by Cathy Baker | Faith |
“Discovery favors the well-prepared mind.” -Jerome Bruner
Thanks to an Amazon birthday gift card (thanks Mom & Steve!) I recently purchased Where Do You Get Your Ideas? A Writer’s Guide to Transforming Notions Into Narratives, by Fred White.
I’ve yet to dive in but admit I couldn’t resist dipping my toes into page 31. The subject? Capturing Ideas In Your Writer’s Notebook.
Writing down your thoughts, however amorphous, is important because the very effort to capture ideas in words helps to develop them. One of the most fascinating things about becoming an active idea hunter is that very act of hunting for ideas will sharpen both your observational skills and your imaginative skills. Work hard to cultivate the habit of writing down the ideas you’ve hunted down, even before you begin assessing their story potential.
One idea: Here’s an opportunity to practice idea recognition while simultaneously doing housework: Find a cluttered closet, junk drawer, or corner of your attic, basement, or garage and organize it. As you do so, see how many potential story ideas you can recognize in the items you come across. Here are two examples from a closet purging to get you going:
- Old musical audiotapes from a long-forgotten jazz quartet. Possible idea: What if a jazz enthusiast, recognizing the exceptional talent of this group, sets out to find the individual musicians and reunite them?
- A cache of holiday greetings from twenty years ago, some from friends and relatives you haven’t heard from since or have since fallen out of favor. Possible idea: What would happen if your main character attempted to reestablish a close friendship (implicit in one of the old greeting cards) that had gone sour for some reason?
How and where do YOU capture ideas?
I’ve much to learn but you’ll rarely find me without this in a nearby pocket. In it, you’ll find random ideas, quirky words/phrases, and mini notes from Marcia Moston’s devotions, given every month in our writer’s meeting.
Now to transform my notions into narratives!
by Cathy Baker | Faith |
Today I was nominated for the Liebster Blog Award by Allison over at
The Budget Maven!
The Liebster Blog Award is given to bloggers by bloggers. It’s a way to acknowledge each other and say “you’re doing a great job”. It is for blogs with 200 or less followers, so it’s also a nice way to spread the word about smaller blogs and get them more readers and followers!
When you receive the award, you post 11 random facts about yourself and answer 11 questions from the person(s) who nominated you. You pass the Award onto 11 other blogs (make sure you tell them you nominated them!) and ask them 11 questions. You’re not allowed to nominate the blog(s) who nominated you! (To get the button, right click the picture on my page and save the picture to your computer. You can then upload to your blog.)
11 Random Facts:
- I’m married to a bluegrass musician (and a darn good one at that!)
- I’m a germ freak. My hands may be chapped but I can’t remember the last time I caught a cold!
- I’m a closet NASCAR fan. Yes, NASCAR. The love-fest began in 2001 at Daytona. It just happened to be the first race I’d watched in years (my mom dated a NASCAR driver for many of my teen years). When I watched Dale Earnhardt Sr. hit the wall and not emerge from his car, I was emotionally hooked.
- Autumn is my favorite season. I’m convinced heaven will be fall-like for an eternity!
- I feed my spoiled Lhasa Apso by hand. Did I just admit that?
- I would like to write a children’s book.
- I collect vintage chenille bedspreads.
- I’m not partial. I have one of the cutest granddaughters God ever created.
- I have a weakness for McDonald’s Chocolate Chip Frappe’s. Can anyone say 18 Weight Watchers points? Ouch!
- I watched the 1995 version of Pride and Prejudice (with Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy) so many times that my DVD began to flicker—so I invested in a new one. 🙂
- The study of The Tabernacle was a turning point in my Christian walk. Forget the idiom “the devil is in the details” — it’s our awesome God who is interested in every minute detail of our lives. Thank You, Lord!
Allison’s Questions for me:
1.What is your least favorite color?
Blue
2. What smell makes you the happiest?
Crisp leaves in Autumn
3. What’s one thing from your bucket list that you’ve yet to do?
Make a bucket list.
4. Who would win in a fight between a hard shell taco and a grilled cheese sandwich?
Hard shell taco, hands down. Unless we’re at Mike’s on Main Street in Hendersonville NC. Their grilled cheese with a cold root beer is yummy. I’d best stop now or I may have to change my answer to #2.
5. What’s your favorite dessert?
Birthday cake. White cake and buttercream white icing. Sweet mercy!
6. If you could trade wardrobes with a celebrity, whose closet would you raid?
Sienna Miller’s – love her style!
7. What overused expression really gets on your nerves?
“politically correct”
8. Vintage or Modern?
Vintage
9. Coke or Pepsi?
Coke…it’s classic.
10. If you had to change your name, what would you change it to?
Aubree Sophia Baker (where did that come from?)
11. If someone gave you a check for a million dollars, how would spend it?
Truly,
I would give a generous check to Summit (my awesome church!) and other
Kingdom causes. Then I’d build a cabin in the mountains where my
family could vacation together (and we could live full-time!)
Here are my nominations for the Liebster Award:
4. Julie at Anti-Writing
My Eleven Questions for Nominees:
1. Would you rather see a movie at the theater or at home on DVD? Why?
2. If someone wrote a book about your life, what would they title it?
3. Who’s your favorite singer or band?
4. If you had to choose a favorite book of the Bible, what would it be and why?
5. Fiction or non-fiction? Why?
6. How would you spend a million dollars?
7. Walmart or Target?
8. Do you parallel park or drive around the block?
9. What’s your favorite cookie?
10. If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?
11. What recent blessing from the Lord would you like to share?
A BIG thanks to Allison at
Budget Maven for this opportunity to share and to help other blogs get noticed.
by Cathy Baker | Faith |
Our Word Weavers group couldn’t be prouder of Marcia Moston!
If you missed her book signing today at
Fiction Addiction, you missed a delightful time. Balloons, books, friends, fellow writers, and the most remarkable cake you’ve ever laid eyes on. Her book cover, made of edible paper, was propped atop chocolate and vanilla cupcakes. Enough said.
It was a blessing to see Marcia surrounded by family and friends. If you would like to purchase a copy of her debut memoir,
Call of A Coward, click
here and then please consider leaving a review. After all, there are many ways we can show our support for one another.
Congratulations, Marcia!
by Cathy Baker | Faith |
Today, I’m excited to introduce you to friend Marcia Moston, author of Call of a Coward: The God of Moses and the Middle-Class Housewife. We’re in for a treat as we learn more about Marcia and her amazing journey.
Tell us about yourself.
Although I hold degrees in sociology and Christian education, most of what I’ve learned has been by the proverbial seat of my pants. I’ve taught English in a Christian high school, worked with orphans in a Mayan village, led mission teams to Central America, delivered Yellowbooks, stuffed vending machines, and lived in everything from tepees to parsonages.
Your writing experience is unusual in that until 2008, you’d never written anything, but by 2011 you had a book contract with Thomas Nelson. How did that happen?
I am grateful to have experienced such abundant grace and blessing on my work. When we moved to the South a few years ago, I had a singular image in my mind: buy a house with a pool where I could sit and write. Although I didn’t know what I would write, nor did I know how to write a book, it was as though my story’s time had come, and I needed a nesting spot. II took a writing workshop taught by the editor of the city journal. At the end of the class, she offered me my own weekly column. That’s when I realized I could write something that people would read.
I continued to take workshops and go to conferences. In 2010, my manuscript won at the Blue Ridge Christian Writers Conference. I also won a self-publishing package, but turned it down because I felt constrained to wait.
Later in the year, I entered the Women of Faith Writing Contest and won a self-publishing package from WestBow Press. Unbeknownst to me, Thomas Nelson was looking at my book, and a month after it came out, offered me a contract.
Many traditional publishers avoid memoir. Do you have any advice for someone who hopes to publish a memoir?
The first agent I approached told me no one would publish a memoir from an unknown. He suggested I turn my story into magazine articles. Although I didn’t do it at the time, I think his advice is good. Memoirists need the exposure magazines give.
My path to publication, however, was through contests. I also made sure my story was about something more than me. Thomas Nelson must have agreed because they categorized my book as Christian living/spirituality.
Tell us about Call of a Coward-the God of Moses and the Middle-Class Housewife.
It’s
about laying aside your hopes, dreams, and fears to follow God even
though where He’s leading seems to require credentials you lack and
courage you don’t think you have. And about discovering just how
personal and gracious He is. Here’s an excerpt:
The
road
exceeded my worst expectations. Cliffs rose straight up on one side and
plunged straight down on the other. The dusty, rutted trail
between the two was wide enough for one vehicle. It was one
thing to ride a scary road with a husband you could yell
at; it was another to ride a scarier road with a stranger who said with
the same equanimity. “There’s a good view from the overlook
up ahead,” and “The brakes are bad, that’s why I have to
pump them.”
Hernando downshifted, pumped the screeching brakes and entered the
river. I couldn’t decide whether to look ahead at the
slippery rocks on the steep bank, look behind from where we
had safely come, or simply bury my head in my lap. If I needed a sign
from God, this was it. I decided there was no way I could
ride this road to go shopping, to get our mail, to find a
doctor, to do anything─ever. When, and if, I met up with Bob in the village, I was going to have to tell him so.
Permission
link: Excerpted from Call of a Coward: The God of Moses and the Middle
Class House-Wife. Thomas Nelson ©2012. Used by permission of Thomas
Nelson, Inc. www.thomasnelson.com.
How were you personally impacted working on the project?
Recording
events and later rewriting them helped me to see just how involved God
was (and is!) in my journey. I gained a deeper appreciation of his
grace, and then after the manuscript won several contests, including the Women of Faith writing contest, I realized it was a message bigger than
my personal story.
What do you hope readers will glean from your story, Call of a Coward: The God of Moses and the Middle-Class Housewife?
A fresh confidence in the Living One who sees them. A sense of expectancy in encountering him. Both the story and its path to publication are examples of the possibilities of an ordinary life in the hands of an extraordinary God. I hope readers will be inspired and encouraged that whether they travel a thousand miles or a thousand feet, God can do exceedingly more than they imagine.
What advice have you found helpful to you as a writer?
To do my part—learn the craft, be open for critique, write with guts, and then rest in Flannery O’Connor’s advice: “When a book leaves your hands, it belongs to God. He may use it to save a few souls or to try a few others, but I think that for the writer to worry is to take over God’s business.”
What or who has influenced you?
I’m sure influences from thousands of books are floating around my brain, but most recently, I’ve been inspired by the imagery and metaphors of the Bible, the essays of E.B. White and Annie Dillard, and the stories of Rick Bragg—people who capture the extraordinary in the ordinary.
Are you working on a second book?
Yes.
My working title is Going South-the God of my Mistakes. When we moved
south, we didn’t expect our plans to go south too—but it’s really a
story of hope.
Is there anything else you would like readers to know?
It was with fear and trembling that I put my name on the same line as Moses’, but the story is not about me or Moses; it’s about the God who is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
Call of a Coward: The God of Moses and the Middle-Class Housewife is available online at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Christian Book Distributors or from your neighborhood bookstore.
Visit me at http://marciamoston.com
I’m a tremendous fan of Marcia’s. She’s the real deal — an authentic and dynamic Christ follower. I encourage you to pick up a copy of her book and then would you consider leaving a comment on Amazon or other distributors, sharing your honest opinion of Call of a Coward: The God of Moses and the Middle-Class Housewife?
Enjoy!
by Cathy Baker | Faith |
Yesterday, I had the pleasure of participating in our local Word Weaver’s workshop, Getting Ready for Conference.
Cynthia Owens did a great job pulling the workshop together, along with her trusted instructors Marcia Moston, Mary Denman, Edie Melson, and Lynn Blackburn. Sue Stout, Carolyn Knefely, and Bruce Brady served faithfully behind the scenes. It was a true team effort.
From the get-go, we were reminded of this scripture: We can make our plans, but the Lord determines our steps. Proverbs 16:9 (NLT)
Remember the popular saying “let go and let God?” I wonder if some of us “let go” a bit prematurely, forgetting our responsibility in fulfilling God’s plans for our lives. (You mean letting go doesn’t include Junior Mints and a nice comfy couch, while resting on God’s promises?)
Marcia reminded us that our responsibility includes being prayerfully sensitive to God’s Spirit, while continuing to work hard at honing the skills we believe God gave us, trusting He will use them for His glory…in His ways…and in His timing. Now that’s letting go!
“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” Thomas A. Edison
