A Tender Mercy

Have you ever had one of those experiences that when over, you sit back and see the Lord's hand in it? Yesterday I had one and have to share it with you my bloggy friends.

Let me give a bit of a background to my weekend. Friday my children spent with Grandpa and Grandma and I spent a bit of a time alone, and then with my dear husband at lunch. I wrote a bit on my laptop at Dan's office while I waited for him to finish up before we headed to Provo to camp out for the evening. I got a little frustrated because I had several ideas spinning through my head, but I wasn't able to narrow anything down. I closed the laptop and spent the rest of the evening with my characters trying out several activities in my head.

We love to attend the Scottish games anywhere we can. These games were in Payson, just south of Provo, so we headed down early in the morning. The first on our agenda was to meet up with the Highland dance teacher that will be working with Abbie and watch some of her students compete. We were all enthralled with the dancing and really enjoyed all the events there. After walking through the booths, we passed a book booth that had an author doing a book signing. Her name is Amanda Scott, a romance novelist, that has more than 50 books to her name. We talked for about 20 minutes about her craft and the writing that I am inspired to do. She gave me wonderful advice and about three books to look into to help me with my own writing.

As I finished talking with her and she signed a book for me encouraging me to write. Amanda Scott writes mostly Historical Romance, a genre, within the Romance genre, but she really believes in reading everything because one must pull from the classics and mythology. I am a romantic at heart, and any story that I write will have to have that element to it.

So here is the tender mercy....I was at a point where I didn't know where I wanted my characters to go, and what I wanted to do at this point. Amanda Scott said something that really hit me, "There is not such thing as writer's block, only failure to do homework." Wow! I need to do some research! She told me that I should go back to the mythology and fables and use them to help me. I just couldn't believe that the Lord, who knows the deepest desires of my heart, knew what I needed to move to the next level, to keep up my writing. How interesting that I gleaned more from this twenty minute encounter than I have in two weeks of writing class. I was seriously near tears when I was done, because I had learned so much and felt like the Lord was watching and blessing me with what I needed. What a fortuitous turn of events. I'll let you know how the books are....I'm looking forward to reading them after talking to the author!