Caught in the Pruning

Most of us who identify ourselves as Christians are familiar with Jesus' teaching about the vine, branches, pruning, and fruitfulness. The main teaching is that Jesus is the Vine, the source of life and of fruitful eternal value. 

During Jesus' years on earth, Jews and others--including Romans of the occupation--observed and worked with, in some cases, the abundant vineyards in close proximity. Jesus Jesus used that context to teach and show a vital message.

The message is that His followers must remain with Him as closely as a vine branch attaches to the inner life of the vine. The branches draw their life from their vine, which enables them to grow stronger and produce good, abundant fruit. The continual attachment to the life of the vine gives life. 

My view as a follower of Christ is to stay close to Him and focus on the good that His teachings reveal. The more I read His words the more I can grasp the immeasurable qualities of His love and power. 

Abiding in the Vine brings a well-spring of joy that lives within as we are nourished. The fruit of that can then flow naturally and often without our awareness. Two teachings come to mind: 

Abide in Me as I abide in you.

The context is the essential Vine connection.

 

Do not let your right hand know what your left hand does. 

The context is to avoid, even shun, human pride due to any of our own godly works.

Deal with Every Obstacle!

In writing as in life sometimes we forget that all problem-solving is not up to us. As Christians who write, our work is submitted to God first, and then at times we quickly begin to despair when submissions to editors or agents do not seem to get anywhere.

Like me, you may at times feel that you have been patient enough, have persevered enough, have tried and labored enough over a specific work. And still, it languishes.

The languishing may be due to more work than you think...still undone. The 20th edit may need 10 more edits to make it shine.

However, maybe you see no reason to doubt the worth or readiness of your efforts.

When I get to such a place, I tend to try to problem-solve all by myself. "God gave me a brain, and I'm going to use it!" Networking, getting advice from other writers or people that care about you, all of that can help.

However, it is too easy to become so professional that we forget those humbling times alone in prayer when we lay it all out before the Lord, rushing nothing. We realize that the high, huge, and heavy obstacle is...you're right...too much for you or for me to handle.

It is not foolish at such times to remember: Nothing is impossible with God. It is not foolish to find every bit of scripture to remind you that He can do what no one else, no other power or principality, can do! He is God!

Believing that truth about God and relying upon it...leaning with all your weight on it...is the wisest thing in many a circumstance. You've done all you can do. So, leave it with Him! Nothing is impossible with God! It's worth remembering and repeating.

The way He leads may astound you, causing your major concern to shrink in light of what He is doing to answer your prayers! Even, yes, things far beyond what you could ask or think.

The faithfulness of God, I have learned, is a place to seek and to serve. He is faithful to the end! We lack because we forget to trust. We even may have let our love for Jesus turn lukewarm. Oh, what a thing to realize this has happened.

Stir up the fires of your love for Jesus. Use every remembrance of His remarkable kindness and faithfulness to you, His forgiveness through the sacrifice of His own life! His love to the utmost degree, the shedding of His own blood on a cross of death. That, we must dwell in, to remember what great love the Father has for us!

That is where we want to be, abiding in Jesus and His great forgiving love, His patient love, and His redeeming love. Oh, bless the Lord, my soul, and forget not one of His benefits! The psalm writer of Psalm 103 set our example, to get ourselves over the worst obstacle...any diversion from, or fading of love for, Jesus!

Whatever you are doing today, I hope that writing is not your first love. Getting over that obstacle can open our hearts toward a better time.

I hope to encourage you, as St. Paul put it, by these words!

"What's Your Style Platform or Style Guide?"

Night Writer's Cottage, Ashland, VA_copyright (c) 2014

The photo above holds memories of a very special week of reading and talking with a new writer, my husband, who is finishing his first book. We now use much that I learned--and he heard talked about over supper--for years as a book publisher and founder of Opine Publishing. Opine's presence exists now through our seven books published and online presence at Author Support and My News and Views blog, and social networking, including one and another Twitter account and Facebook.  

You're a writer that may have been writing for a long time. You may be a prolific writer of published articles. Today I'm thinking about facts I only learned due to working with a publisher for the first edition of my first book, Not All Roads Lead Home by Jane Bullard (pen name). When Opine published the expanded, second edition, the work was much easier for Opine's other editor, Carri, who used style platforms and showed me so I could teach myself more. 

Be assured that avoiding tedious details, unless someone else is hired to do it, can run a writer outside the margins (sorry, had to say it) for a long time...or not, depending on willingness to learn. I have found that whoever does the nitty-gritty, when I know the details and "how to's" of what they're doing, I'm able to fill in, help, or co-evaluate the accuracy of the work.

My purpose here is to introduce important manuscript prep facts that I advise any writer that asks me.
Because I hate reading articles with labels and acronyms I haven't a clue about, I'll try to make this clearer, at least, than mud. So if you do not know yet what is a Style Platform (SP) or a Style Guide (SG), I'm here to help.

And why should knowing about SPs/SGs be important to you?

First and for one thing, this knowledge can save you Time and Pulling-out-of-hair so that you may work more efficiently and keep whatever hair you have left. If someone else transcribes or types your work, then they should know.

Equally important, using this knowledge can help your work gain order and uniformity that editors expect, and so do some book agents.

Finally, it can become your style platform, but it began as their style platform, a specific editor's or publishing house's document/manuscript requirements before publication. These "rules" can become habitual for the writer to use, once the details are used often enough.

For example, each magazine will likely have a specific style guide to be used not only for publishing articles and features but also for considering submitted works by freelancers. It's good to research these guides, if available. Otherwise, in a query email or letter, you can let the editor know of your willingness to follow their in-house Style Guides if you could have a copy of what they entail.

Book publishers have style platform/guide preferences from the get-go, and it helps to try to anticipate those. 

For example, a manuscript should always be saved digitally, with the style platform built into the document. The hard copy should clearly show, at first glance, double spacing (definitely), Times New Roman font-font size 12 (most likely), and 250 words per page (often). Margins should be standard and, I prefer, aligned to the left. I also prefer hanging first lines of paragraphs, set at 0.5. Those are my preferred text format options.

Other options exist for headers, footers (page numbers, e.g.), and for in-text headings, regarding style designations and applications. Learn how to use these with your document software quickly. I recently upgraded my MS Word software and feel like I'm learning so much new stuff, but it has to be done...again, for the same reasons!

All style platform options should be available in your document program, under tabs for Home or Format, or other.

Select the font and its size and apply it to each document or chapter, using the "Apply" option. For paragraphs, try (in MS Word) "Format" and select the alignment (left), first-line option (hanging), line spacing (double). Most editors flinch over any bold, italic, or underline in the text, including headings. Some do not want headings, either.

Microsoft Word software is what I am most familiar with, having left the Corel software, which I thought was better for editing. Corel got swamped, in a way, by Microsoft's Word (MSWord) popularity.

Whatever writing or word software you use, you can query editors to see if yours would be okay to use for what you'll send to them, once they accept your article query. If editors open your digital files, they will not likely want to do file conversions (converting a document from Corel's WordPerfect to MSWord, for example), so try to find out and convert your document in advance, if needed. 

Again, editors that read piles of queries and book proposals (the proposal should include style details mentioned above) usually welcome the author mentioning, upon query, a readiness to use the publisher's in-house style, if a guide will be provided.  

I am not a guide writer, so for MS Word here is a recommended style platform resource for you to try if none of this is familiar to you as a writer. I know it was posted a few years ago, but I think it is still very useful. I had to teach myself what he shares in graphics, and so I recommend it to save you the time and hair-pulling-out!

All of us have to go through phases like this as writers, so it's a good thing to get started on this one if you haven't already. I checked a few "how to" articles online, and, as I said, this one looked best to me, given what I've learned on my own. I think it is the easiest, but you might find another, so search away! If you use this one, scroll down for the helpful screen graphics, especially the style boxes and how to name and modify styles.

If this sounds really strange to you now, soon it can be one of the first things you think about to do with any document that will present your ideas and whatever else you will share or create through books or articles.

Copyright (c) 2015 Jean P. Purcell