Category Archives: Bible study

American Colonial History, Bible study, Documenting America

September Progress, October Goals

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End of the month. Time to report what progress I made relative to the goals I set at the beginning of the month, and to set some goals for next month.

  • Blog twice a week, Mondays and Fridays. I suspect my readers are tired of seeing that goal each month. Did this. Only one day was a late and weak post, but I went back later in the day and fleshed it out.
  • Attend three writers meetings, plus the online social gathering. Did this. The meetings were good, though the online social gathering was poorly attended.
  • So far this has not found an audience on Kindle Vella. But I will stay the course and publish all 32 episodes there, the bring it out as a book at the appropriate time.

    Complete the first draft of Documenting America: Run-Up To Revolution. Did this, finishing it on September 22, eight days ahead of schedule. It felt good to have stuck with this, rarely missing a planned day of writing.

  • Decide on whether to post my new Documenting America book to Kindle Vella and, if I do, get the first chapter/episode published on Wednesday, September 6. I decided to do this, and put up the first chapter/episode on September 11 and to publish them on Mondays and Thursdays. That schedule puts the last one available for reading on December 28.
  • Tie down the new writing idea that came to me on August 28-30. Write all I can about the idea in manuscript. I did some of this. Actually, I blogged about the idea here. The book, should that’s what it winds up being, will be fairly complex. It will take a lot of research and planning. I’m not ready to commit to that yet, but I do want to get more of my ideas documented, just in case I ever do want to write it. So I call this goal only half completed.

Okay, not a bad month. Time now for setting some goals for October.

  • Blog twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays.
  • Attend three writers group meetings.
  • Attend the Ozark Writers League fall conference in Branson. This will be at the end of the month.
  • Finish all editing on Documenting America: Run-Up To Revolution, and schedule all episodes for publishing on Kindle Vella.
  • Begin work on A Walk Through Holy Week, Part 1. I have this pretty well planned out. My main problem will be in shifting mindset from history to Bible study, so I’m not setting a word goal. I will probably do so next month.
  • Continue to document the writing idea, The Artwork Of God. I’m not sure how much time I’ll spend on this. I think it will basically be putting somewhat random ideas in a document.
  • Begin reading a book on colonial America, dealing with essays from a newspaper debate in Boston in 1774-1775. I just found this book and saved it to Kindle. What I’m going to do with it I’m not sure.

That’s plenty. I’ll come back in a month and give a report and set new goals.

American Colonial History, Bible study, Documenting America, home improvements

Life Is Busy Right Now…

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Verly close to finishing the book. Individual chapters going up on Vella each week.

…so busy that I didn’t prepare a blog post for today. Yesterday I worked hot and heavy on Documenting America: Run-Up To Revolution, completing two chapters and doing a little restructuring. I had a number of phone calls and messages to make regarding work to be done at the house and upcoming travel.

Consequently, I didn’t prepare a blog post ahead of time. And you get this filler post. I may come back and say a little more later. Right now I’m preparing for a City inspection of some work and our quarterly pest control treatment. Also need to call about a car in the shop, accommodations for our next trip, and something else that’s escaping me right now. Oh, yes, find out what’s the hold up on getting an estimate on some work we want done.

Possibly I’ll get back later to add something to this.

ETA, 3:01 PM Friday 22 September 2023

Well, today I finished DA:RUTR. I wrote the last two chapters this morning. I also edited Chapter 17, putting me more than halfway through the editing process. In addition, ten episodes are uploaded to Kindle Vella and scheduled to be published on Mondays and Fridays. I think that, by this time next week, all episodes will be edited and scheduled to be published.

It’s always a good feeling when you say “I’m done” with the first draft of a book. Better even when it is fully edited, and then when it’s published. At least the first part is done.

Now to figure out what to write next. Most likely I’ll move on the A Walk Through Holy Week, Part 1.

Bible study, C.S. Lewis, Christianity

Screwtape: The Law of Undulation

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Screwtape tells Wormwood the law of Undulation can work in the tempter’s favor; alas, he says, it is also one of God’s most effective tools for Christian growth.

Our adult Sunday School class continues in to study C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters. Yesterday, my co-teacher taught Letters 8 and 9, which were closely related. Screwtape began Letter 8 to Wormwood by saying, “Has no one told you about the law of Undulation?”

Undulation is ups and down. Think of a sine wave diagram; or, if you never took trigonometry, think of waves at a beach. Or, if you’re an inlander and have never spent much time at a large water body, think of the ripples that occur when you plunk a stone into a pond. Peaks and troughs go out from the source. At the ocean beach, waves of irregular size and duration crash to the shore. A sine wave diagram is a nice, clean, consistent show of ups and down: always the same height, always the same width. Boring, if you’re looking for adventure. The ocean waves are much more exciting.

Screwtape says that this cycle of undulation can be used against the humans. Wormwood can attack his “patient” during the troughs. In Letter 9, he explains how to do this. But, the senior devil says, God can also use the troughs. In fact, God uses them more than the peaks to see the Christian grow.

Screwtape explains that God could use his sovereign power to carry the human through, over, or around the trough. He could make it easy on the human. He kind of does a little of that when the person is a new convert. But as the person begins to mature in his Christian walk, God backs off. In fact, when the next trough hits, the Christian can feel abandoned by God. How does this help? Screwtape explains it this way, using his twisted, reverse logic.

He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs—to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. …Our cause is never more in danger than when a human no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obey.

That’s good stuff. Satan tempts us through the trough. But God gives us hidden strength to get through it, to continue in our devotion to him even though we can’t see him, can’t hear him, can’t find any evidence of his presence. In so doing, we are strengthened more than when we do the same thing during life’s peaks. Devotion is easy during those times and, while we are encouraged and enthusiastic, we do not necessarily grow in grace to the extent when we go through the trough and come out victorious.

I had more to say about this, but will end here. Possibly on Friday I’ll pick it up again.

 

Bible study, Documenting America, goals

July Progress, August Goals

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Last day of the month, time to enter my progress for last month and goals for the next.

  • Blog twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays. Did this. I think only one time did I do a somewhat minor post. The rest were all more meaningful.
  • Attend two writers meetings, one of which I’ll present at. A third meeting may happen and I’ll attend, if the library can schedule them. I was able to attend only one writers meeting, due to a change in travel schedule. It was the one I presented at.
  • Work on Documenting America: Run-Up To Revolution. Last month, even though it wasn’t on the schedule, I managed to copy most of my source documents and load them into a Word document. The next step is reading and condensing them to the right length for the format of the series. I anticipate this will take all of July and possibly even longer. I was able to complete this. It was a fairly large task, cutting 130,000 words in the source documents down to 30,000 for my book. Happy to say I completed that on July 25th!
  • Write up my recent Bible study idea into a proper outline of what it would be. It turned out I wasn’t quite ready to write this up, except for some minor, handwritten notes. I continued to do more reading in some reference documents. Possibly I’ll get to it in August, or I may put it off until September.
  • Not an official goal, but I did a lot of scanning, saving, and discarding of genealogy papers. Having a good electronic filing system in place has really streamlined the process. That, and getting to the point of simply discarding stuff rather than scanning it.

So what about goals for August? Summer and family travel appear to be over, so maybe I can get some good writing time in.

  • Blog twice a week, on Monday and Friday.
  • Attend three writers meetings. One writers group is folding, so I’ll only have three most months henceforth.
  • Begin serious writing work on Documenting America: Run-Up to Revolution. I don’t know how fast this will go—or how slow—so I won’t set a word goal. I actually began this on Saturday, and was able to complete the commentary part of Chapter 1—first draft, of course. This bodes well for future writing progress on this book.
  • Read more in reference documents for my new Bible study idea. If everything gels, get started on the study overview and outline.
  • Continue to work on digitizing/discarding of genealogy papers.

That doesn’t look like much in the way of goals, but it’s all I can think of at the moment.

 

Bible study, Christianity, Documenting America, Screwtape's Good Advice, self-publishing, Writing

Too Many Things To Write

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So, the day after posting my writing goals for July, I started to have second thoughts.

In that post, I said my main project would be the next Documenting America series, Run-Up To Revolution. I started working on it yesterday, creating the Table of Contents and cataloging the source items already in the Word document. I turns out I only have five more documents to either find and copy or type. That’s a good start.

But is it the right thing to write? The last couple of days I did some more looking into Kindle Vella. For those who don’t know, that’s an Amazon platform for stories/books brought out in serial form. I thought maybe I could publish my nascent memoir, Tales Of A Vagabond, there. I have five “episodes” as K-V calls them) written, and a little inspiration caused me to start planning the broader book.

But wait, because that new Bible study I mentioned in a previous post continues to pull at me. I did a little research reading for it yesterday in the second source document, and a proposed outline has started to come together in my mind. Nothing is on paper yet.

But it also occurred to me that maybe I should return to working on the eight-part Bible study A Walk Though Holy Week. I’ve written about that before. Parts 4, 5, 6, and 7 are written, and Parts 4, 5, and 6 have had one editorial pass. These four could be ready to publish in a couple of months, Parts 1, 2, and 3 are fully planned, and Part 8 partially planned. It occurred to me that maybe I should shift to writing Part 1, for I don’t know if it makes sense to begin publishing the series at Part 4. What to do, what to do?

Then, our adult Sunday School class has begun re-studying C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters. We went through it around 2008, and I wrote four chapters covering four letters. I found them useful in teaching fifteen years later, and I feel the itch to work again on it again. But, that would be quite time consuming and energy sapping. What to do?

And that’s not all. A couple of months ago, finding myself at the time of our critique group and me with nothing to share, I dashed off the first four pages of the first book in my long-planned-but-never-started Alfred Cottage Mysteries. The crit group seemed to like it, as they had liked the series summary I had shared earlier. I’ve wanted to write that series for a long time but have hesitated since it would be yet another genre—something I don’t really need.

And one other thing occurred to me. Perhaps it’s time to get going transcribing the letters from our years in Saudi Arabia, as I did with the letters from our years in Kuwait. I want to get to that while I still have strength of mind and body. That’s not a commercial project; it would be only for family. But it’s important to me to see it done. I think, among all these things I’ve mentioned, it is the least likely to pop up to the surface at this time.

With all that, I actually have one or two other ideas floating around in my head, things that have come to me recently that haven’t gelled sufficiently to think of a title, an outline, or a purpose and scope. But they are there, consuming brain cells, and interrupting my reading on more immediately pressing projects.

Ah, the life of the writer with Genre Focus Disorder, too much immediate time, and too few years left in an already fruitful life to write everything that sits a while in my mind, never mind those ideas that flit through.

Bible study, Documenting America, goals, reading, The Forest Throne, Writing

June Progress, July Goals

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The Key To Time Travel is published.

How can I possibly have progress in a month that I was taking off from writing? Well, taking time off for me is different than for others. It’s hard for me not to keep up with writing even during my month off. So I got a few things done. I’ll list them along with the goals, then I’ll see what kind of goals I can set for July.

  • Blog twice a week, Mondays and Fridays, as always. Even with grandparent busyness, I was able to get this done. Each day had a real blog post written and posted.
  • Attend writer groups meetings as I can based on travel schedule.  As expected, travel kept be away from all but one of the scheduled meetings.
  • Proofread as much as I can of the four completed volumes of A Walk Through Holy Week. I proofread parts 4, 5, and 6 (which I didn’t remember proofreading last year). Part 7 will be a July goal.
  • Work on the cover for the AWTHW series. I don’t sell enough books to pay for cover creation, so I just have to do it myself. I have a concept I want to use, if I can do the graphics. Which leads to my last goal… This is done, sort of. I worked with my 10-year-old granddaughter, who shows some artistic talent, to go from my preliminary concept to a working prototype. Whether it’s a fully workable prototype, I’m not sure.
  • Work with G.I.M.P. on how to do more artistry in covers. I’ll have to find some tutorials.

Other things I got done were:

  • Catching up on correspondence, both new writing and filing all unfiled correspondence for 2023.
  • Publish The Key To Time Travel. I didn’t mention this as a June goal because I wasn’t sure of the timing for getting the cover. After dealing with some health issues, the cover designer finished her work, and the book went on sale this month.
  • Work on the source material for the next Documenting America book. See the July goals.
  • Do more reading than normal.
  • Brainstorm an idea for a new Bible study, and read some source material for it.
  • Made a few updates to my website—not major ones, but things that needed doing.
  • And one thing that wasn’t writing related, but which I feel like mentioning, was digitizing my genealogy files. No, they are not done—far from it. But I added to what I did in prior months and fine-tuned my filing system as I went along. At the end of the month I felt good about how much of this I accomplished.

Now, for some July goals.

  • Blog twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays.
  • Attend two writers meetings, one of which I’ll present at. A third meeting may happen and I’ll attend, if the library can schedule them.
  • Work on Documenting America: Run-Up To Revolution. Last month, even thought it wasn’t on the schedule, I managed to copy most of my source documents and load them into a Word document. The next step is reading and condensing them to the right length for the format of the series. I anticipate this will take all of July and possibly even longer.
  • Write up my recent Bible study idea into a proper outline of what it would be.

That’s a good number of goals for a month after a break. Documenting America will be my main task for the month.

Bible study, Christianity, goals, The Forest Throne

April-May Progress, June Goals

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When I last posted about progress and goals, at the end of March, I said I wasn’t going to post goals for April due to uncertainty of my schedule and ability to work on writing. Slowly, my schedule clarified itself. I found more time to work in the midst of grandparent duties than I expected.

So here it is June. I didn’t have goals for April or May, but I need to give you some idea of the progress I made in those months. I can’t compare it to goals I didn’t make, so I’ll just give it, in the format I usually do, as if I had goals.

  • Blog twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays. I managed to do this. A couple of times I had almost dummy posts, but I got it done.
  • Attend writers groups as I can. I was traveling a lot, and missed a number of meetings. But I attended whenever I was in town.
  • Work on and finish Parts 4, 5, and 7 of A Walk Through Holy Week. I’m pleased to say that the time I spent on this was quite effective and efficient. I finished Part 7 a little ahead of the teaching schedule. I finished Part 4 just after that, and Part 5 on May 19. I’ll soon write a blog post about that progress.
  • On The Key To Time Travel, finish a final edit to make sure all editor’s marks are addressed, and all dates and ages are consistent. Then format and publish it by the end of May. Yes, I got this done! I learned yesterday I need to make a minor edit to the acknowledgements, which I hope to do today. The print cover has been delayed, as the cover designer has had a health issue. Hopefully it won’t be too long before I can get the print book published.
  • Update this website as needed. I did most of that. Possibly I’ll get it all done before this posts.

So, what about June? I’m not real sure. After five months of intensive work this year, I feel like I need to take some time off. Yet, time off doesn’t result in the writing that leads to publication. Therefore, I’m going to make a few goals.

  • Blog twice a week, Mondays and Fridays, as always.
  • Attend writer groups meetings as I can based on travel schedule. I was supposed to present at one of these in June, but have had to delay that based on my schedule.
  • Proofread as much as I can of the four completed volumes of A Walk Through Holy Week. I actually started that in May, doing a complete read-through of Part 4 and some of Part 5. We’ll see how far I can get.
  • Work on the cover for the AWTHW series. I don’t sell enough books to pay for cover creation, so I just have to do it myself. I have a concept I want to use, if I can do the graphics. Which leads to my last goal…
  • Work with G.I.M.P. on how to do more artistry in covers. I’ll have to find some tutorials.

Enough goals. Although, I’m writing this post on May 23 for publishing on June 2. I can always edit the goals before it goes live.

Bible study, miscellaneous, Writing

A Small View Between Obstacles

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Hard to see in this photo, but the gaps in the forest are there. I took this photo this morning, and the cloud cover is about the same as Wednesday.

On Wednesday, I came to The Dungeon as per my routine, mug of coffee in hand. I opened my current Bible reading book, which is the harmony of the gospels that I wrote, did my reading, had my prayer time, and got to my work—or maybe my busywork, can’t quite remember exactly two days ago. At some point I went upstairs for breakfast, then returned to The Dungeon and got to my real working time.

The day had dawned cloudy and remained so. At some point I looked up and out the window. Now, the window is covered with vertical slat blinds from the top to the floor. And my computer desk with the upper shelf unit is between me and the window. So two items are blocking my view of the outer world.

But I did have some view, enough to know the clouds were still thick. All I could see was tree leaves and branches. Once the oaks leaf out, which happens in the latter part of April, the holler behind our house is fully obscured. I see leaves close, a little light behind them, and then a mass of leaves that covers all else.

I took note that the leaves were perfectly still—not a bit of movement. But then I focused on the small amount of leaves deeper in the woods that I could see through the small gaps between the near leaves and branches. There, behind the front foliage, were places where gaps in the forest canopy allowed more light to penetrate. And in those gaps, I could see leaves and branches stirring. Eventually, that stirring worked its way toward the nearer leaves and branches, and they began to stir as well.

That got me to thinking of the limited view we have of the world. Our view is obscured by the things around us: the work at home, the work at a job, the need to keep in contact with people. So many things crowd our lives that, to use the old and trite adage, we can’t see the forest because of the trees.

It’s good to be looking for those gaps in what crowds us in to see beyond, to see what the rest of the world is up to. That’s what makes our little piece of the world a better place to live in.

When I took note of that movement in the forest, working from deeper in it to the edge of it made up of our back yard, I knew I had to blog about it, but how do I find meaning in it? Meaning, that is, beyond the gaps that allows us to see a little more of the world? And I thought of what I wrote not so long ago about friendship.

Friendships are the little gaps in the forest, with light penetrating the canopy and shining deep within. Friendships are elusive in this busy world, but well worth cultivating.

I’ve been working hard on my current work-in-progress, A Walk Through Holy Week, Part 5. I’m down to less than 1,500 words to go on the main text, plus some kind of introduction. My hope is to finish it today, though a doctor appointment may be too much interruption for that to happen. No matter if it does; I’ll finish it tomorrow. Then, I’m going to take time to cultivate some friendships I’ve kind of dropped while working so hard between writing and parent/grandparent duties.

Here’s to friendships, and to little gaps in the desk top-unit, the blinds, and the forest, that occasionally align and allow a view of the woder world.

Bible study, Writing

Miscellaneous Musings

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Every now and then, I come to a blog day with nothing much to say. I’m sure my few regular readers notice those posts. They are days when, for whatever reason, I’m knocked out of my regular routine, or I didn’t sleep well after not planning ahead.

Today is a little different. Rather than being knocked off my routine, I’m trying to reestablish it. After over two weeks or helping our daughter’s family in West Texas, we are back home and trying to get back to normal. It will be a short normal, as the helping times will come back fairly quickly.

Today I was up at 6:30 a.m. as always and in The Dungeon before 7:00. I caught up on a number of things, but blogging wasn’t on my mind. Getting back to writing was. Except I had some correspondence tasks to do first. Once those were done, it was time for the stock market to open and I had three trades I wanted to make. I lingered over those trades more than I had to. Next thing I knew, it was 9:00 and time for breakfast.

Consequently, it was 9:45 before I was back in The Dungeon and ready to write. My goal for the day was to get back into A Walk Through Holy Week, Part 5 after 12 days and make some progress on it. I didn’t have a specific word goal. Well, I got into it and made progress as I hoped. By 11:20 I had close to 1,300 words added and the next to last chapter completed. Only one chapter to go, and a little of that is done. Based on the word target I established for each chapter, I have maybe 4,000 words to write, plus the Introduction.

So I came here to An Arrow Through The Air and got to my other writing for the day. It’s a blah post, about writing progress. No earth-shattering ideas. No political rants. Nothing about things learned, ministries participation, or people helped. But it’s where I’m at.

And now, the sunroom and my noon reading break beckon.

Bible study, reading, stock market

Working Hard

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It’s 6:26 a.m. on my blog posting day. I normally try to have this written long before this on the day before, but circumstances worked against my getting that done.

The circumstances are, we are in West Texas again, the third of four trips here this year. The first was to babysit the grandkids while our daughter and son-in-law were on a mission trip to Thailand. The second trip and this one are to help out as they begin transitioning to a new location, south of Houston. Richard is down there two weeks and back here two. While he’s gone, we’ll come here to help out.

Yesterday I got the three older grandkids working on pre-move projects. They couldn’t get on screens until they had achieved a certain degree of completeness. They did it without complaining. In the evening, I worked on Bible quizzing with the two middle ones, as they will have a competition in June.

During the day, I have so far been working on yardwork tasks. Yesterday I completed the main task I had, though in reality there is much more to do. I’m going to take today off from outdoor stuff, I think, as I was quite worn out yesterday. I also slightly injured my chest swinging an ax to cut out some old, dead roots from a long-gone hedge. But that’s done, the debris discarded, and I need a day for the old bones—or perhaps it was muscles, ligaments, or tendons—to heal.

We’ve eaten leftovers so far. Today I’ll have to cook something. I can’t say I’m looking forward to that.

I’ve had plenty of indoor time to work on my other “jobs”. Over two days I added over 3,300 words to A Walk Through Holy Week, Part 7. I’m down to only one chapter left now, most likely three days of writing. Then I’ll have the Introduction to do and, of course, editing to turn it from a first draft to a publishable book. On to the little bit of work left to Part 5 of AWTHW, which I hope to finish in May. I’ve had time the last two days to do my stock trading. Fortunately, the type of trading I’m doing right now doesn’t take a lot of time. It’s relatively low risk, yet I’m ahead of the market for the year. That’s nice to see for a change.

I’ve been able to get a little reading in, but not a lot. It’s been good reading, however. To be a good example to the grandkids, I’m reading in a print book when they are around rather then one of three books I have going on my phone.

So, it’s been a good trip. Still more than a week to go before we head home. Lots of work to do. Today I’ll have to take a little time to work on The Key To Time Travel, as the cover designer has reached the point where she needs book dimensions and back cover copy. Since she’s there, it’s time for me to get a few last-minute edits done. I should have that published in May.