I started writing this week’s blog and couldn’t finish it. Instead, this week’s offering is a slightly rewritten lesson from when I used to teach a high school creative writing class. Enjoy!

In Proverbs, there are several sayings that seem on the surface as opposites, but both are true. This parallelism is common in Biblical poetry. Writing lessons also have this type of parallelism.

Writing is easy: I am a perfectionist. I’m less of one now than when I was younger, but wanting everything to be just right has often stymied me.

• No one writes perfectly
• Writing a story is simply one more word
• Go with the flow
• Don’t sweat a word choice or scenario… just write it

Writing is hard: I also have lazy tendencies. In school, I rarely did more work than required unless the project really interested me or if it was of my own making.

• Rewrites and editing sometimes just have to be endured and plowed through
• Deadlines are just that. If you miss them, teachers, editors, publishers, and whoever else counts on you for your written work will not be happy. It will affect how you are perceived for the worse and might impact whether your future writing goes anywhere or not.
• Some days you won’t feel like writing. Write anyway. It’s about work, not feelings.
• When you edit, do your best to get the words right. Especially on the first page.

Follow the rules: Writing, as a craft, relies on certain absolutes. Just as a sonnet has to be fourteen lines, and dialog must be written in its format, writing in general, particularly for publication, has rules to follow.

• Write to your audience.
• Be diligent about your craft.
• Study other writers.

Ignore the rules:

• Some rules are rules just because ‘it’s always been done this way’. If you know your rules well and your audience well, you know when to break them.
• Excellent writing is excellent writing. If you do that, rules don’t matter. Many bestselling writers ignored the rules of their day.
• Today’s rules will be what to avoid in the next generation. You get there first.

Write to your audience

• Books sell and stories get published by authors who know their audience
• Know the market
• Read what your audience reads so you can write something like it

Write for yourself

• You are your best audience. Write what you’ve always wanted to read.
• If you don’t love it, why write it? (Also, if you don’t love it, potential readers will see that in the way you wrote it.)

Meet and talk with other writers

• Like minds can help you decide if a project is a good idea
• Meeting with people who like to create helps you see that you can fit in

Don’t meet and talk with other writers

• If you’re at work on a project, talking too much about it can actually kill your creativity. You can use up all the ‘energy’ talking about it.
• Ideas come from everywhere. Don’t let your brainstorming become someone else’s idea.

Write every day

• Regular writing makes you a better writer. It’s been proven time and time again.
• The discipline to write daily will help you with the discipline to finish increasingly large projects.

Don’t write every day

As writers, we need creative input. To get that, we should

• Read
• Experience life

God did command the weekly Sabbath. Take a regular break to recharge. You will find yourself more creative because of it!

Still, haven’t reached my comment number for the prize, but I will say we’re getting close!

Many of the stories I’ve written, particularly those in the speculative arena, focus on the character’s finding his or her true purpose.

Ms. Bonne in the flash fiction fantasy Dream Job longs to work in administration and has a knack for it. Unfortunately, she’s locked into another position and can’t change her calling.

In The Monitor, a science fiction short story, Glenn and Anne-Marie are both new to their field and eager to make a name for themselves and prove themselves on this mission. When Dr. Otto, significantly their senior in terms of both age and status intrudes, how they handle his interruption will determine their futures—both in terms of career and faith. Should they err, it could adversely affect the space-bound crew that they are monitoring.

Grange Vallen, in the sci-fi work in progress, A Very Grimm Christmas, has to rediscover his purpose when his years of a successful writing career come crashing down through a case of persistent writers’ block. Things might turn out better than before should he address the personal and spiritual issues that he’s been ignoring. Because, as any writer knows, writers block isn’t as much about the writing as it is about the writer.

But this command I gave them: ‘Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people. And walk in all the way that I command you, that it may be well with you.’ Jeremiah 7:23, ESV

For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath beforehand ordained, that we should walk in them. Ephesians 2:10, KJV

As we walk this globe, we find ourselves discovering and rediscovering our purpose. Characters are much the same even if their struggles are simplified and confined to the page. The Westminster shorter catechism says Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever. So, that is the true purpose of each and every human being. But how we apply it and live that purpose can often be the struggle that drives us. Since, as Ephesians says, we are God’s creations, his poems, (the Greek word used for workmanship is poiema), that means we are complex and finding out how to live our purpose can be just as complex.

That’s why it makes such a great story theme!

In Homeschooling Can Be Murder, Jeanine needs to find a purpose within her new community. She knows who she is in terms of her immediate family, but the Army move takes her away from a social environment that she loved and clicked with. Now that they’re in Gentle Springs, and at a new post, where does she fit?

Purpose isn’t always big and overarching. Sometimes, like with Jeanine, it’s brought on by a change of place or situation. When the characters need purpose, life is just a bit out of sync. That extra bit of tension makes the plot more realistic and helps us understand the character.

If we think about purpose as it relates to our own lives, we can experience it from a daily level (what would you have me do today, God) all the way up to a lifetime level (who have you made me to be). If you are awake and aware, you’re seeking your purpose to some degree.

That motivates characters, too.

Haven’t yet reached my secret number. Keep commenting! Appreciate you all!

Many of my stories and books touch on the theme of family—both for the good and the bad.

In the Portal Watchers series, one of the early conflicts involved Garth and his Uncle Murenn. While Murenn has always been Garth’s favorite uncle, because their personalities are similar, the older Vieta keeps siding with the queen. Since Garth is trying to raise pterosaurs, which the queen claims are hers, but the prophet has told Garth to keep safe, the two are at odds. Family doesn’t always take our side or protect us.

There are good references to family in the series as well—both family that the young men have known and family that they find along the way of their journeys. But because they are told to become the cord of three, protecting the dinosaurs who come through the portals, Garth, Bern, and Ne-tel become their own family of sorts.

Though the mom, Jeanine, is the first-person voice of the Talbott Family Mysteries, it should be evident by the title of the series that family plays an integral part in the plots and the solutions of the mysteries themselves.

For instance, in the third book of the series, Plundered Christmas, we have also a mix of pre-existent or natural born family and found family.

You need not read the others in order to enjoy this mystery.

What do you need to know? That Jeanine and James (aka Captain Talbott) are an Army family. Also, because of the frequent moves, they have chosen to homeschool their two kids: Justin and Josie.

The older of the two, Justin, has two passions: soccer and taxidermy. That fateful summer, before their plundered Christmas, star soccer goalie Justin has just suffered defeat with his team, the Hornets. In order to get him out of his funk, his grandpa (and Jeanine’s dad) Robert takes Justin to the beach. But there, widower Robert meets Margo.

She is the beginning and source of all of Jeanine’s Christmas problems.

Rather than having any one of the traditional Christmases that Jeanine loves, the Talbotts will now head to a private tropical island to share the holiday with Robert’s fiancée and family. That’s uncomfortable enough. But when someone pushes Margo into shark-infested waters and then her nephew William winds up murdered, the Talbotts are facing their most dangerous Christmas ever. All because of a family that is not their own, but could be.

Of course, to add to the mess, a mighty nor’easter comes down to wreak havoc with the Coast Guard attempts to reach Banet Island, knocks out the power, and traps the island’s residents.

And what does it all have to do pirate tales and the mysterious Anne Banet whose letters loop all of them into the past? Was she really the infamous Anne Bonny? And is her legendary treasure truly worth killing for?

Of all four Talbott mysteries, this was my favorite to write and remains my favorite to read. Not only because I love Christmas nearly as much as Jeanine does, but also because I enjoyed giving Anne Bonny a hope, a future, and a family, while trying to remain true to what is known of her historically. Since her own father wasn’t the best influence (and he was known to spoil her), I tried to give the pirate queen a need to repent and a new family that honored that choice.

Family in reality or fiction can bring out our worst or our best. Or as The Message phrases Proverbs 17:17 Friends love through all kinds of weather, and families stick together in all kinds of trouble.

One thing I know—They make for wonderful stories!

I have a secret number! When that number comment shows up on the blog, starting from this post, I will comment on it and let the winner know. This gift will be a $5 Amazon egift card and an assortment of books and booklets.