I Wrote a Story!!!

I'm taking Fiction Writing this semester, and my professor comes in on Monday and pretty much freaks the whole class out by announcing that as an assignment we all have to enter the NPR August Three-Minute-Fiction contest, for which the deadline is TUESDAY NIGHT AT 11:00! So basically we have the next day and a half to write a whole story which we have not been planning for or preparing AT ALL. After we all got over our initial shock, we immediately got to drafting and wrote for the rest of the class period.

So that evening I read over what I had written in class and pretty much hated it, so I started over basically from scratch and wrote the whole 600 story in about an hour. It still has some substantial revision before I can turn it in this evening, but, oh my gosh, I wrote a story!!!

Let me explain why this is kind of a big deal to me: I have finished exactly two stories in my life. I wrote stories constantly from the ages of 6-16, but I never finished them! What I have discovered about myself in the past week of this class is that I am always ready with a character or setting, but I have so much trouble with coming up with a conflict for those characters. This is why all my stories never really worked out. They had no conflict!

I had Isaac and Emily read my story after I had finished drafting, and they helped me develop my conflict a lot. Actually they just helped a lot in general, especially with my confidence in my writing. Both of them said if I would continue the story into a whole novel, they would love to read it. I don't plan to, simply because I'm not in love with these characters, but it meant a lot to me. Especially that Isaac liked it, because (1) he is my husband, (2) he is really picky about literature, and (3) it is a story about 16-year-old girls. If he hadn't liked it, he could have just nicely said that it was well-written, but didn't really appeal to him as a 20-something college guy. But he didn't. He liked it!

Let me just tell you, limiting a whole story to 600 words or less is HARD. I mean really, really difficult! When I finished my first draft I had about 728 words, which is a whole paragraph's worth that I had to get rid off. I finally got it down to 599, but now I have to significantly change the ending, which I think will mean that I have to take even more words out before it is all through. I am kind of okay with that, though, because I think it is teaching me not to hold on to every word I write and to be more open about revision, which I already know is the key to good writing.

Sorry if I have gotten too excited about this... it's a pretty little thing to the rest of the universe, but I feel like it is a big deal for me. :) This Fiction Writing class is going to be soooo good for me as a writer. I can't wait to look back at the end of the class and see how different I am! Exciting. :)

Who I Am

I have always been very interested in personality and identity. I have taken so many different kind of personality tests and quizzes, I should probably know myself inside out (although I don't often feel like I do). I love learning about other people's personality types too, because it helps me to better understand and interact with them. And then I just love the sheer creativity of a Creator who can create zillions of individuals without two ever being completely alike! It's crazy!

Last night at Switch we were talking about who we are and how God sees us. Then in our "special" leader meeting, we went over our Myers-Briggs personality test results and talked about a spiritual gifts test, which I took this morning to help determine my spiritual gifts. I have gotten so excited about both the Myers-Briggs and spiritual gifts test that my husband probably never wants to hear about them again. I just love this kind of stuff!

If you don't know about Myers-Briggs classifications, look it up on Wikipedia, and take the test at similarminds.com (take the Jung tests). You seriously will learn so much about yourself and why you are the way you are.

So here is what I have learned about myself through these two assessments:
My Myers-Brigg type is ENFJ, which I have seen labeled variously as the Guardian, the Teacher, or the Ultimate People Person. E means I am Extroverted; I get my energy from being around people. N means I am iNtuitive; I take in information from how things feel to me, through intuition. F means that I am a Feeler; I make decisions based on how I subjectively feel about things. J means that I am Judging; I need to have order, plans, and structure.

Okay, sorry if that is too much detail, but I am pretty excited about these four letters and what they say about me. Once you start looking up these personality types, you will see that there are tons of research and information available on each type. And it is all scarily accurate! What I love about all of this is how freeing I feel this information is. As these articles start pinpointing my strengths and weaknesses based on my type, I begin to see how so much of who I am and what I excel at and struggle with are because of the way God designed me as an ENFJ.

My biggest revelation last night came when I read that ENFJ's often struggle with feelings of guilt, inadequacy, and failure, even when they are performing well and pleasing others. OUCH! Those kinds of feelings are exactly what I struggle with all of the time, and what's the worst is when I know I shouldn't feel that way because I am doing well, I feel like even more of a failure for feeling that way when I shouldn't. It's an ugly cycle. It was so freeing to read that and realize that I am not a failure for feeling like a failure, but that it is natural for me to struggle with those feelings because of the way my personality works!

I'm pretty sure I could ramble on and on about this stuff for ever, but I will just let you read up on it yourself it you are interested. I was going to discuss my spiritual gifts assessment, but I will save that for another post, at the risk of boring you out of your mind with this one. ;)

Intentionality

For the past few weeks, God has been slowly and surely speaking to me in so many different ways about one thing. It's kind of hard to put a name on it, because it has been coming to me in so many ways, from so many angles. At Switch, especially among the leaderhsip, we have been talking about being intentional in our relationships and not living complacently. A few weeks ago I heard something to the effect of "Everyone ends up somewhere, but few end up somewhere on purpose" in a sermon. I've read blog posts and facebook notes about the ways that people are reaching out to others, following their dreams, and living sacrificially. And what I have been realizing is that I have let myself slip into just living for myself, just getting through the day/week/semester/break, whatever. I don't want that any more.

It has all come together for me in this book I picked up on our anniversary date, Do Hard Things, by Alex and Brett Harris. I could say so many good things about this book, and I want EVERYONE I know to read it, but for this post let me just say that this book has spoken some freeing truths into my heart and awakened me from my sloth and complacency. One chapter on fear spoke so directly into something I have been feeling for months, it was crazy. It was one of those moments when you were reading something and you just KNOW it was written for you. Your heart starts pounding and you can feel the heat rushing up to your face and you start clinging on to every word like it is a life preserver. Have you ever felt that way? It's intense! When I finished the chapter, I wanted to flip back and read it all over again. My desire to read on in the book was stronger, though, but I will definitely be revisiting that chapter many times.

It's very timely (thanks God) that all of this is working out of me right at the beginning of a new semester. I've always loved the freshness of a new semester. I tend to make more (and stick with more) resolutions in August than I do in January. When school starts and my lazy summer schedule gets turned on its head, I find it easier to add in new practices than any other time of the year. This year it seems especially urgent because it is the beginning of my last semester at OSU, and if I don't do these things now, I won't get a chance to try again here.

I don't regret what I have done previously or how I have spent my time other semesters, because that was where I was then. But this is where I am now, and here are the "hard things" I want to integrate into my life this semester:

- Really invest into the student leadership program we are building at Switch, and also my Switchgroup
- Serving on the Host Team for the new Sunday night service at LC.tv
- Keep my house clean and take care of my stuff
- Stay ahead of school work and give it my best, rather than just what I know will get by
- Be really active about looking for someone to rent our apartment and looking for a job
- Write something every day, or as often as I can
- Eat out less, buy less junk food, and exercise more

All of these hard things build on the things I am already doing, and the way I am already living; I am just taking them to another level that is more intentional and that I think will be a lot more rewarding. I am so excited about this last semester, and even if I fall, at least I will have aimed high and put myself out there.

What kind of hard things do you need to start doing this semester/year?