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Discuss/Describe a situation where you are sitting around waiting for God to change your life. In what way may God be waiting on you to start moving so that He can direct your life?
What to do with my future. For all I know it could be staring me in the face and I'm just missing it.
I've known for a long time I wanted to write, and I seemed determined to go that route. But when I grew up and actually bothered to look into publishing, I think I kinda panicked, cause it was kind of overwhelming. I began to realize that just writing might not pay the bills, and that writing to publish would be hard. So I started trying to figure out something I could do as a day job, something "profitable," but in the end ended up majoring in English, a major which in no way leads to a specific job. And then in a not-very-well-thought-out decision, I decided, in the middle of my B.A., to pour blood, sweat, and tears into that web design certificate.
Now writing is hard. Sometimes it doesn't flow so well, because now I have to actually think about what others will think of these expressions of myself. And I'm not gonna lie, I got burned by the CWCW. I had friends there, sure, but stick a real traditional writer with a Christian genre novel in with a bunch of avant-garde writers who are mostly poets, and it's just not gonna mesh well. Their 3-page-per-meeting limit didn't work well for workshopping a novel. And when I finally started just bringing poetry to make things easier, it was meh. (One person said my Petrarchan sonnet "Judge Frollo" [addressed to the character of that name from Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and inspired by a song of his in the movie, "Hellfire"] should have more lines. Um, it's a sonnet...it can't have more lines! It was the first time I'd written a Petrarchan sonnet too).
Still, sometimes, it does flow, and I am happy. Yesterday, I wrote 2,851 words for the novel I've been trying to work on this month for Camp NaNoWriMo (which, based on where I am, I am basically not going to win). It's a challenge cause I'm doing multiple first person for the first time. I've encountered it before in novels here and there (Chateau of Echoes has it, as do the Baby-Sitters Club Specials). I do write a lot easier in first person. It comes easier to me. I've been trying to branch out into third person also though. It's just harder.
In what way may God be waiting on me to start moving so that He can direct my life? Maybe I need to be more proactive. My mom keeps saying things don't happen by magic, and that I need to stop acting like they will. She also says I need to speak up more and actually ask for what I want. (I usually beat around the bush instead of being direct). So I guess I need to set a goal and actually do something about it. Like if I want to be a writer and get my name out there, I need to, well, write first off. I need to get my author website shipshape. (I've been planning to get it updated and then have Web Design Relief, a group that's affiliated with Writer's Relief, look at it. It's quite a bit of money but I know it'll be worth it, because quite frankly I'm just not good at promotion, online or off. I have looked into it of course, but I just have no clue what the heck I'm doing). And then I need to get updated Writer's Market books and actually submit some stuff to magazines or journals, just to build publication credits. Cause all I have to show for publication credits fiction-wise is a handful of stuff from CWCW publications, a short story in the Anthology of Short Stories by Young Americans from 2003, and a self-published chapbook.
Yeah, I think that's it. That's what I gotta do. Be proactive!
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