Monday, October 26, 2009
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Silly NCU Marriages
I can't help but kind of snicker to myself when I see some of my former classmates "finding" each other and getting hitched. It's actually very amusing. Before I go any further, let me clarify that I am very fortunate and blessed to have found my lovely wife Ashley early on. We've been married for a year and a half (almost) and we'll be together for the rest of our lives.
Having said that, for me, the humor comes in when I see those people who have dated several other people at the school and, seemingly at the last possible minute, find "the one" and get hitched just in time for (or shortly after) graduation. Let me explain using this fictional scenario.
Bobby hasn't found "the one" yet, and if he doesn't find her soon, he'll graduate Christian college and forever be alone. Conveniently, there's a fridge full of leftovers for him to choose from, and what's more, these are not girls he has dated or even considered dating. PERFECT! He tries them out in rapid succession until he finds one who he can at least settle for. Then they get together for a few months in the first semester of their senior year and he proposes over the winter break, probably on Christmas Eve, Christmas morning, or New Years Eve. They plan the wedding for one of the weekends shortly after graduation, get married and live oh so happily ever after.
Quick, easy, convenient. True love? Well...the jury might still be out on that one. I'm afraid that in light of fewer options and impending separation from the hunting grounds of a Christian college, some of these people I went to school with just "settled" for someone who they could live with for an indefinite period instead of waiting for God's timing.
I could be overreacting; I probably am. Alas, I've been fortuitous enough to find true love early. Maybe I'm just baffled by some of the less likely combinations I've seen over the last few years. Maybe God's got it in control after all. I know He does...I just hope some of these folks didn't subvert His will out of over-anxiousness. After all, the divorce rate is the same in Christianity as it is in the rest of our culture...
Having said that, for me, the humor comes in when I see those people who have dated several other people at the school and, seemingly at the last possible minute, find "the one" and get hitched just in time for (or shortly after) graduation. Let me explain using this fictional scenario.
Bobby hasn't found "the one" yet, and if he doesn't find her soon, he'll graduate Christian college and forever be alone. Conveniently, there's a fridge full of leftovers for him to choose from, and what's more, these are not girls he has dated or even considered dating. PERFECT! He tries them out in rapid succession until he finds one who he can at least settle for. Then they get together for a few months in the first semester of their senior year and he proposes over the winter break, probably on Christmas Eve, Christmas morning, or New Years Eve. They plan the wedding for one of the weekends shortly after graduation, get married and live oh so happily ever after.
Quick, easy, convenient. True love? Well...the jury might still be out on that one. I'm afraid that in light of fewer options and impending separation from the hunting grounds of a Christian college, some of these people I went to school with just "settled" for someone who they could live with for an indefinite period instead of waiting for God's timing.
I could be overreacting; I probably am. Alas, I've been fortuitous enough to find true love early. Maybe I'm just baffled by some of the less likely combinations I've seen over the last few years. Maybe God's got it in control after all. I know He does...I just hope some of these folks didn't subvert His will out of over-anxiousness. After all, the divorce rate is the same in Christianity as it is in the rest of our culture...
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Post-ACFW Conference Jitters
Wow...it's been almost a month since I went to the conference and there's so much to tell! The biggest news is that as a result of the conference, I got 2 literary agents to request my manuscript (one wants the full MS, the other wants the first three chapters and a proposal), and 3 publishers have expressed interest at least on some level. Since then, I've been hacking away at my story and trying to get it cut down from 167,000 words (which is waaay too long) to 120,000 at the most. So far, I've eliminated about 27,000 words (almost 100 pages) from the story. Don't worry, it was all fluff, mostly from the beginning. My first 6 chapters are almost completely different now (chapter 4 is pretty much the same, though) but in a very good way!
The long and short of it is that I have a lot left to do and not much time to do it. I'll try to post some more as time goes on, but right now I have to run to work.
-Ben
The long and short of it is that I have a lot left to do and not much time to do it. I'll try to post some more as time goes on, but right now I have to run to work.
-Ben
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Writer's Conference Jitters
Last year around this time I was preparing to get ready for the church-planting assessment in Minneapolis, MN. And by preparing, I mean doing everything they told me to do and not putting much effort into it. I flew by the seat of my pants...it's one of the things I do best when I'm forced to do it, but when I try to use that talent to cover up my laziness, it just ends up ruining good opportunities for me. You can guess whether or not I passed the assessment based on how much work I put into preparing for it...in my own defense, all laziness aside, the primary reason I didn't pass was because I didn't have (and still really don't have) any pastoral experience since I'm only one year out of college.
The good news is that this upcoming writer's conference in Denver, the American Christian Fiction Writers' (ACFW) conference, has very few guidelines at all for what you have to do to prepare for it. Ironically enough, this lack of information forced me to more actively research and prepare for it than the very specific guidelines I was presented with at the church-planting assessment. So, even though we're down to the wire and I naturally have a few last-minute things I need to wrap up, I feel very, very well prepared for it overall.
Having said that, my whole purpose of this blog post is to beseech you all to pray diligently for me from the moment I set foot on the airplane in Milwaukee on September 16th all the way through the conference itself until I get back on Monday the 21st. I have the unrivaled opportunity to have two scheduled meetings with two very potentially important people in my writing career: a literary agent AND a representative from a publishing house. At this point, I don't have any more info on who they are, but I know they are going to be the right people who will tell me what I need to hear, even if it isn't all good news.
In these meetings, I will actually be able to "pitch" my book idea to them for their consideration. This is a real life, viable opportunity for me to #1. get an agent; and #2. get connected with a publishing house! That means, if all goes the way I want it to (which is at least remotely likely), I could be a published author within a year! It's crazy to think about, I know, but there is a possibility of it happening. So like I said: I need prayer for this. I need prayer that I will be clear and articulate with my presentations to these folks, both in the scheduled meetings and in the multiple non-scheduled encounters I will have with other agents and publishers. I need prayer that God's Will will be done regardless of what I think it is or should be. He's already miraculously provided a way for me to go to the conference at a very low expense to me, and I'm certain that I wouldn't be going if He didn't want me there for a good reason! Otherwise He wouldn't have made it possible, right?
Well, anyways, just pray for me. This is not only a dream come true in the making but also a chance to finally use my talents for God, something I've been yearning to do all my life but could never quite figure out which direction to go with what He's given me.
That about wraps it up...I'll give you an update once I get back. Until then, pray for me. I've got more work to do. Thanks!
-Ben
The good news is that this upcoming writer's conference in Denver, the American Christian Fiction Writers' (ACFW) conference, has very few guidelines at all for what you have to do to prepare for it. Ironically enough, this lack of information forced me to more actively research and prepare for it than the very specific guidelines I was presented with at the church-planting assessment. So, even though we're down to the wire and I naturally have a few last-minute things I need to wrap up, I feel very, very well prepared for it overall.
Having said that, my whole purpose of this blog post is to beseech you all to pray diligently for me from the moment I set foot on the airplane in Milwaukee on September 16th all the way through the conference itself until I get back on Monday the 21st. I have the unrivaled opportunity to have two scheduled meetings with two very potentially important people in my writing career: a literary agent AND a representative from a publishing house. At this point, I don't have any more info on who they are, but I know they are going to be the right people who will tell me what I need to hear, even if it isn't all good news.
In these meetings, I will actually be able to "pitch" my book idea to them for their consideration. This is a real life, viable opportunity for me to #1. get an agent; and #2. get connected with a publishing house! That means, if all goes the way I want it to (which is at least remotely likely), I could be a published author within a year! It's crazy to think about, I know, but there is a possibility of it happening. So like I said: I need prayer for this. I need prayer that I will be clear and articulate with my presentations to these folks, both in the scheduled meetings and in the multiple non-scheduled encounters I will have with other agents and publishers. I need prayer that God's Will will be done regardless of what I think it is or should be. He's already miraculously provided a way for me to go to the conference at a very low expense to me, and I'm certain that I wouldn't be going if He didn't want me there for a good reason! Otherwise He wouldn't have made it possible, right?
Well, anyways, just pray for me. This is not only a dream come true in the making but also a chance to finally use my talents for God, something I've been yearning to do all my life but could never quite figure out which direction to go with what He's given me.
That about wraps it up...I'll give you an update once I get back. Until then, pray for me. I've got more work to do. Thanks!
-Ben
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Learning, learning, always learning...
You may have noticed a substantial hiatus in my blog posting recently...something that spanned several months. Well, I came to the rude awakening that "freedom of speech" is a very crazy term and cannot ever be interpreted at face value without facing consequences. What I mean is that I can exercise my freedom of speech at my leisure, but if I do that, I have to face up to the consequences that may and probably will result of my liberal expression of my thoughts. I have decided that this is not the place to express those thoughts because I have no anonymity, which means if I hurt someone with what I say, that falls on me whether I want to accept it or not.
God is so good...He saved me from shooting off my mouth too much before I could REALLY get into trouble. And believe me, I almost REALLY did on a few separate occasions. So, from now on, this blog and my Fidzo20 Twitter account will serve as outlets for healthy exercises of my freedom of speech. Look forward to some "nicer" blogs in the future...I'll keep my jaded criticism to myself. :)
God is so good...He saved me from shooting off my mouth too much before I could REALLY get into trouble. And believe me, I almost REALLY did on a few separate occasions. So, from now on, this blog and my Fidzo20 Twitter account will serve as outlets for healthy exercises of my freedom of speech. Look forward to some "nicer" blogs in the future...I'll keep my jaded criticism to myself. :)
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