Truth—Stranger than Fiction

"Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is, because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; truth isn't.—Mark Twain

"Well, isn't that special." —Church Lady, Saturday Night Live

Church Ladies with Typewriters Strike Back

They're baaaaack—church bulletin bloopers. Just more proof that you cannot trust spellchecker.

Food and Fellowship

The Fasting & Prayer Conference includes meals.

Potluck supper Sunday at 5:00 PM—prayer and medication to follow.

The church will host an evening of fine dining, super entertainment and gracious hostility.

The pastor would appreciate it if the ladies of the congregation would lend him their electric girdles for the pancake breakfast next Sunday.

Music Ministry

A bean supper will be held on Tuesday evening in the church hall. Music will follow.

Next Thursday there will be tryouts for the choir. They need all the help they can get.

Miss Charlene Mason sang 'I will not pass this way again,' giving obvious pleasure to the congregation.

At the evening service tonight, the sermon topic will be 'What Is Hell?' Come early and listen to our choir practice.

This evening at 7 PM there will be a hymn singing in the park across from the church. Bring a blanket and come prepared to sin.

Eight new choir robes are currently needed due to the addition of several new members and to the deterioration of some older ones.

Children's and Youth Ministry

For those of you who have children and don't know it, we have a nursery downstairs.

Scouts are saving aluminum cans, bottles and other items to be recycled. Proceeds will be used to cripple children.

The eighth-graders will be presenting Shakespeare's Hamlet in the Church basement Friday at 7 PM. The congregation is invited to attend this tragedy.

Ministries

Don't let worry kill you off—let the Church help.

Low Self Esteem Support Group will meet Thursday at 7 PM. Please use the back door.

Weight Watchers will meet at 7 PM at the First Presbyterian Church. Please use large double door at the side entrance.

Ladies Bible Study will be held Thursday morning at 10 AM. All ladies are invited to lunch in the Fellowship Hall after the B. S. is done.

Remember in prayer the many who are sick of our community. Smile at someone who is hard to love. Say 'Hell' to someone who doesn't care much about you.

Volunteers Needed

The ladies of the Church have cast off clothing of every kind. They may be seen in the basement on Friday afternoon.

Ladies, don't forget the rummage sale. It's a chance to get rid of those things not worth keeping around the house. Bring your husbands.

Say What?

The sermon this morning: 'Jesus Walks on the Water.' The sermon tonight: 'Searching for Jesus.'

Please place your donation in the envelope along with the deceased person you want remembered.

The Associate Minister unveiled the church's new campaign slogan last Sunday: 'I Upped My Pledge—Up Yours.'

Irving Benson and Jessie Carter were married on October 24 in the church. So ends a friendship that began in their school days.

Make Your Writing Time More Productive

"Time is free, but it's priceless. You can't own it, but you can use it. You can't keep it, but you can spend it. Once you've lost it you can never get it back."—Harvey MacKay

By Scoti Springfield Domeij

For writers, time is money. So…how much time do you spend writing each day, each week, each month? Do you want to be more productive? The tools below will help you determine how you really spend your writing time. Choose the tool that best suits you.

MyHours

Ever wondered how much you spend on different writing projects? myHours.com, a free easy-to-use, web-based time tracking and management tool, tracks the time you spend while working on various projects.

Myhours.com

Features

• Create projects, tasks and generate reports
  
• Calculate costs required to complete a project
  
• Supports different date and currency formats
  
• Email comprehensive task and project reports
  

Toggl

Want to manage your writing time? Toggl, a free online time tracker tool, helps writers and freelancers manage and also time their working hours.

Toggl

Features

• Put a time-tracker on your tasks/projects
  
• Add a billing feature to timed projects
  
• Invite other users to monitor project time and billing details
  
• Export project time reports to PDF or CSV (Excel) files
  
• Timer continues to run even if browser is closed
  
• Multi-Lingual: English, Estonian, German and Spanish
  
• Can be run as a desktop program, but still requires internet connection to access Toggl server
  

Tasktimer

Want to measure the exact amount of time you spend on a writing project? Tasktimer times and measures the total working hours for each writing project or task over an extended period.

Tasktimer Features

• Start and stop timer clock as many times as you want.
  
• View tasks lists by current month, week, or day.
  
• Add comments and generate reports (details) for each task-timed task.
  
• Export task list along with the timer reports to CSV (Excel), OPML and RSS formats.
  

Track How Much Time You Waste Online?

Kick your internet time wasting addiction. It's too easy to procrastinate writing by spending more time online researching, surfing, or catching up with Facebook friends. How often do you kick yourself and think, I could have spent that time writing, writing, writing. These tools help track your online time and even provide reports to help you decide how to make better use of your time.

LeechBlock

Are you a social networking junkie? Set LeechBlock to block time-wasting websites from loading in Firefox during your writing time. This productivity tool will help you avoid sucking the life out of your writing day, by blocking time-consuming sites for the specified hours that you stipulate.

Time Tracker

Do you spend too much time on Firefox? Do you open tabs faster than you can close them? Can't meet your daily word count? Keep track of how much you browse with TimeTracker.

This simple, yet effective tool, tracks the amount of time you're browsing around.

RescueTime

Where are you spending your time online? Facebook? Blogs? Google? Rescue Time, a web-based time management and analytics tool, helps writers who want to be more productive. It provides a bird's eye view of the sites where you spend the most time. Rescue Time allows you to set goals, like "spend less than an hour per day on Facebook or blogs" or "spend at least 2 hours a day writing." It also sends you a daily summary of how you're doing on those goals (via RSS) or receive real-time alerts when you exceed a goal target.

Tools You Can Use: Organize Your Library

"To add a library to a house is to give that house a soul".— Cicero

By Scoti Springfield Domeij

How do you organize your books? Mine are by topic on my bookshelves. BeepMyStuff lets you create a personal library without much effort. All you do is scan the book's barcode using your webcam.

BeepMyStuff

Features Include

• Barcode driven personal library of your movies, books and games.
  
• Automatically obtains book details from Amazon.
  
• Option to catalog the item manually.
  
• Free and easy to use.
  

Benefits of Beep My Stuff

• Creates an online library of all your DVDs, Blu-Ray movies, CDs, video games, and books
  
• Share your library with friends and view their library collection
  
• Records your library to show your insurer
  
• View your library as a list or thumbnails

You might be a fiction writer, if:

--A friend is telling you her terrible news, and it’s so bizarre that you can barely say the words “I’m so sorry” because you’re concentrating on details in hopes of using this incident in the future. I’ll share my most recent case, but I warn you, I’m going to find a way to use this, so don’t steal my story.

My friend’s car is making strange rattling sounds, so she takes it to the shop. The mechanic opens the hood and finds the engine is filled with acorns. He blows out the nuts and tells her to liberally dust the engine and her driveway with cayenne pepper. But he warns her to avoid the air conditioning coils, or she’ll send cayenne pepper through the system. Another customer's vehicle became a nut burial ground, only he didn’t catch it in time. Squirrels ate through the engine’s wires causing more than $4,000 damage.

Is your imagination beginning to create havoc in a character’s life? Isn’t this great conflict—as long as it isn’t happening to you? Of course, you’re sorry that it’s happening to someone you know. (You’re only glad you heard about it.)

--In a middle of a sermon, you begin to take notes. Not just for your own edification, but for your character's.

--You overhear a catchy bit of dialogue and grab a napkin to record the phrase before you forget it.

--You’re looking at your children, smiling and nodding at what you hope are appropriate places, but your mind is still mulling the scene that you were working on before you were interrupted.

--You hate to waste any conflict, argument or inconvenience in your life. You don’t relish experiencing difficulties, but if you have to go through them, at least let them be useful for your fiction. I’m always thankful that my life isn’t worse; I can always find someone in more difficult circumstances. But I’ve had so much adversity since becoming widowed that I’ve started making a list of conflicts to throw at my characters. Poor darlings. They have no idea what they’re in for!

--You meet someone new and strike up a conversation. When they mention an unusual occupation, you begin to casually interview them.

That’s my list so far. What are the ways that you know you’re a fiction writer?

~Roxanne Sherwood

Creativity Killers

"From cradle to grave, the pressure is on: BE NORMAL. Those who somehow side-step that pressure and let their genius show are customarily ridiculed, reviled or otherwise discountenanced." —Gordon MacKenzie, Orbiting the Giant Hairball.

By Scoti Springfield Domeij

Sometimes it's nice to know that other creative souls understand the discrimination I've felt through the years. 1 Corinthians 12 states, "Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are varieties of ministries, and the same Lord. There are varieties of effects, but the same God who works all things in all persons" Yet, often organized religion harbors and promotes intolerance. Their internal political machines demand that members march in lock step herd mentality with their theology, their beliefs, their mantras, and their causes.

How Often Have You Heard?

• "You're not a fit. Maybe you need to leave." (Translation: Or we will get rid of you, even if we have to slander or lie about you.")
  
• "You're rebellious." (Translation: What's wrong with you? We can't control you. Why can't you follow our man-made rules?)
• "You're too edgy." (Translation: You're too honest. Our most strident followers don't do vulnerable.)
  
• "You're a loose cannon." (Translation: Your questions or insight make us too uncomfortable. We're comfortable with the status quo.)
  

No Brain. No Drain. No Gain.

Believing their actions were for my own good, many religionists shot cannonballs through my heart, tearing gaping holes in my self-esteem, calling and faith. Too often religious folks prefer to discard those with whom they disagree rather than pursuing biblical resolution of conflicts, reconciling differences of opinion, or respectfully agreeing to disagree. Many religious people claim they do not believe in divorce, but in reality, they do. In defense of their theological, philosophical, or ideological preferences, it's easier and more expedient to build impenetrable, unforgiving walls to toss relationships over and out of their lives.

And we wonder why some form opinions that Christians are hypocrites.

For years, I've asked myself these questions, If Christ is so powerful, why doesn't he change the people who claim to know him?Why do religious people prefer religion to relationship with God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and their fellow man? I think the answer is simple.

Fear of commitment, intimacy, and being real. Pride makes it too difficult to allow Christ to recreate us in his image. Too much open heart surgery.

Danger! Are You a Conformity Hazard?

G.K. Chesterton observed, "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried."

Critical and creative thinking is discouraged and demeaned. It's a threat.

To what? Some claim to the truths of God's Word.

Why disturb beliefs in pet theologies? Why encourage people to think richly and deeply about their faith, when you can cling to rigidity. Black—White. Wrong—Right? When we close our eyes, we're all the same.

Sinful. Accepted. Loved. Forgiven. Gifted. Empowered.

Cloning vs. Body Building

A religious organization attracted creative, thoughtful people of faith. Yet many creatives did not feel supported or understood. Some left discouraged, stripped of their confidence in the way God created them to function and contribute within the body of Christ. Others lost their faith. The grinding corporate political infrastructure commanded allegiance to the founder—to the point of idolatry. Without question, the head honcho's views were correct—always.

Can anyone say "cult?" And some wonder why there are no C.S. Lewis or G. K. Chesterton's today.

No human, I repeat, no individual's beliefs are correct all the time. Not mine. Not yours. Not anyone's. Blind holes occur in every one's judgment. If the scholars are unable to agree about theology, what makes me think I'm "the" expert?

I wondered, Why do some leaders want clones, instead of mentees? Not one person is spiritually-identical to another. My spiritual DNA longs to replicate my Creator. Why not adopt a win-win attitude towards encouraging everyone's God-given spiritual and creative passions? How much better equipped would the corporate body of Christ be able to reach into all aspects of culture with God's good news? Enclosing the God-breathed creativity of others within a rigid theological and ideological grid is about as effective as herding cats.

Give Your Creativity Life

Writing provides a safe, quiet, and hidden place to express what I think, feel, and observe. After I survived the hurts inflicted by religionists, I became stronger in the Lord. I no longer believe naysayers. I study God's Word so I can ignore the roar of the herd and hear God's breath in my heart, soul, mind, and writing. I also have learned to surround my heart with friends who understand and encourage who God created me to be. Our friendships are more than cheering sections. I can count on them to hold me accountable. Gloria has cheered me on for years. And Beth has been my Velveteen Rabbit. Both are creativity healers.

Who has trampled or shamed your God-given abilities? What do you need to do to overcome the "shoulds" to break from the herd?

FREE Online Character Building Workshop

"Difficulty attracts the man of character because it is in embracing it that he realizes himself."—Charles de Gaulle

By Scoti Springfield Domeij

Develop Living, Breathing Beings

You can't change the winds of these hard times, but you can adjust your sails and learn to sail your writing ship. The Writers Village provides a FREE independent study online Character Building Workshop using online questionnaires. Fill out the forms and answer questions to discover your characters on a more in-depth level and the roles they play in your story

Other Resources

Build a character wall.

Character Building: Bio sheets.

Character Building: Basing characters on real people.

Character Building: 12 questions.

Character Building: Building a character using multiple perspectives.

Character Building: Brainstorming

Character Building: Interview

Character Building: Biography

Character Building: Possessions

Character Building: A Day in the Life

Character Building: Defining Characters By Their Roles

The Snowflake Method

Tips on Naming Your Characters

Character Name Generator

Creating Characters Made Easy

Character Creation Worksheets

Character Building Worksheet

A Character Creation How-to

 

No pain, no gain. Growing as a writer.

Some people become writers after tossing a book aside and boldly proclaiming, “I can write better than that.” Other people write for months or years before timidly showing their work to anyone. No matter what type of personality you have, at some point, you’ve got to take risks to become a successful writer.

Here are steps to increase your opportunities for success as a writer:

If you’ve never shown your work to anyone, find a critique partner or group.

If you’re in a writers group, you can teach a workshop. (You don’t need to be the most experienced writer in the group. You only need to focus on one aspect of craft such as point of view or setting. Research on the Internet, with books and through other writers. Present your material. Not only will you have served your fellow writers but you will have learned more than if you’d only sat in the audience.)

If you’ve polished the same chapter several times, enter a contest to get feedback from professionals.

If you’ve won a few contests, you can become a first round judge.

If you attend any sort of community or church group that has speakers, try to present a topic to the group. You’ll develop public speaking skills, which is something every writer needs. It doesn’t have to be the keynote speech. Start small and work your way up.

Write an article on one aspect of writing craft. Your research will strengthen your own writing. Now look for a place to publish the piece—either online or in print media. Maybe you can guest on an established blog or perhaps it’s time to start your own.

All of these things can be intimidating. (Believe me, I know. I’ve done each one of them with fear and trembling.) If you wait until you’re comfortable, you’re going to miss many—if not most—opportunities. So take inventory of your writing. Are you at the same place as a writer that you were in last year? Have you grown as a writer or are you stagnant? If you haven’t grown, what is one step you can take right now?

Don’t procrastinate one more day. Meet that goal. Each step moves you farther along the writing road.

~Roxanne Sherwood