God really knows best

God really knows best

I don’t know why for some, it takes so long for them to come to the realization that there is a God and that He is really a loving and caring Being. But I suppose the first realization to reach is to believe in God. That is the first step before you can totally surrender to the fact that He really knows what is best for your life and all His intentions are for your good.

I do believe in God being the bottom-line for my life and it took me a long time to finally shut up, settle down, and walk humbly beside him. Once I did that and decided in my own mind that I was going to trust His love for me things got easier. Have there been obstacles, of course. Could there have been a parting of the ways over the years because what I wanted and what He allowed were two different things – absolutely. Were there times I did everything He asked of me and like a game of Father May I, I asked first then I took all the steps and was told “No” when I was right at the finish line and sent back to start all over again? You bet.

But I guess what I am saying this morning is that never and I mean never was what God’s final decision ended up being for my life ever, wrong. Some things took time for me to see clearly all the repercussions of what might have been had I gotten my way. Places I would have found myself with people who would have nearly destroyed my life knowing what I know now.

I think the times that mankind feels that God is somehow uniformed or unaware or simply doesn’t care what is happening to the world or Heaven forbid might actually be behind these catastrophic events, as being the truth are the worst off.

Everyday I wake up and realize that my life is not my own and there is someone I can trust that will never leave or forsake me is worth any amount of money, fame or relationships. It is all going to pass away. The time spent here no matter the circumstances is far less than eternity. But here again you have to be a believer. If you don’t believe then this is all just philosophical babblings of a 63 years old woman who thought she had something to blog about this morning.

My testimony isn’t about earth moving events, though at the time they were to me. It is the simple things that God lovingly gives me everyday that I am so appreciative of. How he heads me off from things because He knows what is coming. How he has already gone before me and made provision for me in light of what could be an “outage” in my life.

For instant, yesterday was a record breaking heat wave for the month of June and yes, the air conditioning in the apartment where I live, died. It has done this now five times since they turned it on the “cooling” part of the system. I happen to live in a building where there is not the option of having your own unit to turn either to heat or cool at one’s own discretion. It is done down in the boiler room. So as you would guess there is someone else making the decision as to when or if we need heat or cool each year.

Back in March or April when it went from 50 some degrees straight to 80 the third floor apartments went to 90 and above. This is where I live. The first day that this happened and the air condition was not scheduled to be turned on for another month if then, I knew I had to do something.

God knew it was already coming. Two days prior to the change in the weather because I have learned to hear His voice, I knew to order a portable air conditioner and do it ASAP!

I didn’t even know they made such a thing where you installed a vent in the window, no mess no dripping pan no water streaking down the side of the building, just wonderful cold air for me to thrive in.

Within three days of the first onset of would have been madness for me trying to survive in this apartment with the temp over 100 degrees was taken care of because I listened and moved on what I knew was the right thing to do.

So when for the fifth time so far this summer and a lot more days to go with the possibility of the air being out, I have exactly what I need. I have to, no . . .  I WANT to give the Lord Glory for loving me and most of all helping me accept His wisdom and guidance in my life even in the times that it goes against all that I think my pitiful little mind thinks is wrong. Some of the biggest problems are the things that I simply do not understand how the world thinks and I feel so helpless.

This world is in a mess. Fires, floods, hurricanes, tornados, poverty, and lawlessness about to breakout to such a level that it boggles the mind to the extent that watching the news at night is frightening, and yet, we think we know what is best.  I’ve been wondering if through Facebook, or any source, a wave of silence and prayer for the world to step back, shut up and whether we all believe the same or not jointly ask God for the benefit of all mankind to forgive and help us could be possible?

I don’t know, I am sure there would be controversy on every side over even proposing such a thing. I just know I cannot help but thank Him for being here in my little world and loving me enough to see ahead of me and finally got me to trust His love to the point of listening and doing what I hear.

And as a parent isn’t that what we want and ask and would love for our children to do at times? To simply say, yes, Mom, okay Dad, even though I think I know what is best for my life, I am going to listen to what you have to say and I will take your advice. As wonderful a thought that is for us as parents what in the world would it be for God to hear mankind say it to Him?

Maybe things won’t have to get much worse before that becomes a reality.

Times like this !!!

Times like this !!!

It is time like this that I wish I had a writing buddy! I had a dream early this morning and have not been able to stop writing since I got up, made coffee and sat down in my chair. The coffee has long since gone cold and the words are flying onto the page.

I also did something totally out of character for me. I grabbed a pen and before I started I wrote out twenty-one individual paragraphs of the story to follow. From beginning to end I have it in an outline! I NEVER do that. It happened so fast I could not get it down quick enough.

Now I am just transcribing it from my head to the page. The dream woke me up. At first all I wanted to do was forget it as fast I could. I was in it and something bad had happened to me that caused me to be left alone in a store and soon found myself on the floor being asked if I was all right by a strange woman. From there all I can remember is the feeling of being rolled over and put on a gurney.

I was in a fix. I could feel the dread as I also realized that whoever this woman was had saved me from being hurt even more. The next part of the dream I was in her car and she was taking me to her home. Boy oh boy was I glad that it was only a dream!

Don’t you just love it when that happens? You wake up and poof! You are out of the situation!

But then the dream turned into this complete story. I know this sounds peculiar even to me. Usually I get this really great idea and then have to fill in the rest. I see all the characters and it is as if they are writing themselves. (I promise there is nothing but cold coffee in my cup.)

What makes this even more amazing is I am already working on two other books that are nearly writing themselves and I hava to keep jumping form one to the other  in order to not forget where each book is going. This one has completely taken over my life today. It isn’t going to wait on being written.

Hmm, now I am wondering what I ate before I went to bed last night? (She said, Grinning.)

I’m not complaining mind you. I’ll take them any way I can get them, it is just a lot to try and create all at once. My brain is swimming. Sometimes I think we can have spurts of highly creative energy. Now I need a burst of energy to get all this written. I look at the clock and it in 3:15! It was just 8:30 a few minutes ago. I end up losing a lot of days this way.

Has anyone else had this happen to them? I can’t believe I am some sort of artistic savant. It probably was the high blood pressure pill and swigs of Orange Juice at 4 am this morning.

Anyway I am going to blog this and get up and take my trash down the hall and check the mail. I need to give not only my brain a quick rest but my numb bottom as well.

There I go again, sharing too much FYI.

You can’t let them get you down

You can’t let them get you down

I realized that I have once again neglected my blogging. It isn’t that I haven’t had some thoughts that I could have blogged about, it is that I wasn’t sure I should give place to them.

Sometimes I think I tend to tell too much.

I do however have some thoughts today about what loving to write can do to a person if they let it. I entered a popular 24 hour writing contest a month or so ago and had fun doing it. I thought what I wrote fit the rules and outline. I know it did because I am not a person who colors outside of the lines. I am not a risk taker or a troublemaker. Never have been.

There was a six week wait for the winners to be announced and today the e-mail came. Did I win one of the top three places? No. Did I get honorable mentions? No. Did I get a door prize? No. Well, surely I deserved a grab bag – no, not nada.

Wow. Hmm. Geez. Nothing? Not even an Atta-Girl for entering and playing within the rules? Nope.

It kind of made my dander go up, I am sorry to say. I don’t think I am a bad looser, but please. . .  give me a break. It was a $5 entry fee 24 fun activity in creative writing. It wasn’t for a Pulitzer Prize winning Novel or the next Oscar winning Novel turned into a million dollar movie for goodness sake!

If we wannabe writers think that it is just the publishing world that gives us a hard time, I felt absolutely hurt over this silly contest. What in this world do they want from us?

I guess this unexpected stab to the heart came on the heels of watching a couple of what I call B movies. The whole time I watched them I kept thinking how in the world did they ever make it into the world. One of the storylines was a rip-off from a popular movie which had real well-known actors playing the part. This filmmaker must have used someone’s grandmother, nieces and nephews I think.

The other one was so irritating to watch that I am not sure it even came from a book. The first ten scenes were filled with this listless, humped shoulder man waking up each day, shaving, shuffling to work, watching the clock, sloughing to lunch, back to his desk, watching the clock, shuffling home. . . . AHHHHH!!!! I am not kidding they did this for what seemed a quarter of the beginning of the movie. He never said a word.

Finally . . . FINALLY… he says something about his life being boring. Yeah? You think? My, my, my . . . what is this world coming to.

Either some people have way too much time or money on their hands or think their opinions are mo-better than the rest of us.

Needless to say, I, (we) can’t let them get us down. Maybe my love of writing is just that. A love. And that is all it is meant to be. I kiddingly say that it is God’s seat work for me here and now. It keeps me busy and out of trouble. Of course, I am not sure what trouble a 63 year old woman can get into.

I have said this before and will probably have it written in my obituary. I love writing fiction because I can go, do, be anything I want. There are absolutely no limitations. I can make people, places and events good, bad, real or imaginary and no one can tell me they are wrong.

But when you step into a structured place of writing designed by someone who has already decided what you are to write about, you are subject to their opinions.

I guess if you want to call it sour grapes, then so be it. But when I read the three winning entries I kept looking for the initial paragraph that we were supposed to use, I never found it in any of the three writings. I thought how is that? Where is their standard of fairness? What these three people did was take an aspect of the prompt paragraph and twist it into some facsimile of a story based on the prompt. It would be the same if you entered a pie baking contest and a chocolate cake won because it did have a crust. ?????? How fair is that?

Again, I guess it is just me. I must be out of touch with how this world is progressing or not progressing toward rewarding following the rules and playing fairly.

So, I’ll keep coloring in my own fashion for my own pleasure.  On the flip side of my discourse today, my memoir teacher called me and she was absolutely full of compliments about the novel I asked her to read and edit so that I could finally get it into an E-Book format. I have put it off because I felt it wasn’t edited properly.

When she gave it back to me and I found only a few places where she had penciled in corrections I thought she must not have really read it all. This is what she said to me, “ Sue, I did read it. I got so swept into the story and characters that I guess I just got lost in the book itself. I wouldn’t worry about a misplaced comma or two. The book itself is wonderful!”

Hmm, that is humbling. Two completely opposite outcomes having to do with what I write. Which road will I take today? The positive one. The one that makes me want to open up the files I am working on and keep filling them with pages of promising stories that will be read one day.

I guess I saw another well learned lesson in all this. I am getting must better at handling disappointment and other people’s opinions of my worth as a writer.

       " It  . .  was a dark and stormy night .... once apon a time...."

Another tearful day. . .

Another tearful day. . .

It is one thing to make yourself cry and it is another to write about it. But I simply cannot help myself this morning. After adding another 30 some hours of reformatting, posting, and creating an Author page on Amazon I have lowered my pay rate as a wannabe author to probably about $0.0000000000000002 per hour.

So, I am asking myself again, (to you who know whom I am talking to, forgive me for repeating myself) why do I keep at this writing thing?

After all the checks were done and I was notified that all my books when live on Kindle I rushed over to the store to see for myself. Sure enough if you put in Susan Todd and Kindle Books, there I am. https://www.amazon.com/author/toddsusan-storyweaver  - to save you time.

Because I have had the hard copies on Amazon for a while and opted into the “Look Inside” program it followed suit with my e-books. So as I opened them one by one and read them, the same thing hit me yet again. I wrote them and even I wanted to keep turning the pages! Having not read them in a long time, they were new to me.

I could not help but be thankful to some skillful Amazon employee who added just the right amount of teasing chapters that hopefully would leave the would-be-reader hanging and wanting more.

Then the tears come spontaneously. I simply cannot help it. Every bone in my body feels for these books. Especially since joining a couple of writing Facebook groups where I post occasionally. I regress, again, but when I post on these sites I am instantly reminded of an ant bed or bee hive. When one author-Ant comes in with a leaf of possibility all the other ants run to that newfound site and strip it clean.

If a worker bee-author stumbled onto a site of flowering smorgasbord where they can sprinkle their wordy-pollen . . .  whoosh! Off the bees fly. Post after post of how this and how that comes up. And you have to be quick. Once you post it goes down the Facebook tube in a hurry. I have gone back sometimes within minutes and my post isn’t even showing any longer.

Please, dear fellow writer, if you are reading this, don’t think me ungrateful or mean-spirited. I truly am not. I am simply asking the question . . . "WHAT ARE WE ALL DOING THIS FOR?"

But I can only answer that for myself. I wrote these books over the years, and I mean years. I tried to stop writing once and it literally made me sick. So I thought, why do this to myself? Who cares?

And, I know, I know dear Christian reader, that everything I do I do unto the Lord and it isn’t a life lesson in trust that I am seeking an answer to today. I know all too well and believe me this isn’t the first day of prayer that has gone into this endeavor between God and myself. I have asked, I have prayed and I have trusted. Do I not know that God gave me this desire? Of course I do. Do I not know that the creator of the Universe can and could at any moment decide that it is time for my humble writings to skyrocket to the top? Absolutely, I believe this.

I have done again everything I know to do to put my books in line to be found at the moment. I am sure there are probably other things I will do lowering the above mentioned pay rate yet again.
For today, right now as I write, I am going to let it be enough. I have to. Writing gives me something to fill my hours. It takes me places I cannot physically go any more, if ever. It brings the type of people into my life that I understand and like. It helps me diet. (I eat less when I am writing all day.) So there are many upsides.

One day when I stand before the Lord I will not care at all about books, sales, sites or the such. Only being with Him and seeing the Father’s face will matter to this woman then. And perhaps my mansion will overlook an arena of cushy cloud seats with a podium where He will announce, “And now heavenly guests I am pleased and proud to give you, my child, Susan, reading from her latest book for your enjoyment.”

Hmm, maybe I just stumbled upon a writing prompt! I will leave this post on a positive note, “I am going to keep on writing, believing and trusting and I hope you all do the same.”

                                 "Is that what I think it is?

  "I'll catch up with you later, Susan's books have gone Kindle!"

The question really is, fellow writers, who really hooks whom… or is that who?

The question really is, fellow writers, who really hooks whom… or is that who?

This blog is in response to Susan Braun's blog. Susan addresses the agent syndrome that all truly passionately serious and patient would-be-authors experience. The conclusion that I have come to is one of personal belief. Agents are only front men to their own agency. They are the public face that has to show up at the conferences in order to catch the attention of what could be the next Nicolas Sparks, Steven King, Dan Brown, or Danielle Steele. So they are not stupid, they have their pitch all ready.

We on the other hand come with our hopes and dreams entwined around our 40,000 – to 90,000 word children we carry in our arms. So when we step up to these Word Wizards of Oz that we hope will be the answer to our dreams, something really does happen.

An invisible collar is attached around our necks with miles of invisible chain. The other end is securely hooked to one of the hundreds of rings hanging off their belts like scalps. They do this because they are not going to risk the possibility that standing in front of them at this moment disguised as grey-haired grandmothers, lanky love sick college students, retired or soon to be retired individuals from every walk of life could be the next #1 Best Seller that their skilled expertise will have snatched from the writing pool.

If they were humane they would ask us while we are right there in front of them to condense the 90,000 words we have given years of our blood sweat and tears to, not to mention the social life and time with family that has been sacrificed, down to a one minute synopses and decide right there and then. Which that, in itself, I find ridiculously impossible. Oh, no, instead they make sure the chain is secure by adding, “Send me a copy of your manuscript and I will get back to you.”

They do this because back at the ranch they have a team of well schooled ghost-readers who are highly skilled at knowing the criteria of what to pass on to the agent for a second look or chunk in the rejected manuscript compost pile. Then months later when the composted pile of rejects has grown too large and begun to ferment they pound out a stack of standard reject letters which they address, stamp and send out on a Friday just for good measure knowing they will lay in the postoffice for yet another two days. 

Ah, the joy of wanting to be an author! I have decided that agents come from the same emotional rock quarry as did my father. It took me years to realize that he never ever had any intentions of doing what he promised when he said he would. It was simply to put me off as long as he could before he had to actively respond to my request. Thus you have the equivalent of the book agent.

I realize that my father having only me and one other sibling to ignore, these agents get hundreds , sometimes thousands, of our wordy children all clamoring for their attention. So I will give them that.

We on the other hand start looking the very next day in our mail boxes, both electronically and by snail mail hoping to see that long white coveted envelope. Howbeit sad, we cannot stop. Those who did not dance to the agent’s charming tunes for years but surrendered to the self-publishing world welcome all of us last-ditch stand-off believers. Of which I have to say I was one.

Although, this post sounds dreadfully morose, it isn’t to me. My books, though still patiently waiting to go home with any eager reader who thinks them worthy of their time, are alive and in the world.

I have the satisfaction of having accomplished that part of writing. I hung in there; I wrote day after day, edited and edited and edited, designed covers, forged through frustratingly hard formatting and did not give up.  So when I click on books by Susan Todd on Amazon and those books are mine, well, Katie bar the door! I am an author in my own rights!