CDWM

Puleng, Martin, Me and Lindi

Season 2, Episode 8 of Come Dine With Me South Africa
Photo courtesy BBC Entertainment 

So I have sat and watched it twice now- my episode of Come Dine With Me South Africa.  My first reaction now that it's over?  “Wow! That’s it?”  I also had a whole bunch of friends watch it with me and I think I paid more attention to the twitter feed than I did to them – what kind of hosting is that? 

Ha!!

I also am pretty mad at Dave Lamb right now, with his snarky narration...but what was I expecting?

I guess after the rolls and rolls of film, I expected – well, more.  More show, more reality...more of what really went on with the four of us.  The four of us, as many of you have seen by now was Puleng (Diva!), Lindi (Genius) and Martin (    ).   Martin’s parenthesis is left empty because that’s how well I knew Martin after one week of hanging out and whooping it up.  Nothing, nada, zero.  That’s how much of himself he really shared with us. 

And he won.

As I said in the episode I am a pretty simple woman who is here to love and serve God in any way I can  in South Africa.  I love South Africa – I love its people.  My husband is a pastoral kind of guy, also filled of love and fun.  All that didn’t make it into the episode...

 When I first saw CDWM I thought that it looked like a lot of fun...and I thought that I could win.  If you don’t know anything about full time ministry, let me tell you that no one does it to get wealthy.  All of our money is usually poured back to others who have greater needs than we do.  So ten thousand rand is a hefty chunk of change!  It could do a lot for our church, our ministry and the people in the township.  I entered online, got interviewed and then was told (while I was shopping) that I was going to be on the show.  I was excited!!  I had no idea what was in store for me....

Contrary to popular twitter posts, Puleng (or first host) is not stupid – she’s amazing.   When I read the menu I honestly thought that with the pride in traditional food that it was put together by a Xhosa man.  When she opened the door I thought: “Definitely not a man!”

To put a show like this together isn’t easy.  It's filled with tiny nuances and surprising starts and stops.  The first night is the hardest because (honestly) you just want to get to the dinner party and let the games begin!

Puleng was a great host and she was attentive and served some beautiful wines and champagne.  She is also incredibly beautiful up close.  At one point I had to apologize for staring at her.  Honestly, I am a happily married woman...

Lindi is prettier than she appears on film -right away showed razor sharp wit and a speed of communication that kept me on my toes.  During dinner I quoted William Shakespeare and Lindi quickly identified where it was from.  She loves to stir, so a less worthy opponent might feel intimidated, but I loved her immediately.  She also has incredible, adorable fashion sense.

Martin did not dress in traditionals and made no apologies.   At one point Puleng brought him a Springbok jersey (quite hilarious) and told him if he wanted to dress like a traditional white boy that he should do it right.  It was classic. 

At the end of the night I went home almost falling asleep in my taxi because it was 1:30 a.m..  All night long I thought I cheated Puleng out of an 8 – but in the morning I realized that my score was fair.  After all, she was in the kitchen a lot and seemed to have a cheat here, a cheat there.  Nothing major, but just little stuff (I could tell the spinach was store-bought). 

Lindi hosted us next.  I’m going to say this loudly – and often.  If I wasn’t going to win, Lindi should have won.  Her menu was ambitious and she pulled it off.  She also knew how to host a party.  Her house was a showcase of art and she kept us all talking.  We felt much more comfortable with each other by the end of the night. 

Lindi’s fish was overcooked – but that tamarind sauce  on top of it was FROM GOD!!  I put the sauce on everything, and if she would have left it on the table I would have put it on my apple tartin.  I have passionate feelings about pastry, which is why she got an 8 instead of a 9.  Her apples were perfect and I hope next time she’ll think twice about shop-bought pastry. After all, she’s fabulous and should be making her own fabulous pastry.

The only hostess to bother with fine details, Lindi provided a masseuse, a cheese tray and an apéritif – a very expensive one.  Truly a classy lady.

Martin hosted us next with quite an ostentatious menu.  We all knew that his “Oh, I don’t cook,” act was just that - Martin could cook.

I didn’t mean to be picking Martin apart on his night- the way it came off on film was pretty funny, but edited to make it look like I didn’t like him.  I thought my story about being adamant about the spelling of the Bering Sea was funny – even I (from North America) got the spelling wrong.

Martin tried and succeeded in being genuinely a good host.  I thought he had a good shot at winning simply because of the table he set - It was amazing!  In between courses Martin made sure we had drinks and still managed to serve nice, hot food (a feat of note with the way CDWM is filmed).  

His barracuda was perfection.  Brown and seasoned perfectly, it fell apart against my knife and still tasted buttery and gorgeous. 

I don’t eat chocolate, so I didn’t eat Martin’s dessert. He also said he was making a coulis, which wasn’t what the packaged fruit topping was.  It was unappetizing, but he had me at the fish.

8 out of 10. 

Still, if Martin would have shared just one iota of his heart we all would scored him even higher.  Instead, Martin is now known as the shameless cheat who lied about making his own cheese sauce. The night ended with a yawn.

The day I was supposed to host began with a power surge on my property that blew out all of our electricity.  I had no lights, plugs, etc., and the stellar CDWM crew (in the most calm, cool and collected way) set up a generator that would enable me to use my oven and my blender.  Also, because of this new twist, we had to change a lot of things around, including the location of the piñata – we almost didn’t do it! 

The whole power issue really mattered much more than what you can imagine, but I somehow managed to get everything done that I was supposed to do, unless you count organization!!   I was (understandably) flustered.  Every question about my family brought me to tears.  At one point they asked me what I would do with the money if I won and I just lost it, saying that the best prize would be if my new friends came to church with me.  It was a highly emotional day, and my nerves were pretty raw. 

By the time that Martin (my first guest) had come to my door, I had barely gotten dressed (in the dark) and put on my makeup (I didn’t blend my blush enough –many tweets pointed this out, just in case I missed it). 

Martin and I had a full Margarita before the rest of the guests got to the party and I finally felt relaxed.  This is when Martin did something that I think was designed to sabotage my party – he told Puleng that I had specifically requested “No talking about T and A”.

Know what?  I didn’t!

This would have seriously hampered Puleng’s ability to relax.  She is very tender-hearted and Lindi and I felt very protective of her (She really is adorable and tender and she came off looking like a fake diva...and she’s not).  While I was greeting Lindi, I came out to the patio and could tell Puleng was upset – and didn't know why.

I think this was worse than lying about the cheese sauce.

You saw that Martin asked me why I didn’t say grace.  I didn’t forget, and I don’t think I needed to lead the group in prayer when we hadn’t prayed any other night!  It would be kind of conceited for me to think that I could force my guests into some kind of reverence for God.  I didn’t think much of it, really.  I love God but I hate religion and pretentiousness.

 I forgot the guacamole. I forgot the palette cleanser.  I forgot to lay out a sufficient number of forks....  By the end of the night, I was exhausted.  The night was fun and my party had gone really well  (Martin even said later that it was his favorite night).  But the scores reflect that I didn’t pull it off.     

Want the truth?  We all cooked well. Puleng served up great traditional food and made us all feel like friends on the first night.  Lindi executed a challenging menu to perfection, adding classic touches that no one else thought of.  Martin cooked – and well!  And  as far as I am concerned, dear ones,  I gave it my whole heart preparing a meal for three beautiful people I wanted to love with food.

If I had to do it all again, I would.

But this time, I would have gone and searched Martin’s garbage with Puleng. I would have found the fake cheese sauce.   Then I would have scored Martin a 5 for lying to his guests – in a cooking competition!

Buen Provecho! (That's bon apetit in Mexican...or Latino) 

To see the BBC advertisement of this episode click here.

block

The hard part of writing a manuscript is writing.

Did I say that right?  Am I communicating my point?  Does it sound redundant or too simple? Is it accurate?  

Maybe I should rewrite it. 

A story in your head is different from a story told and put down on paper – or on a screen.  Building a manuscript  is a work of thought, developing the embryonic idea into a truth with beauty and life.  When building this, writers write; then read what they write; and then rewrite.  Eventually even the best writers face a time of dryness when the words stop coming....  They call it writer’s block, but it should be called writer’s slow death.

When writing The Poisonwood Bible, Karen Kingsolver admitted that the scope of the book daunted her, causing a writer’s block that plagues the best of us.  “For many years,” she wrote later, “I had instead of a manuscript, a file cabinet; its imaginary label was the ‘Damned Africa Book’ or later just D.A.B.”

Hemingway, when asked what he struggled with when he wrote and rewrote the ending of Farewell to Arms 39 times before he was satisfied, answered “Getting the words right.”

Getting the words right.

Even Hemingway,  so precise and clear - so free of pretence- struggled with getting the words right.  The best advice I ever got about writing was “Just do it.”  Start, tell.  Get it down, read it make spelling changes, then move on.  Keep going.  Keep telling.  Do it , do it, do it. 

Starting a novel at anytime is a challenge.  NaNoWriMo is a dare to us – let’s band together and begin at the beginning.  As I’ve set out on the process I realize the weight of responsibility to introduce my audience to a wide spectrum of characters, give them a good peek at their lives and then most of all, keep them reading.  What makes a reader interested?

It’s important for people who are trying to do a manuscript in 30 days (ONE MONTH!!) to do it.  According to some of my favorite writers, getting it down is first, then refining comes later.  Using their words, here’s some encouragement:

·         “Put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.

                                         ~Colette

·         “Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense.”

                                        ~ Mark Twain

·         “I have been successful probably because I have always realized that I knew nothing about writing and have merely tried to tell an interesting story entertainingly.”

                                      ~ Edgar Rice Burroughs

·         “Any man who keeps working is not a failure. He may not be a great writer, but if he applies the old-fashioned virtues of hard, constant labor, he'll eventually make some kind of career for himself as writer.”

                                            ~Ray Bradbury

Here are some tips that I use to make the process of writing a manuscript  in 30 days a little more relaxed:

• ·         Keep a calendar – Write and record how much you’ve written.  Diaries can’t lie and you will see when you are most productive
• ·         Make your writing station as comfortable as you can - I’m sitting on a barstool at  the counter of my kitchen, close to coffee and tissues at my left hand.  There is a small and functional desk lamp that illuminates my keypad.
• ·         Bring other people in on your goal – Once accountable you may be more productive!  Also friends can encourage you, motivate you, pray for you....
• ·         Believe that you can do it- Goals are either motivators or accusers.  In the face of accusations it is important to remember that the story must go on.  You can do it!!
• ·         Read when you are “stuck” – something in the same genre you are writing is best.  Reading frees up your troubled mind (the part that keeps tripping).

NaNoWriMo has its own website:  http://www.nanowrimo.org is very helpful and encouraging.  Check it out!!

Remember that Rome wasn’t built in a day – a manuscript really isn’t finished after 30 days!  Nevertheless,at the end of 30 days you should have in your hand the broad brushstrokes of a manuscript – a rough draft with characters and ideas that are alive and waiting for you to perfect their environment.

Then you can get to the real work of writing: re-writing.  

Gulp.

Photo Credit for " block" appears here - also a great blog!

manuscript

YA Artist May-Ya Rendition "Thou Art my Love" 

                

Getting into the mind of a sixteen year old (again) is not easy. 

It's also not a fun place to be.  

I hated sixteen.  

 I hated it, loved it and lived it loud.  

It's showing up in m new novel, a genre I decided to try called YA - young audience - but it keeps veering into a very troubled, more adult theme - just like  my life at sixteen.

 So....I need help.

This is my first chapter.  Can you please read and tell me if I'm on the right track.  Would you keep reading if you were a sixteen year old?

  Let me just begin by telling you that I love you.  I don’t mean I love you in a metaphysical, spiritual love kind of something.  I love you because you picked up this book and started to read it.  After all, look at all these books here and you picked up mine! I know it sounds dumb, just blurting out “I love you!” to a complete stranger, but really I am kind of dumb.  I should be really clear about this right from the start.

Next I need to apologize to you for bringing you in on this thing.  What could have been an open and shut case of romance has now been blown all out of shape by the twisted idea that things have to be perfectly awful to be any good.  And who has this idea?  My boyfriend, Fred.

Yeah, that’s right, his name is Fred. 

“Is that your real name?” I asked him the first day I met him.  Our assigned seating in computer lab was right next to each other and he had a backpack the size of Cleveland.  I mean, Cleveland!  And here he was sitting next to me with a thump like he didn’t even want to be here.  He was sitting next to me!  The prettiest, blondest girl in the whole class and he didn’t want to be here!  So, as I was staring at him, he turned and looked at me through his hair that was too close to his eyes.

The thing was, it was great hair and he had great eyes – brown and green. 

“Hi,” he said, sighing. “I’m Fred.”  Then he stuck out his hand like I was supposed to shake it!  I didn’t know if he was serious or what, so that’s why I asked him if it was his real name.  Maybe to distract him from wanting to touch me –like shake my hand, I mean.

“Actually,” he said.  “It is.”  His eyes were so green and so sad.  I wanted to pretend that either fact didn’t bother me.  But the truth is, I’ve never seen eyes that color before and I have a thing for puppies with sad faces.  So as the teacher droned on and on before we were even allowed to turn on our computers about things like the ban on social network sites (like it wasn’t on my phone!) and how profanity or research on drugs that weren’t yet legalized or any drugs for that matter....  (yawn!) I listened. 

Maybe I should say right here and now that he smelled like soap.

Now, you might understand how the whole idea of Fred was really cool.  But I’m telling you, Fred was hard to get and that’s why I love you for even wanting to hear the story about how we were put together and how we went to homecoming in the same limousine as King and Queen and how he kissed me and how we both decided that the timing was right....

And this is where I need to tell you that I’m really sad.  I’m sad because he gave up on us and now as I tell my story – our story – I can tell you that I’m not a give up kind of girl. 

I may be dumb, but I’m not stupid.

YA Artist May-Ya blogs here - Photo Credit

 Story copyright - Janet Rodriguez 2012

plot

Everyday this month I will be blogging about the process of writing a new YA novel during National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).

Plot  is a literary term defined as “the plan, scheme or main part of a story” by dictionary.com.  Wikipedia describes it as “the events that make up a story, particularly as they relate to one another in a pattern, in a sequence, through cause and effect, how the reader views the story, or simply by coincidence.” 

I used to read aloud a children’s picture book to my students when I was introducing creative writing as a unit.  It was called “Aunt Isabel Tells a Good One” (By Kate Duke, Picture Puffin Books).  In its pages, Aunt Isabel  said it best:  “A good story is the hardest kind to tell... We must put it together with the right ingredients.”

A plot, very simply put, is the ingredients of a story - mixed together; baked at the right temperature - that come out on the other side as the story. Sure, characters make a story real and geniune with their voices and perspectives, but no reader wants to be so distracted by characters’ voice that they feel like they never know what’s going on, or what's supposed to be going on.

Sometimes a plot is well planned, leading us directly from start to finish.  Sometimes it meanders through a forest, taking its time to show us more about the human heart, a multifaceted, sad, and beautiful place to make discoveries.

The absolute best plot I’ve ever read in a story was Marathon Man (William Goldman  1974), a conspiracy thriller novel that was soooooo not my genre, but it was lying around at my dad’s house and I decided to try it.  I was half-way through the book (which was really interesting) when I got slammed in the face with a pan – the plot came together all at once and all of the orphaned characters knew each other!!  BAM!!!    I have read a LOT of books, but none whose plot was as as well architected as this one. 

The was also the juicy unravelling of Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen); the masterful sugar-basket weave of War and Peace (Leo Tolstoy) and the tender non-plots of all of Flanner O’Connor’s stories, especially “The Turkey”, leading me to a place of recognizing that the human heart is constantly searching for elusive happiness, most of the time left with a bewildered realization that our journey rarely ends at the pot of gold. 

 I have been writing another novel at this time (two hours a day of sitting down and writing) and have begun a story in a genre they call YA – young adult.  My plot?   An unlikely romance develops between an effervescent cheerleader and a computer geek who has an unusual fear of hearing good news.  I’m thinking of calling the YA baby euphobia.

So far, the girl and boy share one class (a computer lab) and a family history that is remarkably similar (they have not yet shared this).  He is a new kid at school and has a funny name and a geeky hobby (he restores the schools computers in the lab) but he tries to stay away from her because she is so optimistic and bubbly and pretty and way out of his league.  The problem is, she likes him and seems to understand his heart, a rarity in high school.

So, my plot is still unfolding.

In NaNoWriMo a book called No Plot? No Problem! sells BIG TIME to authors wanting to write a novel in one month.  

My problem right now with my new project?  Getting into the minds of the main characters – why do some kids experience tragedy and move on with their lives, while others get into terrible patterns of self-protection and sabotage of their own happiness? My is Gina effervescent and an optomist?  Why is Fred so walled off and self-protective?  

Any insights? Ideas? Send them along to me!!  Especially you younguns!!

By the way, please join my blogsite: www.brazenprincess.com.  The more members I have the better chance I will have to get an agent to publish my book!!

Getting help for NaNoWriMo was never this easy!! Click here to Order "No Plot? No Problem!"

Kate Duke's Masterpiece "Aunt Isabel Tells a Good One" is perfect for all ages!!

If you dare to read Marathon Man, you can order it her. I promise, "It is safe...."

characters

Wilkins Micawber
from David Copperfield

The beauty of good books lies inside of the people living in them.  Characters can make a dull story exciting and a good story even better.  

Here are some of the most memorable characters of books that I’ve read:

• ·         Macon Leary (The Accidental Tourist,  Anne Tyler) – a frightened, anal-retentive man who is content in his sheltered world until his son is killed in a random shooting.  After this happens, Macon’s marriage falls apart and his back goes out, forcing him to move back in with his brothers and sister in the house he grew up in.  As much as Macon tries to make his life manageable, it continues to spiral out of control...which (of course) is the hope for Macon.  Brilliantly written, Anne Tyler made Macon a loveable protagonist I was unexpectedly cheering for.
• 
  
• ·         Marianne Dashwood (Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen) – romantic, young and beautiful Marianne explodes off the pages of S&S, throwing caution into the wind and losing her heart completely for John Willoughby, the dashing neighbor intent on sweeping her off her feet.  While her family carefully maneuvered around her, I knew that Marianne was headed for disaster and I could do nothing to stop her.  She reminded me of myself and then other Mariannes I have later known.  I became personally attached to her in the story.
• 
  
• ·         Wilkins Micawber(David Copperfield, Charles Dickens) – the most conflicted man I have ever met in any page of any book!  Mr. Micawber was reckless and foolish with his spending habits, causing his family great shame and eventually going into debtor’s prison.  Still, his heart was the most solid of gold and he became a friend to the orphaned David (the book’s real hero) and was a loving husband and father.  His optimistic outlook on his life (“Something will turn up!”) and his coaching of David not to go over his budget made him likeable and tragic at the same time.  I loved him completely.
• 
  
• ·         Jing-Mei Woo (Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan) – After losing her mother unexpectedly, June (Jing-Mei) realizes that her Aunties want her to take her mother’s place in their club (the book’s namesake) which meets to play Mah-jong and invest in stocks.  After realizing that the Aunties have arranged for her to “finish her mother’s unfinished business” June is plunged into a journey of self-discovery and forced reflection that she wasn’t bargaining for.  Graceful but insecure; brave yet shy – June reminded me of every woman I ever met and left me in tears at the end of her journey.  I have read the book about 10 times... and each time I think she is the most unlikely and graceful of heroes.
• 
  
• ·         Ivan Ilyich (The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy) – A man who, at the end of his life is faced with an illness and has nothing to do but lay in bed and reflect.  Sound boring?  Ivan was relentless in the detail of the triumphs, disappointments and passions in his life and spent the last three days screaming in bed.  I have never, ever put down a book with such transfixed horror and sadness.  It still haunts me to this day, the way he wondered what would follow this awful death....
• 
  
• ·         Yasin Abd al-Jawad (Cairo Trilogy by Naguib Mahfouz) – A man with a large appetite and passion, Yasin strolled through the story meant to belong to his father with such clueless confidence that it unnerved me.  To this day he epitomizes the attitudes of men in old Egypt – misogynistic and unable to weigh the consequences for his actions.  Yasin bled off the pages and made me hate him, hope he wasn’t caught in his folly and later wish he could find a woman who could understand him.  Mahfouz’s brilliance in writing him reminded me of every prodigal that never seems to understand how his own behavior affects his family. 

Now – those are charecters who are fictional.  They never lived, and yet they are people I’ve met and I remember.

I am no expert in developing characters.  What I do know is that I go through a little inventory before I begin writing.  Maybe writing good characters mean that you need to know them well before they appear on paper.  

Here’s some questions I’ve been told to ask myself before developing a character:

• ·         Does this person exist already in your mind? 
• ·         What year were they born?  What are some of the things happening in the world that would influence them?
• ·         What drives them? (if they are driven)  What inspires them? 
• ·         What do they do?  Do they do this out of choice or because they have to?
• ·         What does their world look like?  Who do they eat lunch with?
• ·         What is their definition of good and evil?  What do they base their beliefs on?
• ·         What are their flaws?  Their little annoying habits?
• ·         What are their strengths?  Their courageous little habits that makes them loveable?
• ·         When they wake up in the morning, what makes them want to get up?

Once details about the character start forming in your mind,  begin writing about them.  Eventually you will know them and “remember” a defining event in their life that has influenced/changed them.

 Exercise:  HAVE FUN!! 

• ·         Begin by finding a picture of a person in a magazine, on an advertisement – the web ANYWHERE. 
• ·         Give that person a name.
• ·         Ask yourself what this person is going through right now. 
• ·         What do you know about this person that no one else does? 
• ·         Is there a story here?

writing

“To write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write”   

~ Gertrude Stein

Public Domain Image Details

The greatest gift of writing is being able to communicate truth from the depths of your heart.  It’s why cavemen chiseled on walls; why the spiritual songs were written.  The Bible had to be written by a man’s hand to communicate the greatest truths and the heart of God.  Soldiers took up pens and precious paper  in trenches to declare the deepest love for their families back home - love that survived even the most horrific events of war.

Sometimes  I pick up a book and I hear the words of someone like they are a friend crying out to me.  “Here I am!  Connect with me!  Understand!” 

Writers write to connect with people.  Connect their heart with another persons.  Inspire them, motivate them, love them.  Writers write for the same reason painters write.  We write to deliver beauty to a world that needs it.  We write to translate the unjust pain of a people, left without a voice and too weak to cry out for themselves.

We write to be understood, to cry out primordially from the depths of our soul.

Today as you write, dear writer, let the heart of the God who created you come out, voicing the pain and anguish; the joy and the exhilaration; the sorrow and the pity of all that is in the world.  Focus on one thing and write. 

People mistake writing a story for giving birth to a child very often.  I’ve done both – and writing is easier.

Not much... but easier.

• Yesterday I wrote three chapters of a Young adult novel I think I’m going to call “euphobia” (no capitalization of the title).  euphobia is the fear of good news. 

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," – that is allYe know on earth, and all ye need to know.

-John Keats

story

Stories are things that soothe us, stimulate us, make us laugh, cry, forgive and hope all in the matter of a few pages. William Shakespeare told good stories for the stage, still produced today.  In the past century, modern authors have seen their stories  adapted for the screen - and most of the time the book is better.

WHY?

A good story sticks in our mind and forms a memory - usually attached to a sense (comfort, fear, love).

I remember my first story that stayed there – it was of a little boy named Sambo, a boy who meets four hungry tigers on the way to school.  He gives to one his shirt. To another his pants (Sambo had a diaper on underneath in my book),  to the next his shoes, and to the last his umbrella so they will not eat him. The tigers in the story began to show off for each other, each saying they looked the best.  In fury and frustration, they end up fighting and eventually chasing each other around a tree until they churn themselves into butter.  

Sambo (who has encouraged the tigers to fight) picks out his possessions from the churned butter, then  and scoops the butter to bring home to his mother.  At the end of my picture book, Sambo’s family are all eating stacks and stacks of pancakes – smothered with the butter.

The story of Sambo has since been banned because it is 1) Politically incorrect (Sambo was black - the word "sambo" has since been considered a racial slur); 2.) encourages animal cruelty (turning tigers into butter is mean); and 3.)lacking in educational value, (other than the educational fact that butter is good on top of pancakes). 

Stories don’t  have to make sense.  

The ones that stick in our hearts have characters who are clever, frightened, weak, vulnerable and think well under pressure.  They encourage us to root for them as they navigate the rough waters of their predicaments, and cause us to cheer when they prevail.  They remind us that revenge is sweet, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and good should always triumph over evil.  

Sometimes they just make us hungry (I remember lying in my bed after the story of Sambo and thinking that I would do anything for some pancakes right now).

Some things never change.

Jesus spoke to people in parables (stories)  to explain the Kingdom of God.  The deep truths in life are better disguised so that people make their minds up themselves.  It is good to have part of your heart attached to a story so that your future decisions can be shaped by its message.  Aesop called this a fable.  Jesus called it a parable.  

It works.  

Today is the November 1 - the beginning of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and I am embarking on writing a novel in one month.  This will require two hours of focused writing a day.  My novel (at the end) will be rough, unedited and ready to revise.  

Care to join me?  

If not, let this month encourage you to write - a daily writing prompt will appear for an idea for a story that will be birthed in your head.  

BEGINNING a good story:

A good story begins with someone we care about.  They usually find trouble right away – or they’re already in trouble.  They are ill-equipped to handle their trouble and often they seek out the wisest person they know. 

This is the beginning of Great Expectations, Seven Samurai, The Outsiders and each of the Star Wars books.

Begin with an idea...but make sure that trouble is close at hand.

Daily Writing Prompt: 

Write a short story about a child who is lonely until he/she meets an unlikely friend.