Reading Is My Super Power

If It's Tuesday, Would You Like Coffee with Your Reading?

I have tried and tried to post with this stupid thing. It keeps giving me an error message, so I'm starting all over again. The other post was much better. I even had a photo. This is ridiculous. Ever have one of those days?

Usually, today is the day I give you a little review on something I'm reading. Only what I'm reading today is a manuscript. I cannot tell you anything about that because whatever I think about this manuscript is strictly between my client and me. You would appreciate that if you were paying me to read/critique your manuscript.

I have two more manuscripts to tackle after this one. It's been a long summer.

This past summer I gave up my book review column. I stopped reviewing books because it was interfering with my own progress in writing. What was happening to me was I was reading EVERYTHING. I read just about everything coming out in the Christian market. I could not discern my own voice when I would write and I could not figure out anymore just what my story was above all of the other voices. I could doctor any genre and a few nonfiction manuscripts. I had no passion left, because it was consumed by so many words. I had to let it all go or I would never be able to lift my own head above the din. I was drowning in words.

That is why I started this blog. I had to get back to things that interested me. I couldn't even tell you what kind of a book I'd pick up, if I had the choice! I was so used to being sent books and reading whatever I was sent, that I could not tell you what kind of book I'd pick up if actually given a choice. Therefore, I could no longer figure out my own passions. I was enveloped in the passions and hearts of others. That is not a bad thing, but I have this great desire to write my own thing before I pass on. What are my passions?

Lee Warren on Little Nuances has these lists of 100 Things, 100 Preferences and 100 Little Nuances

I want to think about these things in my own life. I have thought about other people's things and given out so much to others, that I've lost myself in the word salads. I couldn't find a sesame seed of my own flavor anywhere!

I still have a few more pieces of writing I have done to share. (And I fixed all of the mistakes--I think--from yesterday's story. Sigh.)Maybe people can fully see me here, but I can't fully see me. I'm like in a fog, and I can't fire at targets until that fog disappears.

I still love books. I still love helping other authors find their full potential. But I need a little refilling of my own.

Maybe my journey here will help you, too, discover your own passions and potential. I hope so. As Stephen King says, "If God gives you something you can do, why in God's name wouldn't you do it?" God expects us to follow those passions in our soul because He put them in there to make you, you. You have to feed it and exercise it. I haven't done that for me.

Stephen King's book, On Writing, speaks to ME. Not something for one of my clients or fellow writers (though it may,) but I reread it for ME. In order to give out more, you have to refill the well.

So, that is what I'm going to do.