A blank slate

When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained. What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him

                                    Psalms 8:3-4

 

Writing a manuscript…I often think it must be how a person controlling a puppet feels, and every so often, I wonder if it’s a bit how God feels. I start a story with what amounts to a blank piece of paper.

I open up my word program to a new document and stare at a blank white page on a blue background. There is nothing there. A white void of nothingness that I am going to have to fill in. If my story is to come alive, to come into being at all I am the one that will do it. Somehow I will take that page of nothing and turn it into an 80,000 word story where the characters have names, personalities, homes, families, problems, feelings…

The list of all the things I must give life to on those pages does not end. To be a good writer I need to make sure my reader can see, hear, taste, smell, and feel everything my characters do.

It’s not enough to say: She was cold. I have to be able to show that she was cold, to remind my reader what it feels like to be cold. So I use descriptions more like: The icy wind howled like the angry cry of a wild animal and cut through her thin dress like the blade of a knife. Shivers ran through her body until her hands shook so hard she had a hard time holding onto the reins. Fat flakes of snow blew around her blocking out the field beside the road.

I must create my stories, give my characters life. It all rests in my hands. If my hero and heroine have never met I need to put them in the same place at the same time so they can. To do that I have to control the scene to bring them together. Where is she? Where do I need him to be?

Now I’m not a planner so these thoughts don’t go through my head. I simply put my fingers on my keyboard and the story flows. I may not be consciously planning these things but they all come out anyway.

If I need my hero to save my heroine I can’t have her sitting safe at a quilting bee with the town ladies. I need her out in a field facing a rattle snake, or falling off a cliff, drowning in a river… I have to move them where I need them to be to make that happen.

In doing all that I take a blank paper and create something that someone else can see and hear and feel. I must create imaginary life.

Very rarely do I think about these things. Today as I looked at Psalms 8 and read verses 3 and 4 I thought of them. Thought of what my Creator did when He stood before a void of nothing and made the world we all live in.

He thought of everything.

Nights would be dark so He gave us the moon and stars. We would need water so he gave us oceans, creeks, rivers, streams and rain. Air would need to be made new again and again so He gave us breath and He made plants to absorb what we breathe out and renew our air. The list of all the things He created just for us is unending.

He took a blank slate and created life.

For you.

For me.

For us.

When an outlaw comes knocking

But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,

Matthew 5:44 esv

 

There he was.

Standing on my front porch in all his angry glory.

Moments before he had attacked my front door. There is no other term for it. There was no knocking involved. When his hand connected with my door, the frame shook, the windows rattled, and the sound carried to the neighbors house.

It sounded like the person on the other side intended to come in whether I let them in or not. The angry pounding should have been my first clue but I did what anyone would.

I opened the door.

To be greeted by a man that was wearing attitude like most men wear shirts. He glared at me, his city ID tag proudly displayed around his neck, and started very nearly yelling at me and calling me by someone else’s name.

When I told him I wasn’t Joanie, he gave me a look that implied I was lying, and launched into another tirade. I tried to be nice, really I did. I politely informed him I wasn’t Joanie, to no avail.

This man had it in for me whether I was Joanie or not. I’d like to be able to give him the benefit of the doubt and say maybe he was having a bad day but with this man, that isn’t the case. He works for the city I live in and I’ve seen him around town. I have never been on the receiving end of his attitude before but I have had one other encounter with him. When I helped another woman at the city hall inform him that what he was demanding she do went against city ordinance.

This time though, I was the sole recipient of all that attitude. He glared, he glowered, and he snarled.

There is no way this man meets hero requirements. He is the type of person that makes you want to cross the street to keep from being in his presence. He can make small children cry and hide with just a look. He is the man a writer casts as outlaw in a manuscript.

And he would make a good outlaw.

But what do you do when an outlaw worthy person is snarling at you from your own porch.

Say whatever you have to and shut the door!