Something no one else has…

Hello friend! This month has been busy with several trips and birthdays, and less creative work done than I would have liked, but I am plugging away at my projects. Baby steps in the right direction are still getting me closer to my dreams. How has your month been?

A Joshua tree in Joshua Tree National Park, one of the places my family visited this past month.

Imago Dei

I tell my children they are special. They have gifts and talents and personalities that make them who they are. I tell my boys that God gave them their strong muscles, not to hurt anyone, but for helping. I tell my daughter she is so smart, talented, and caring, and to use those things to be a blessing to the people she is around.

It’s so easy to see the blessing others are in the world, and yet so hard to see ourselves as valuable. But friend, I want to tell you, YOU have a special gift to give the world. There’s no one else who can give your gift to the world. Only you. Each individual on this planet has had their own life, their own experiences, their own thoughts, which are unique and special.

I have to remind myself of this on the days when I look at the work I’ve been making and hold it up against other people’s work and see all my weaknesses and failings.

I feel defeated.

I feel like giving up.

Why Bother?

Because right now, there is someone out there 

with a wound in the exact shape of your words.

(The Second O of Sorrow)

– Sean Thomas Dougherty
(The Second O of Sorrow)

So, don’t give up. Create something. Something beautiful that comes from you.

What happens when you turn off the TV, the social scrolling, the podcasts, the sports? The quiet of your own thoughts greets you. What is churning inside of you? What intrigues you? What puzzles you? What are you thinking?

It’s not easy to make something. Tough noogies. Make something anyway. You have something to give to others, and it’s not the latest gossip or small talk. It’s something real and if you don’t start trying to get it out, 
it 
will 
be 
lost.

Lost because what you can offer the world is something that only you can offer the world. Something that is stirring inside of you. The gift from your Creator to join Him in creating.

So, what stirs within your heart when I talk like this? A book? An artwork? A garden? A recipe? An invention?

I would love to hear about it. I would also love to see it when you create 

it.

But unless we are creators we are not fully alive. What do I mean by creators? Not only artists, whose acts of creation are the obvious ones of working with paint of clay or words. Creativity is a way of living life, no matter our vocation or how we earn our living. Creativity is not limited to the arts, or having some kind of important career.

– Madeleine L’Engle
(Walking on Water)

Project Updates:

­I have been in the query trenches (as it is fondly called by those writers who have experienced it) this past month and a half. As I shared, I had finished my book dummy for Bulldozers in the Sky, and have been sending it off to agents. So far, I have received some lovely, and some even personalized, rejections. I guess that’s why it’s called the trenches. Perseverance and dedication is required to make it through this gauntlet to actually having an agent who loves your work and will champion it for you to the big publishers. 

I am working on the early work for my next dummy. These are stories that I have taken through many versions, gotten feedback on, and had a lot of positive comments on before. Now I’m adding my own illustrations to them before sending them out into the world.  

The next story I’m working on is called Superhero Sister. So far I’ve broken the story into pages, worked on some character sketches, and thumbnailed about half of the story. 


Books I’m Reading and Recommending:

Grownup:

The Last Bookshop in London by Madeline Martin

This book was wonderful, but I needed tissues! There were several tear-jerking parts. 

August 1939: London prepares for war as Hitler’s forces sweep across Europe. Grace Bennett has always dreamed of moving to the city, but the bunkers and drawn curtains that she finds on her arrival are not what she expected. And she certainly never imagined she’d wind up working at Primrose Hill, a dusty old bookshop nestled in the heart of London.

Through blackouts and air raids as the Blitz intensifies, Grace discovers the power of storytelling to unite her community in ways she never dreamed – a force that triumphs over even the darkest nights of the war.

Middle Grade:

The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis

The Chronicles of Narnia is our family read-aloud. It is going well, we read the Magician’s Nephew first, then this one. My 9-year-old especially enjoys it.

Narnia… the land beyond the wardrobe door, a secret place frozen in eternal winter, a magical country waiting to be set free.

Lucy is the first to find the secret of the wardrobe in the professor’s mysterious old house. At first her brothers and sister don’t believe her when she tells of her visit to the land of Narnia. But soon Edmund, then Peter and Susan step through the wardrobe themselves. In Narnia they find a country buried under the evil enchantment of the White Witch. When they meet the Lion Aslan, they realize they’ve been called to a great adventure and bravely join the battle to free Narnia from the Witch’s sinister spell.

Picture Book:

King Bidgood’s in the Bathtub by Audrey Wood and Don Wood

A humorous tale that my children had to read every night while we had it checked out from the library. The pictures are hilarious and beautiful.

Despite pleas from his court, a fun-loving king refuses to get out of his bathtub to rule his kingdom.


Until next time,

Charlotte J. Glaze