Day by Day

 
(I shared this on my blog last week, so if you've read it already, I apologize! See the little comic below? That happened to me this week, leaving me unprepared with my scheduled post this morning. *sigh*) 

Life isn't really lived from decade to decade, or year to year, or even week to week.

"Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don't get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes." Matthew 6:34 (The Message)

Life comes from day to day. God fulfills His part...

"Blessed be the Lord, Who daily loads us with benefits, The God of our salvation! Selah."  Ps 68:19 NKJV

For the believer, we have daily tasks as well. Sometimes in prayer, sometimes in action. Those daily assignments are for our own good as well as the good of others.

"And daily in the temple, and in every house, they did not cease teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ."  Acts 5:42 NKJV

"Beware, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God; but exhort one another daily, while it is called "Today," lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin." Heb 3:12-14  NKJV

As we fulfill our daily spiritual tasks, we cooperate with God's actions in the spirit realm.

"So continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved." Acts 2:46-47 NKJV

I tend to think in terms of weeks, or months, or years. One-day-at-a-time thinking (and planning) is challenging for me, but from what I can see in the Word, it's the best way to think in terms of stress reduction and cooperation with the Holy Spirit. My husband was laid off from his job a few weeks ago and I've been endeavoring to hold fast to the "don't worry about tomorrow" instructions.  One day.  Just get through today. After all, the entire world can change in a day.
 

 

About the Author: Niki writes fiction, blog posts, articles in the local newspaper, grocery lists, and Facebook status updates. She can be found at her own blog, In Truer Ink, in addition to posting here. She was a 2009 finalist in the Faith, Hope, and Love "Touched by Love" contest.

Irresistibly Sweet Blog Award

This blog was nominated for The Irresistibly Sweet Blog Award by INSPIRATIONAL E-BOOKS. Founders Shawna K. Williams and Nike Chillemi both write for Desert Breeze Publishing). You can check these incredibly sweet ladies at their blog, Inspirational E-Books.

http://inspirationalebooks.blogspot.com/


Ten Nominees for the Irresistibly Sweet Blog Award…

1) http://petticoatsandpistols.com/ because the posts are interesting tidbits of information about my favorite writing periods.

2) http://internationalchristianfictionwriters.blogspot.com/ because we get to see what Christian writers outside the U.S. are doing. The international recipes are a bonus. Yum!!!

3) Seekerville which I automatically look at everyday along with ours. That's mostly for what I learn and the community. It's like my personal "Cheers" bar in Boston. http://seekerville.blogspot.com/


4) http://colonialquills.blogspot.com/ It's my other favorite group blog. Enjoy the history topics and interest in promoting Colonial Fiction! (Don't forget to check out CQ's interview of Inky Gina. http://colonialquills.blogspot.com/2012/01/interview-with-gina-wellborn.html)

5) Novel Matters! I check it almost every day. http://www.novelmatters.com/

6) "Writing Roseanna" http://roseannamwhite.blogspot.com/, covers fiction, history, and spiritual issues. Always intelligent, thought provoking, and fun!

7) anitamaedraper.com/author-memories.html Anita is the Fred Rogers of making authors feel comfortable to share moments that changed their lives.

8) http://stevelaube.com/blog/ for the insight into the publishing market, the tips on writing, and the Fun Friday videos!

9) http://www.acfw.com/blog/ (Because Gina didn't think she could get away with listing http://www.ew.com/.)

10) http://www.inkwellinspirations.com/ We check it every day, rain or shine, in sickness and in health!


Ten Random Facts about Inkwell Inspirations (because 7 just isn't enough!)

1) Three of us are the exact same age. Care to guess who? (Please don't.)

2) Several of us were/are pastor's wives.

3) My Inky sisters aren't afraid to speak up - whether I want to hear their suggestions or not. LOL

4) One multi-published author loves an Inky book so much she uses it in her workshops as an example of How To Break the Rules!

5) For her birthday, one Inky received loose leaf tea named after Austen characters. This year's gift was "The Passion of Miss Price" (black tea with vanilla infusion).

6) While one Inky wanted to be called Toni when she was in Jr. High (it never caught on), another Inky wanted to be called Zsa Zsa. A third Inky (not Jennifer) spent a year answering to Jenny because her manager read her application wrong and thought her nametag was spelled incorrectly.

7) One Inky's mother grew up in North Pole, Alaska!

8) Inkies live on the West Coast and East Coast, as south as Texas and as north as Canada. One Inky used to live in West Germany, another in Lebanon, and one more in Gabon.

9) Deep in the recesses of the Inky Cave, they have something too amazing, too scary, too shocking, too priceless, and a pair of glittery shoes that they can't share with anyone who doesn't know the Inky theme song.

10) The Inkies are quick to love, quick to help, and quick to pray. 

A Veggie Revolution!

by Dina Sleiman

Of course I’ve been told my whole life to eat my vegetables. Problem is, I’ve never been much of a fan. Generally I have some sort of vegetable, hopefully healthier than potatoes or corn, in my dinner each night. I tend to stick with stir frys and soups where the vegetables are well disguised. But lately (thanks largely to my body rejecting white sugar and flour) I’ve been in the midst of a vegetable revolution. Veggies really are the healthiest foods you can eat. You can’t go wrong with them. And unless you cover them with crappy saturated fats, you really can’t eat too many. Veggies even help the body fight disease.

Perhaps veggies are the real food of the gods. After all, what did God give us to eat in the Garden of Eden? Fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and whole grains. All wonderful wholesome foods. Then add in a little bit of the meat he permitted later, meat carefully butchered without fat or blood. And there you have a balanced diet. But all those other foods, healthy as they are, need to be eaten in moderation to maintain a healthy weight. And now I’m having flashbacks to the all fruit diet I tried in high school, and yes, I did manage to gain five pounds. Whereas veggies are a veritable free for all.

Why are veggies so good for you? Here’s a quick list in case you need a reminder.

1)      Low fat

2)      High in vitamins and minerals including anti-oxidants

3)      High fiber

4)      Low and even negative calorie counts

5)      Raw veggies provide enzymes which aid digestion

6)      Raw veggies help to cleanse the body

7)      Veggies fill you up and keep you from eating unhealthy foods

In fact, here’s a food chart that pretty well describes what I’ve been eating lately, and how we probably all should strive to eat. Once you eat those 5-7 servings of veggies you won’t have much room left for junk.

So the biggest problem for me was how to choke down those veggies. I’m not a fan of the classic iceberg lettuce and canned vegetables. I don’t like green peppers or peas. But there’s a whole world of vegetables out there I’ve been discovering. And the main trick is preparing them right. For raw veggies I’ve found I love salads with fruits and nuts involved. Even more healthy food. Add a little lowfat cheese like feta and some light fruity vinaigrette. Yum!

And for my cooked veggies, I’ve discovered I love just about anything with cold-pressed olive oil, salt, and pepper. Roast it in the oven or saute it on the stove, and I’m one veggie eating fool. Brussel sprouts, asparagus, broccoli, and carrots are all tres yummy this way. And cauliflower. Don’t even get my started on cauliflower. Let’s just say it tests the strength of our family togetherness when I roast cauliflower. No fist fights have broken out yet, but it’s been close. (Oh, and please don’t mention to Christi the night she was at dance and we ate it all without telling her.)

What about those potatoes you might ask? Not really one of the good ones. But…sweet potatoes are awesome. I used to think they were gross. All goopy from the can with sickly sweet stuff on top. Not so the baked sweet potato. I like it with just a little smart balance butter and salt.

Don’t forget the squash family. Butternut, acorn, and our favorite, spaghetti. Yes, there are lots of interesting vegetables out there. These ones really fill you up.

And for a thick, meaty vegetable, try portabella mushrooms and eggplant. Both especially awesome in Italian and Chinese food.

So hopefully this has gotten your veggie juices flowing. Here’s my roasted veggie recipe for anyone who’s hungry.

1. Slather finger-food size cuts of veggies in olive oil. (Try carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, brussel sprouts, or asparagus)

2. Add salt and pepper to taste.

3. Roast on cookie sheet at 435 degrees for approximately 30 minutes, until the olive oil caramelizes.

What are your favorite vegetables? Do you have any favorite recipes? Have you discovered any new and exciting veggies dishes lately?

Choosing a Point of View

by C.J. Chase

One of the devices in a writer’s toolkit to create realistic, three-dimensional characters is point of view (POV). Consider, a novelist's job is to make fictitious people so real, the reader feels like he knows them. Judicious use of POV provides the frame of reference for the story and creates a bond between the reader and characters. There are three major POVs in common usage.

First person POV creates the most intimacy between the reader and the character. In a first person story, the narrator is a character who addresses the reader directly—like friends chatting over coffee. The narrator and reader bond because they spend the entire story together.

A reader can immediately tell first person because the narrator calls himself (or herself) “I” and “me.” “Call me Ishmael” begins the narrator of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. Or how about this favorite from my childhood? “The first place that I can well remember was a large pleasant meadow with a pond of clear water in it.” Yes, even a horse can be the narrator of a first person story.  

Third person POV adds a little more distance between the narrator and the story. The author chooses one character from the story and proceeds to present the story world through that person’s senses. We are limited to the character’s experiences—only what he can see, feel, smell, hear, or taste.

Third person is the most commonly used POV in modern commercial fiction. A very deep third-person POV is almost a first-person POV. Almost. For instance, this opening line could easily be changed in first person: “Too late, Crispin Worthington discovered he hated dying even more than he hated his father.”

So why use third person instead of first? Third person keeps us at a bit more distance than first person, so an author can more easily switch to another POV character in the next scene or next chapter. A common structure for mysteries and thrillers is to open the story in a villain or vicitm’s POV, and then switch to the hero (protagonist) at the beginning of the next chapter. Back and forth, the POV changes from villain to hero. While each shift adds a bit of distance from the reader (because with each switch, the reader must adjust to seeing the world from another perspective) it adds tension. The reader now knows more than any one character.

In omniscient POV, the narrator is even further removed from the characters, like a bird in the sky reporting on events below. Omniscient allows us to peek into any character’s thoughts, but because we aren’t intimately connected to any single character, it is the most distant.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” That is the narrator’s opinion. We don’t know if Sidney Carlton or Charles Darnay agreed. Indeed, they had no notion of what was about to befall them. Or how about this gem? “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” Rather than a character relaying this opinion, the author has stepped into the story to address the reader.

The Bible is the story of God stepping into history to address all of humanity. Omniscience (Latin for “all knowing”) is a characteristic of God. And yet, just like a reader of a story told in omniscient POV, how often have I kept the Omniscient, Omnipotent and Omnipresent God at a distance? Guilty, far too many times.

A writer creates intimacy between the reader and a character by having them spend time together. It is the same in our relationship with God. Only by spending time with Him will we gain intimacy with him.

The God who already knows every aspect of our being wants us to know him—more intimately than a first person novel. He gave us approximately 1,000 pages of revelation of his POV. "And I will give them an heart to know me" says God in Jeremiah. "Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me" invites Jesus. "In reading this, then, you will be able to understand my insight into the mystery of Christ," Paul told the Ephesians.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a bit of reading to do!

Do you have a favorite point of view? Do you enjoy stories told in first person or do you prefer third person? 

After leaving the corporate world to stay home with her children, C.J. Chase quickly learned she did not possess the housekeeping gene. She decided writing might provide the perfect excuse for letting the dust bunnies accumulate under the furniture. Her procrastination, er, hard work paid off in 2010 when she won the Golden Heart for Best Inspirational Manuscript and sold the novel to Love Inspired Historicals. Redeeming the Rogue was an August, 2011 release. You can visit C.J.'s cyber-home (where the floors are always clean) at cjchasebooks.com