Roses And Thorns

I wanted to take a moment to give some great family advice. About a year ago, I happened to pick up one of the parenting magazines I have laying around. It's funny that I even picked it up at all, every few months I get these things and I'm not sure why since I never subscribed. But even though I randomly get them and never read them- I still keep them for a rainy day. I picked up this magazine and flipped through it finding mostly ads for diapers and baby clothes and whatever else they promote to parents.  Annoyed by all the ads, I was about to set it down when I saw a short article about Roses and Thorns.  I started to read and little did I know that this article was not only about to change my life, but the life of my family.

Roses and Thorns is a simple concept that a family sit down together at dinner time every night (or during some other moment when you are all together) and take a turn discussing their Roses and Thorns for the day.  What is a Rose?  A Rose is something good that happened to you today.  It is as simple as: "I took the kids to the park and we had a great time"or "My son helped me with the dishes today." Anything that made you happy that day--there are no right or wrong answers.  AND tell all Roses--ever day should have many.

A Thorn is not necessarily something that occurs every day.  If you haven't figured it out yet, a Thorn is something bad that happened.  Like "I spilled my drink all over my shirt" or "I wasn't feeling good today." You get the general idea. 

As soon as I read this article I told my family that evening, while we sat around the table eating our dinner, that this was our special new thing. My children embraced it way more than I could have imagined. I realized that many nights my husband and I would have a conversation that may not have always included our children and many times our children were forced to just sit and listen to us talk.  In other words, we weren't talking TO our children enough. 

As months passed, I saw a significant change in my family by applying a simple, but very important concept. We explained to our children that every day should be filled with lots of Roses and sort of discourage thinking of a Thorn.  If they have a Thorn, they of course share it, but we try to teach them to focus on what makes you happy instead of what makes you sad.

My family has grown so close by this small, simple concept.  This works for young children or old children. We even make people who come to our house for dinner share their Roses and Thorns and it helps us to get to know them even more too.  So here is my advice/challenge to you. Try this in your house even for just a week and I PROMISE the results will be amazing. You will learn things about your children that you never knew before. It really opened up a new level of communication in my family and we are stronger and closer because of it.  

Writing Advice

Okay, so I know I've been failing at this whole blog thing for awhile... which is why I've decided to get myself to add something at least once a week.  We'll see how that goes....


I wanted to take a moment to talk about writing advice.  Shocking huh?  This is for all those people who are curious or trying to become writers.  Let me just say this "You're in over your head!"  Okay, just kidding.  I will admit, you will have days that you feel this way.  But writing takes TIME.  If you don't have a lot of time, it doesn't mean you can't be a writer . . . it just means that it will take you a lot more time to get a finished product than others.  If you are a very busy person--estimate years and years.  If you are an insecure person (like me) and you are constantly giving up and thinking you will never aspire to anything remotely readable--estimate longer.  **this is where you laugh**


Do you need an education to be a writer?  Well obviously you need SOME, you need to know the english language enough to figure out the difference between "know" and "no."  There are so many great books you can read that help you to learn about being a writer as well as loads of blogs and websites too.  For me, I read books.  Actual novels.  I study the structure of other writers.  I don't just read the book, I think about how they introduce their characters, describe the room, at what point the climax of the story is revealed . . . that kind of thing.  Okay, so you've got options here.  Of course, college is never a bad idea.  I'm still thinking of going back just to deepen my knowledge.


The greatest thing a writer can do is write.  Huh?  WRITE people!  Books don't just magically appear.  The work doesn't improve unless you actually work on it.  But what would be most helpful is figure out what your story is first.  What's going to happen to your characters?  Who are your characters?  Are those characters part of the overall plot?  I could go into so much detail it's not even funny.  But I'll try to keep it simple today.  Any writing you do makes you better.  Let's repeat that: ANY writing you do makes you better.  No one just sat down to a computer and wrote a book and BAM it was amazing and brilliant and ready to publish.  Nope.  No way man.  This is the real world.  All those great writers out there work their butts off to get just the right sentence.  And yes, I said sentence.  Every single word is important and when you have 60,000 of them or more to make up your novel . . . it takes awhile.  So write and write and write.


And when you are finally done with your novel . . . you are going to have a sort of mid life crisis hit you when you see how much work editing is.  This could all depend on how good of a writer you are, but if you're like me you will basically re-write your entire book again and maybe ten or fifty times over again.


Now don't be discouraged.  If you have a passion for writing.  GO for it!  You should let nothing stop you!  But just know that it's going to take work.  But the goal is so rewarding.  And when you are done with writing and editing.  Then comes publication.  **bangs head against the wall**  But we'll talk about that another day . . .

PATIENCE

I recently had an experience that taught me a valuable lesson in patience.  Many weeks I had been praying for direction in my life.  I had reached a point with my newly finished novel (that was edited and re-written several times over) that I knew it was finally ready to get published.  I prayed for this guidance to lead me in the right direction on what my next move should be.  Through the help of a good friend, my novel happened to make it’s way to an editor for a publishing company.  I waited anxiously for seven weeks to get the answer that I hoped to get “We love your book and want to publish you!” 

Through long hours of prayer, agonizing over the result of what this editor would say about my novel and how it would change my life, I was given a feeling of peace and comfort that I was on the path that I was supposed to be on.  I felt like this feeling of peace was a conformation that this was it.  That this editor was the one and that my book was about to get published.  

Alas, it was not.  The editor gave me a sincere response and informed me that there were some things about my novel that needed to be re-worked.  I struggled for days on this, confused by the feelings and answers I had received that this was the one and that my novel was finally done and finished.  This was my big moment where everything would change.  I was heartbroken and lost.  Did I read the message wrong?  Were the encouraging and comforting feelings not real?  Did I make the whole thing up?  Maybe I heard wrong.  Maybe everything I think I know about personal revelation is wrong. 

But that was not the case.  I was heartbroken and lost, yes.  And I did the worst thing in that moment that I could have.  I stopped praying and reading my scriptures.  I pushed God away when I really should have pulled him closer and allowed him to help me understand what had gone wrong. 

I probably would have understood sooner had I not pushed God away.  But a week later I finally received my answer.  I spoke to my mother who informed me that maybe the reason that I was supposed to submit my book to this editor was not because my book was ready to publish, but because this editor had something important to point out to me about my novel.  I listened to the editor’s advice and revised my novel.  Through all this, I learned that God does lead us down the paths we need to follow, but we need to stop and listen for the purpose for why he took us down that path.  The results may not turn out the way we want.  We may not even understand at first why we must do it.  But if we stop, listen, and have a little patience we will understand how that particular thing fits into his overall plan for us.