My nonficton manuscript, Wild Women--A Real Walk in the Woods is in the mail to the publisher who requested it!
It was an amazing thing to write the last sentence and know that it was just right:
"Wild is more than a physical untamed place . . . it's an unrestrained soul soaring on the wings of the wind."
I wrote it and lifted my fingers off the keyboard and knew that seven years of work had come to an end. The strangest feelings washed over me, but the greatest is knowing that after several false starts and misdirections, it ended up better and deeper than I could have dreamed . . . and at just the right time. I couldn't have written this book a month, or even a week, sooner. It cried out for many elements that just recently came together.
Some of you have wondered where I've disappeared to.
A while back I read the book, The Creative Call by Janice Elsheimer. She mentioned taking a year off. Can you imagine? A year off everything. I've often wondered what that would be like. Well . . . I didn't take a year, but I pretty much took three months off. I didn't take time off from my family or the things that draw me close to The Creator, but I set everything else aside in order to focus on finishing Wild Women. It simply was time.
What about you? Are you like me--starting a lot of projects but not finishing much of anything? Perhaps you need that time off to focus. My first time off was spread over two separate ten-week wilderness vacations where I sought God for direction. That's always a good place to start. I also ended the writing of the book at a cabin at Box R Ranch.
Goodness! But it feels good to have completed such an enormous project.
Now, for my fiction story. Only this time,I plan to work it into my daily schedule. One thing I learned on my last trip into the wilderness was to set reasonable goals. I was so out of shape I had to set small goals from tree to tree, but in doing so I covered the entire trail. So, I'm setting smaller goals and cutting out the things that hinder or aren't as important.
One thing you don't want to cut out, though, is time for the unepected. God so often calls us in the unexpected places and in unexpected ways.
I'm looking forward to catching you up on some of the awesome things I've been doing for the past few months.
BTW, all the photos on today's post are from the last part of our trip to Alta Lake this fall. We started out with warm sunshine and ended with a snowy wonderland. Perfect!
