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!
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| 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?
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)
