Wow! I made a lot of wonderful writer friends last week. A few of them have blogs, so I’m going to mention them here and suggest that you check them out as well.
One talented friend (you know who you are) doesn’t yet have a blog but should. I will feature her when she finally gets around to that.
And look for these names on your bookshelves–coming soon:
Lanita Boyd
Keisha Gilchrist-Broomes
Pasquale Russo
There were many unexpected blessings at the writer’s conference last week. One such blessing was the privilege of attending fiction author Joyce Magnin‘s not-yet-published-fiction author’s clinic.
I hadn’t signed up for it, but when I met with Joyce on the first day of the conference and she read over my manuscript and synopsis, she gave me the opportunity to attend.
I had the chance to make some wonderful friends, and participate in discussion that was aimed directly at the kind of fiction I’m writing, so it made for a wonderful week.
And Joyce was such a pleasure to get to know. She calls herself the “queen of quirk” and her writing is something you really should check out for yourself. It’s available at Amazon or for Nook and Kindle.
It is hard to put into words the blessing I received at last week’s conference. It was amazing! I made new friends, had some valuable experience being critiqued, participated in one-on-one interviews with authors, agents and editors, learned a LOT.
One of the biggest blessings was meeting up again with author Cec Murphey, who has impacted my writing in many ways. I met him first at a writer’s conference in 2005 in Ohio. I took copious notes from his workshop, and applied them as much as I could in my writing and life.
Then, in 2007, I had the opportunity to attend one of his mentoring clinics. This event truly made a difference in my writing.
Last week, at the Greater Philadelphia Christian Writer’s Conference, I attended his “Dancing with Dialogue” workshop. During the workshop, I had the opportunity for one page of dialogue from my manuscript to be torn apart by the class. :)
I have learned to love criticism (when it comes to writing, anyway). It’s the only way to grow. Wonderful!
All summer long, our kids have been waking up fairly early in the morning, with the sun. They usually find something quiet to do. Often, they draw. My kids are serious artists. The other day, my husband and I came downstairs to see this on the kitchen table.
Funny how we like to have rules. Of course, as parents, it’s necessary to make rules. We’ve tried a number of different “systems” in our home, and a number of different parenting philosophies have influenced us. When my firstborn was very young, I read Shepherding a Child’s Heart. I liked the idea of being able to show your children from the Bible how to mold their behavior.
Later on, we struggled with just exactly how to discipline as we realized we had one child who seemed to thrive on negativity, and discipline appeared to have no effect. I searched everywhere I could and found a book entitled, Transforming the Difficult Child: The Nurtured Heart Approach. I had avoided reading this book, not wanting to label my child, “difficult.” But when I was desperate, I focused instead on the idea of nurturing the heart.
The book taught me to recognize my child. To constantly “notice” everyday activities and make comments about them–not always praise–sometimes just saying something like “Look at that. You’re using a green crayon to color the house.” When the child misbehaves, he or she is to be sent for a time out, the idea being to remove them from where the “fun” is–where the action of the family is.
It’s incredibly difficult to do–to notice and praise, when your instinct is, “everything’s going well now–I’m not going to disturb things.”
While we still use many of these principles, we’ve finally arrived at something that works really well for our family: the If/Then Chart from Doorposts.
As with any “system” you’d choose to use with your family, consistency is the key to success. But this is simple, with not too many rules, it’s biblical, and kids can clearly see and understand what the consequences of their behavior are. Even the smallest ones.
Have you adopted a system of discipline for your family? How does it work?
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