Starting From Scratch?

I gave my family heartburn last month. I told them I was taking the 173 (typed and covered in hand-written notes, along with over a dozen pages simply handwritten) and past 5 years of work on my book and "starting over from scratch"!

In talking my plans through especially with our daughter (who was beside herself at the thought) and the gals from my Bible study, who are praying and cheering me on, I've come to realize that the "starting over" aspect of this statement is indeed correct, but the "from scratch" part isn't exactly accurate.

As I explained to a friend, my current manuscript attempts have been written over a much-too-long time frame and at too many drastically diverse stages of physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual abilities. I can't even figure out what I was trying to say in certain sections that were penned in the earliest post-stroke attempts. What I can identify, often doesn't flow well and the pieces don't fit. There were many days when I've been writing and doing therapies at the same time!

Therapy device.

Rather than try to repair, I am just salvaging what I can and starting fresh. I'm glad I have all these "building blocks" to work with and a solid book skeleton in place, so now I can flesh out something fresh. I would dearly like to have a finished manuscript ready to start presenting to publishers before the Mount Hermon Christian Writers Conference in April 2017. Would you please pray with me toward that end?

My post Mt.Hermon 2016 review and article about Perception and New Things can be found at http://strokeofgrace.blogspot.com/2016/03/i-perceive-it.html - amazing how what I learned nearly 9 months back fits so well with today's announcement!
If you are interested in helping me go to Mount Hermon in 2017, read more at
https://www.gofundme.com/StrokeOfGrace

What I long for my writing to be:
"We need theologians to plumb the depths of the Bible and to clarify doctrine. We need preachers to open the Book for daily living and show us the way of worship. But often what we need is a compatriot, a fellow pilgrim on the road with enough scars to prove, 'I walked this path before.'" - Alton Gansky, from the foreward of Jesus and the Beanstalk (Lori Stanley Roeleveld)

Wherever your heart lives today, may God flood you with HOPE!

Snails Lapping

My manuscript for Hannah's Hope was due to the publisher 12 years ago this month.

I had no idea then that I would even write another book at all. Once I realized that was God's call, never dreamed I wouldn't have a second manuscript to a publisher yet.
God's timing...

When I think of the current (pre-stroke) manuscript in terms of the writing profession, it is taking SO LONG and I get really sad and discouraged. (Hannah's Hope took me 10 months of active writing time. The manuscript for Harvesting Hope from Heartache has had 4 years of active writing - I started it a week before the strokes, then could not do anything with it for the next several, so it has been about 4 years since I had the single-handed typing coordination and eye-sight to get back into this project - and it is STILL not finished!) I think even the snails and turtles are lapping me at this point!

When I think of all I have accomplished in the past 4 1/2 years from the perspective of a brain stem stroke survivor who should not even be alive, and what I do type is through very slow thought processing and single-handed typing, I'm honestly rather blown away by what God is working through me THIS FAST!

God's Timing

Five years ago today, I posted to Facebook, http://www.facebook.com/NavPressPublishing is asking, "What NavPress author, current or past, would you like to see more books or Bible studies from?" I'm currently working on a study on the Fruit of the Spirit I hope to pitch to them early next year, followed by a Hannah's Hope style encouragement guide on living with chronic pain/illness based on the life of Paul.

I posted this several months before my strokes. A week before I stroked, God showed me a beautiful way to merge my fruit of the Spirit work with another project I had on the back-burner, based on Psalm 126, to become my Harvesting Hope from Heartache [facebook page link] manuscript. Over 4 1/2 years later I'm STILL not finished nor ready to present it to a publisher, but absolutely not giving up either. Didn't account for 6 strokes and ongoing brain recovery in that "next year" plan!

13 Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” 14 Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. 15 Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” 16 As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil. 17 If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.

- James 4

Big Writing News

I just posted a detailed timeline of all God's doing in my life this week, very possibly even leading to the relatively soon publication of this book, over at http://strokeofgrace.blogspot.com/2016/03/im-dizzy.html!