NaNoWriMo Day 20:

Status: 77,777 words / 50,000 words

Whoops.

Guess it’s been a while. Not my fault. I’ve been gone, and internet and computer access were limited, and I never had the forethought to write the blog posts before I left... Oh well. As you can see, I passed 50,000 words, a number of days ago. On day 10, I believe.

It’s really been a lot of fun to write all of this. My character finally got through summer (that took forever), and started back at school, made some new friends, and is now at one of the major plot points in the story. I’m forcing myself to stop writing tonight because I love the word count that I stopped on ^_^

What with being on, some of the days I got no more than 500-700 words in, and on other days (like today) I had a twelve hour drive home, so I spent most of that time writing and finally getting to the exciting parts.

I know some people, when they write, they’ll write the exciting parts first and then go back and fill in the details. What I’ve found though, is when I do that, I’ll have fun writing the exciting parts, but then it’s nigh impossible to convince myself that I really should go back and finish the other little bits. Also, when I write that way, I find that I tend to conform myself to what I had planned out in the beginning, rather than going with the natural succession.

Sometimes thing change drastically from day to day, and even little thing might make it so that your big plan is all in ruins. By not writing the major stuff out, I find that I have both encouragement to get to the exciting stuff, and I’m able to write it like it should be, instead of the way I think it should be. The two are not always the same for me.

--Star Lit

S.O.Y.

I’m not going to write about writing. I’m not going to write about writing. I’m not going to write about writing. I’m not going to write about writing. There. I won’t. Not today. November’s almost here, so wait until then :)

On a slightly religious bent, today/tonight I’m going to write about something that I did. A couple weeks ago, more than a month now, I guess, my youth group went to an area church and did the complete church service.

We call ourselves S.O.Y. This is not the youth group with MY Sixth Graders; this is just a bunch of high school/college students. Anyway, S.O.Y. Serving Other Youth. We’ll go to various churches, do the whole service from welcome to sermon to benediction.

Since May, when we started, we’ve gone to three churches. I’ve done something upfront all three times. The first time, the least stressful, I gave a mission story. All I did was talk about a trip I took with my older brother to Brazil a few years ago, and the miracle of the batteries (more on that another time). The second time, I was asked to give a testimony. I freaked out for a few days, then the night before figured out what I was going to talk about. I was going to talk about writing.

No, no! I promise, I’m not writing about writing, I’m writing about giving a testimony about writing. Make any sense? :P Didn’t think so.

Anyway. The third time, and most recent, we went to a nearby church that I haven’t been inside of in over ten years. Yes, a very, very, long time ago, and it turns out, I knew more than half the population of the church. And this was where I was to give my testimony?!

It’s one thing to talk about my testimony to people I don’t know, to people that I’ll probably never see again, but another thing completely where it’s people that I’ve known for years. People who know me, and might, possibly, judge me, because I’m not a perfect person. To say the least, I was afraid.

The interesting thing was, once I was up there, and made sure not to look directly at anyone I knew, the fear faded away. I was still nervous, I always am when I’m upfront of people, but I knew I had a purpose. It didn’t matter what they thought of me, because I was telling others, sharing my “testimony,” about the ways that God had been working through my life, and how He’s brought me closer to Him.

I won’t write out the entire testimony, as that would take too long (and I’m supposed to be going to bed). The gist of it was that God was using my interest in writing to bring me closer to Him, to help me remember to study my bible, and sometimes, even asking those questions that I didn’t really want to think about. It’s complicated, so maybe I’ll put that up as another post. We’ll see.

Sentimental StarLit Signing Off ^_^