What I've Been Writing

I’ve not sure why, but I find this topic harder to write about. Maybe it’s because I don’t want to give too much away, but it may be a while until anything I’m currently writing gets published so…hopefully I don’t spoil it for anyone in the future.

When I was first writing as a child, I would write whatever story I had in mind and some of them took me a few years to finish. I think I have said in the past that often by the time I was finished writing the story, I would look back over it and realize it what not as good as I first thought. I was growing as a writer in the time it took me to write those stories. Around eighth grade I looked back at all the stories I had written and there was only one I still liked. It had some issues, but the idea I still liked. It was one of my earliest stories, and I wrote it in a matter of days. (That is unusual for me.) It was the retelling of a Bible story. It was the story of the ten pledges in Egypt told from a cat’s prospective. I decided to do other Bible stories from the prospective of animals for children’s stories. I think it may have been around this time that I started thinking more of my writing as a gift/calling from God. What better way to write with that in mind then to tell Bible stories? I had ideas for the other stories, but I liked the idea of Bible stories, so that’s what I stuck with. I did a very short story of the fall in the garden, and then I did one of Noah’s Ark. That one took me all of high school to write. That’s when I was questioning about being a writer. (see earlier blogs) I was planning to write Bible story starting at the beginning of the Bible and go all the way through. But it took me so long to get though Noah, and I had no idea what to write next if I kept following that pattern. I think when I first started to think about writing Bible stories, I had an idea to do the Christmas Story from the three different prospective.

In college I was still trying to touch up my Noah story. With no ideas for how to keep going from there I decided to jump about and write the Christmas stories that had been growing in my head. These stories would be different in that instead of it being for young children and from the prospective of an animal, it would be for slightly older children (12ish) and from the prospective of a fictional human character. The first story was of a boy who helps care for Mary and Joseph in the stable. He hears both of their stories and is present for the birth of Jesus. The second story was from the prospective of a shepherd boy. And the third was of a boy with the wise men. I started the first story while in college and write the next two the following year after college. I did research for these stories and tried to include interesting things I had learned in college and over the years. When I finished them it was one of the first times I had written something that by the end I was still pleased and even proud of. Over the next few years I would do touch up editing on it, but I still liked the stories. In time these three stories combined would become my first published book “Meeting Jesus: Three Christmas Stories.” In the future, a little closer to Christmas, I plan to make a blog about each and explain why I did certain things and about each story. A sort of promotion. :)

Well, after these stories were done I was back to what to write next. I decided that trying to force myself to write a certain story might not be the best way to write and to rather go with what I want/felt like writing. The new ideas I had were to write fantasy stories. I was a little leery of this though. I was raised very conservative and anything “magical” was bad. Yet like many I found it somewhat fascination. More than that, “the Chronicles of Narnia” and “the Lord of the Rings” were/are some of my favorite stories. Also the Narnia books definitely were Christian and drew me closer to God and taught me things. (The last book, the Last Battle, opened up the idea of heaven to me in a new way. I distinctly remember thinking, “If that is what heaven is like then I’m not afraid to die.”) So after praying about it I decided to write my own fantasy stories. I had had ideas growing in my mind since high school. These stories are Christian with Christian values and ways of thinking. Being its fantasy and not set in our world, I do not use words like Christian or Bible, but there are essentially counter parts to them in my stories. Some might find the way I have gone about this strange, but it’s the way I have chose to do it. I don’t want people to mistake that this is not Christian. I still wish to be very careful. I know there are things today that can be called “Dark Magic” and “witch craft.” I don’t want to get even close to that.

My stories are heavily influence by Tolkien and Lewis. To be honest I have not read much fantasy. But considering those two men were the starters of modern fantasy, or fairy tales, who better to read then the them. After all, these are my own stories and do not have to fit in with what everyone else writes. It’s my own take on things and ideas. (I have read a good number of fairy tales, but fairy tales can get really weird, real fast. Also I know the Brother Grim fairy tales are called that because Grim was the brother’s name, but grim is a good word to describe a lot of their stories. I don’t know how much I want my stories influenced by fairy tales.)

My stories have elves, dwarves, fairies and much more (including evil creators such as orcs and goblins.) There is a magical land and a none magical land with only a select group of people who know of the other and can travel between the two. I’ve had a lot of fun with this series. Currently I’m working on book 9, however it's going to be a lot longer than any of the ones before. Not sure how all this will work out when it comes time to do editing and publishing. Most of my stories tend to be on the shorter end. But people seem to like shorter stories so maybe it will work in my favor. Some are romance stories, but I try to keep it realistic. No, “Oh we just meet but were in LOVE so we’re going to get married!” Some are more adventure stories; book 9 is. How long I will keep writing these stories I don’t know. Some I have liked more than others, but over all, I still like them all. I have other ideas in the back of my mind and maybe sometime I will take a brake and write something totally different. I already rewrote the cat in Egypt story from when I was little.

Well that’s what I’ve been writing. This ended up not being too bad. Like most things I over think it, but when I sit down and do it, it isn’t so hard. (I do that a lot.) I hope you enjoyed hearing what I’ve been up to.

Thanks for reading.