in the shadows that I'm supposed to find and these recurring words are my clue. So whenever I notice a common theme in stories, verses, or sermons that I encounter, I tend to pay attention. 

Lately the word Hope has been following me around. It literally pops up everywhere. It's one of those words I never really paid much attention to because we use it all the time. "I hope it rains," or, "we're hoping for the best," or "I hope I can find some chocolate before I faint." It often comes with the connotation of uncertainty in our language. It's as if hope has taken on a meaning of chance. Consequently, when I hear someone talking about sharing hope with victims of a disaster or read a verse about hope, I guess that's just how my brain subconsciously interprets it. 

Recently I had one of those "of duh" sort of moments. I suddenly realized, "DUH! that's not what hope is." At least, that's never how the word "hope" is used in the Bible. Certainly not any time I can think of. When God says in Jeremiah 29:11 that He will give you a hope and a future, He surely is not talking about giving you a chance at good future. When the Bible talks about putting your hope in God, it surely is not a thing of uncertainty. After all, with all the uncertainties of life, why would you throw in your lot with more uncertainty? No, in fact, when hope is mentioned in the Bible, it is very much a thing of expectancy and anticipation.

God gives us certain promises in His Word in which we can have expectant hope, knowing He will do what He has promised because He is faithful. It's not a matter of "I hope God comes through," but a matter of "God said He will do this and He will!"
I ordered several things online recently from a certain well-known website using a gift card with which I had been blessed. Since it was a gift, I didn't have to pay for the items--they had already been paid for. All I had to do was use the card to cover the cost of what I needed. Then it was just a matter of waiting for my packages to arrive. I was waiting with an expectant hope and much anticipation! One of my packages took entirely too long to arrive. Eventually it did arrive, but if it had not arrived I would have had every right to write the company and complain and demand they make it right. Even if it wasn't the company's fault things didn't go right, I have a guarantee that they will deliver.

To me this is a perfect example of the hope we have in God's promises. I had redeemed my prize that someone else paid for and now the items were mine. All I had to do is wait for them to arrive. I may have had to put in a little effort to fight for my right if things didn't go as planned, but that would be an exception to the general rule of how things work. So it is with the promises of God. He paid for them. Now it's up to us to take possession of what He has given us. Sometimes it requires a long wait and a lot of patience. Sometimes it takes a bit of a battle to keep the enemy from running interference. But we can know with a confident hope that God does provide what He promises and He will come through for us!

The Bloggosphere: I Love Customized Backgrounds :D

Hey check it out! I overhauled this blog too now.  Emily Ann Benedict of Blog Cargo and I have been working on it for a while now. Well I say we but I mean she. I was just the ruthless taskmaster, she was the mastermind/slave/artist ;) haa ha :P  So d'ya like it? Hmmm?  I do B-)  I just can't see the whole thing on this screen because I'm still using this tiny secondary screen rather than  my normal laptop screen :'(  *sadness in a box*  BTW, Emily's also my campaign manager for my "buy me a real computer of my own" fund cuz she's cool like that B-)  So anyway if you like it, stand up and cheer. If you don't, sit and whine... either way, it's here to stay for a while.  I hope... (And Emily probably does too :P )
Now all I gotta do is get the buttons to put on my website and hopefully I can quit playing geek for a while :-B
G'day!

Motivation

Next to inspiration, motivation is probably one of the most important facets of writing. It also seems to be another one of the most-struggled-with amongst many writers I know. I'm no exception. I know some writers have no problem getting motivated. To them, it's almost necessary for life or is, at the very least, a huge part of life. Writing itself is motivation.
I think part of what sets apart those of us who struggle with motivation is the rest of life. When I think about my own life and that of some of my fellow writers, there are a lot of us who are multi-talented or who have a lot of other responsibilities besides writing (such as parenting, school, work, etc.). Those of us who fall into those categories seem to be the ones who struggle most with motivation. That is not to say this is scientifically proven or that because you're multi-talented means you may struggle with motivation or anything like that... this is just my observation.
I know for me, it's hard to sit down and write sometimes because I have SO many other things going on that make it difficult to concentrate and work at inspiration. And then there's demotivators. LOTS of demotivators (yes, that is a word, oh spellcheck. I have spoken, therefore it is a word. but I guess I don't feel too bad since it says "spellcheck" isn't a word either :P Sorry, I digress...). Sometimes I'll be writing along and something happens to lose all my work or someone will suggest I totally redo a large piece of work... that's just so uber demotivating. Don't get me wrong, it's great if someone has a good suggestion that will make my work even more perfect (lol) than I already have it. It's just like this subconscious thing about having to do MORE work and realizing that all that work was wasted *tears*. Ok well  with the exception of accidentally lost work, no work was truly wasted, right? That's what I'll keep telling myself anyway. But anyway, as I was saying, these things just totally work against motivation. When these things happen, I just run into a BRICK WALL mental block not much unlike the Berlin Wall... complete with armed guards and barbed wire. And it's not so easy to get past. This drives me crazy to no end, and it almost seems like it's unstoppable. It's like a battle within just trying to MAKE myself get back into writing and climb the blasted wall. I usually end up taking a break and working on something else but that is just not conducive to productivity in the writing area (though it works great in the "help dad out", baking, exercise, or sewing departments :P ). This is a bad habit I must conquer. *attempts to look determined*
Ok so now that I've admitted my stupid problem, let's talk about what DOES motivate me. And let's see if there is anything that could possibly help me overcome the demotivations I face... hmmmm
So one thing that motivates me is new or fresh ideas... new things in general, really. It kinda reminds me of my school days when getting a new book to work on got me all excited and motivated to get schoolwork done. I don't know exactly why, but newness is always very motivating. Sometimes I just have to get out a fresh page and start writing. This can be both motivating and inspiring (the two are very closely linked, you know ;) )
Outside challenges or deadlines are usually very motivating. Especially when it comes to getting over the brick wall. I have to be careful there, or sometimes it occasionally causes panick and therefore causes sloppy writing which in turn causes having to re-write large portions and you know where that leads. However, knowing that I have a deadline helps me focus and tell myself that I have no choice, no time for pity parties or hitting the wall with my head, just gotta get it done. Does that mean I work well under pressure?  Ummm yeah sure I guess so. In a way. Here's the thing though. It doesn't always work if I have self-imposed deadlines. I usually have to get someone else to hold me accountable to my deadline in order for it to be motivating. Funny how that works, huh?
Sometimes I play little tricks on myself to motivate myself. I wrote a blog elsewhere once about this... Sometimes I will bake cookies in order to motivate myself to clean the entire kitchen solo mio. Usually seeing a dirty kitchen is enough by itself, but if I've cleaned the kitchen solo for a week and my brothers come in right behind me and mess it up: y'know... demotivation. Anyway, so the same thing works for other things I need motivation for. I just find something else to do that necessitates or inspires me to do something that I need to do. That's a little trickier with writing, though. But I find that if I do a lot of studying and note-taking, that sometimes motivates me to start writing.
Another thing that will motivate me sometimes is thoughts/dreams. Yeah I know, kinda funny... But like sometimes I have an awesome thought while I'm taking a shower or going for a walk and it just totally motivates me to write. Or sometimes I'll have a horrid dream that it's the end of the world and God is disappointed with me for not finishing my book (I can't tell you how dreadful those dreams are! O_O ). Sometimes I'll have a positive-motivating dream though where I write this tremendous book or preach a tremendous sermon that changes the world. Then I just wanna write and get it done. ^_^
For sure, the absolute biggest motivation is inspiration. Which is funny because sometimes inspiration comes by motivation. The two are just such great pals, it seems. They're always pushing each other around and having a great time. ha ha that got a funny picture goin' on in my head
Ok well I'm either out of things to list or I just lost my motivation to write this blog. At any rate, I do feel some serious motivation to get back to work (lol). But before I go, I want to ask YOU: Do you ever have motivation problems? how do you motivate yourself? Or do you? ;)

Blog Fail

Reason #102 I'm not a very good blogger...

I was going for a walk today in the icy wind with our two crazy dogs, Danger and Duke. (No, that's not my blogging problem :P ) This is a rather common occurrence in the average day of me: walking alone with no human companion to chatter with... just me and God and the critters and the trees B-)  I find it's a good way to clear my mind and do some praying and some talking to myself too. (Not like Gollum kinda talking to myself... It's more like rather than thinking in a continuous line I think in conversations with internal mental images of people I know, where I'm actually supplying both ends of the conversation :P)  So as often happens while I'm out walking and thinking and praying I'll get some brilliant idea of something to write in my book or something to blog about so I don't bore my adoring readership (L.O.L.).. well that happened again today. So then after I got back and thawed out and got ready to get to work I tried to recall my brilliant ideas. At this point one of two things usually happens: #1, I decide it wasn't really quite as brilliant as I had originally thought (aka "that was dumb" xD) #2, I find that somehow I misplaced the file for that brilliant idea or accidentally deleted it from my CPU... Yes, I'm smart like that. Today, the latter is what happened. I would explain it all but, as you would quickly be able to deduce from the evidence at hand, I don't remember what it was or how I misplaced/deleted it. So now you know why this entry will have to suffice :)

Waxing Poetic Once Again

I haven't written poetry for a while but I've recently had an idea bouncing around and I finally decided to scratch it down on paper... Sometimes messing around with poetry helps me clear my mind. Well for one, it gets some of my "irrelevant inspiration" out of the way so that relevant inspiration has room to divide and cross-multiply... and be fruitful and fill my head... or something (pretend that last statement was intelligent and witty). ANYWAY so if you're interested in reading my poetic scribble go to my poetry blog here. (FTR it consists mostly of poetry/songs I did not write, but a few of them I did :P )

Inspiration

Sometimes I am easily inspired. Sometimes not so much. I sometimes go weeks without even looking at my book because I am just SO uninspired. Sometimes if I re-read or work on editing I'll get some inspiration and get some good writing done. But that doesn't even always help. Sometimes, though, I'll just be going for a walk or listening to a [completely unrelated] sermon and BAM it'll hit me. I always try to carry my little blue n white notebook around for times when inspiration will strike but sometimes I forget it. And wouldn't you know it, that's when inspiration strikes. Yes, I know, ce'st la vie ^_^
One of the biggest problems I encounter in writing is schedules. No I don't mean like deadlines. I love to be uber-organized (even though I oftentimes appear to be so unorganized and a lot of times I am :P ), so I like to be able to schedule my day. Only problem is that if I put on my schedule that I will write during a certain time every day, it just doesn't work. I mean, I can work on writing all I want, but if the inspiration won't come, I'm just wasting my time. And like I said, sometimes inspiration hits me at the randomest times so maybe I'll be studying Spanish then all of a sudden I gotta go write. Bye bye Spanish book, bye bye schedule. Why does life have to be so complicated sometimes? :P
So, to my wonderful audience out there (stepping out on faith here and assuming you really do exist :P ), how do YOU get inspired? Do random things inspire you, or do you find specific things more helpful in bringing on the inspiration? Surely I'm not all alone in my inspiration issues :P
G'day!
~me