Tonight, it was late, and believe it or not I actually do value my sleep (not as much as other things, but I do value it nonetheless), so I didn’t write anything original today.\u00a0 Instead, I went back about ten or fifteen pages back and did some light revision while reminding myself what’s going on so far.<\/p>\n
It was actually quite good!\u00a0 Helped to renew some excitement for me in the story, which was nice.\u00a0 Good motivation for writing tomorrow.\u00a0 And, day after tomorrow, there is a writing party over at Jakeson’s and Gamila’s (who actually live on the same block as me, I found)!\u00a0 I am definitely looking forward to getting WAY ahead during that night!<\/p>\n
Man, I suppose I’m either a wimp or just really busy with other things to only be doing 500 pages a day, and some days less than that!\u00a0 I hope I can learn to balance writing with my career (not to mention career and writing with family!).\u00a0 As it is, I can’t hardly balance anything.\u00a0 Not the important things, anyways.\u00a0 Temple, scriptures, friends, homework, tests, papers, readings, reading for recreation, vs. all the stupid things that can waste one’s time…shoot man!\u00a0 It’s a hard, difficult battle!<\/p>\n
And I really hope that writing is more than just a “good thing” on that list.\u00a0 I really do.\u00a0 If it’s just a “good thing,” then it means that I should cut it out of my life, because there are already so many “good things” that I could be doing that I don’t have time to do them all!\u00a0 It would be a matter of cutting them to allow time for the “great things” and the “best things.”<\/p>\n
But then again, I think it’s quite likely that writing fiction IS something more than a “good thing.” I’m reading this collection of quotes from Madeline L’Engle, the fantastic writer of children’s literature who wrote A Wrinkle In Time<\/em><\/a>, the book that (believe it or not) hooked me onto Science Fiction and becoming a writer.\u00a0 In this book, L’Engle talks about writing as something holy and sacred, about serving the story, and about how art and creative writing is a profoundly important and spiritual thing.\u00a0 It’s quite interesting, because it’s very different from my current view of writing (which is basically “I want to write because it’s cool and there’s something compelling me to do it that I don’t understand”).\u00a0 Very thought provoking, actually.\u00a0 I really want to understand where she’s coming from and see it for myself.\u00a0 It could really change the way that I approach all of this, in a very positive way.\u00a0 I’ll have to blog about it once I’ve read the book.<\/p>\n And you know, this might be me going out on a limb, but if writing really is a way that I could profoundly shape the world for good (or the life of an individual, which really is the same thing ultimately) then it would make sense that Satan would want to put doubts into my mind about my writing and my stories and the possibility of getting published and all of those other problems.\u00a0 If it has the potential to be that good on a spiritual level, then it makes sense that there would be so much opposition.\u00a0 In which case the answer, of course, really is faith–stepping out into the unknown, trusting in something greater than yourself to show you the way and lend power to your writing that you yourself could not have put into it.\u00a0 I believe quite firmly that all of this is possible–I just need to make the leap.\u00a0 I’m still trying to control my own writing too much, and not focusing on the ultimate potential that lies beyond my limitations.\u00a0 If it is true that there is a place for spiritual significance in writing, then I need to make space for God and enter with Him in a partnership to do this.<\/p>\n I honestly don’t know.\u00a0 Until I sat down to write this, I didn’t know that I had these doubts–indeed, maybe they didn’t enter into me until I started to write this.\u00a0 And I honestly don’t know what I’m saying or where I’m going with all this spiritual stuff.\u00a0 It’s something I still need to think about.\u00a0 But it really does seem like it’s something worth pondering and contemplating.\u00a0 I feel that it has the power to profoundly and fundamentally change my approach to creative writing in general.\u00a0 For that reason alone, it is worth focusing a fair measure of my attention.\u00a0 I will definitely be doing this, because I have a lot of questions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tonight, it was late, and believe it or not I actually do value my sleep (not as much as other things, but I do value it nonetheless), so I didn’t write anything original today.\u00a0 Instead, I went back about ten or fifteen pages back and did some light revision while reminding myself what’s going on… Continue reading not too much<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[],"tags":[8,4,599],"class_list":["post-80","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-writing-in-general","tag-the-lost-colony","tag-thoughts-reflections","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-1i","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}