The Artist

The Artist pulled out His white, clean paper, and spread it out with His hands.

He took a single paintbrush, dipped it into brown paint, and drew a single, bare-branched tree. Lightly He illumined it, with other subtle colours swirled upon the brown. Shadows spread out from the tree's bole, fell upon a masterfully silhouetted snow-bound mountain. With one, two, three strokes, the Artist formed a mountain range, shadowed in blue and grey, and a snow cloud laying its weight over the cold, snowy scene. The Artist stood back, to view His handiwork: a painting of a snowy plain, relieved by one bare tree standing in winter light.

The Artist swirled His paintbrush in water, and selected a new paint. Gently, He set the tree budding with green. He touched the tree here and there with tender green, hinting at it's spring awakening. Swift strokes bloomed the snow to grass, and He selected other colours to add flowers abloom in the earth. In the clouds, He added the pale blue of the sky, and drew a ray of Sun. It touched the leafing tree, and cast a golden shadow on the grass. The Artist stood back to survey his work: a painting of a green meadow, crowned with an awakening tree standing in a gentle spring sunbeam.

The Artist chose now a darker green, and drew leaves outflung upon the tree's branches. He highlighted green leaves and brown trunk with splashes of gold, as though the Sun let fall drops of its golden glory to shimmer on the common land. Fruits bent low the branches, touching leaves to the grass. The Artist added tall grasses and taller wildflowers. The morning light of the spring sky now bloomed with blue, the deeper, sharper blue of summer. White clouds, as smooth and billowy as snow, accented the blue. The Sun reached the meridian, and starlings flew beneath its beams. The green grass blushed with hues of red, orange, and purple, full and happy with summer life. The Artist stood back to slide His glance across His work: a painting of rosy meadowland accented under the soft shadows of the fully leafed tree, all aglow with brilliant sunlight.

The Artist took up His paints, and added hints of gold, red, yellow, grey, purple, blue, and orange. The leaves he edged in gold, and added coin-bright leaves blowing away in a wind. The grasses bent low in an autumn gust, and shadows danced, dappled grey and green, beneath an enormous setting Sun. Clouds edged the horizon, flamed in the Sun's fire, changing the blue sky to lavender and grey. He took every colour in His palette, coloured the grass in all the shades He owned. A flock of geese filled the fiery sky, and their shadows ran in silver-edged dancing over the incandescent grass. The Artist stood back to peruse his work: a painting of fired meadow, shot through with beams of red, gold, and purple, and the tree crowned with gold and dropping coins of leaves into the air.

The Artist took His brush, and quietly slipped away, leaving behind Him, on His easel, His painting: Creation.

The Assumption

Today is Monday, August Fifteenth, the feast of the Assumption. It is also sometimes known as the Dormition, or the "falling asleep" of The Blessed Virgin Mary. This is the day when we celebrate Our Lady being taken up, body and soul into heaven through the power of God. She now reigns there as Queen of heaven and earth, and of all mankind.

If you notice, this is the feast of the Assumption, as opposed to the feast of Our Lord's Ascension. To ascend means to rise up by one's own power. To assume means something that is done to one. God, after His death, burial, and Resurrection, later rose, or ascended to heaven of His own power. Our Lady was assumed into heaven through God's power, and not through any power of her own.

She is the one creature of God who now enjoys the glories and joys of heaven with both her body and soul.

Today, I also received a blog award! A huge thanks to Ruth Schiffmann of Out on a Limb, for awarding me the Liebster Award. (Liebster translates to mean Beloved, so that's even sweeter.) Thank you, Ruth!

The goal of this award is to spotlight upcoming bloggers who currently have less than 200 followers. The rules of the award are:

1. Thank the giver and link back to the blogger who gave it to you.
2. Reveal your top 5 picks and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog.
3. Copy and paste the award on your blog.
4. Have faith that your followers will spread the love to other bloggers.
5. And most of all - have bloggity-blog fun!

My five choices are:

1.) Kristen at The Cozy Reading Corner

2.) The Writer of The Desert Rocks (I'm shocked to realise I don't know your name!!)

3.) Denise at A Room to Write

4.) Amanda at Old-Fashioned Girl

5.) Miriam at The Twenty-Six-Letter Imagination

Congratulations, everyone, and Happy Feastday!

God bless.

The Fish Eater's Forum

Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary

Women for Faith and Family

New Program: FantaMorph!!

I love Monday Miribilia. I get to talk about the random things that inspire me.

Like this program I'm using, called FantaMorph.

It's the coolest program! You can take photos of two people - or just two things, the choice is up to you - and create ONE new person, or creature. How cool is that?

I created a prototype of the character I am now in the process of revising, and I just LOVE having a face to put the voice to. It's amazing how much easier it becomes. For instance, here's a face I came up with that is absolutely BEGGING for a voice and a story:

I'm not sure who she is, or what her story will be, but isn't she so CUTE? Don't you wish you knew someone like this?

As an exercise, try this. Come up with a name that you think fits this character, and give her a character trait, a personality, and maybe a little bit of a voice.

Here's my effort:

Here name was Vanessa Heather Raine, but everyone called her Ness. She always seemed to be smiling, even when she was nervous. Then, you could only see her uncertainty because of the way she'd reach up to play with her hair.


She was mostly easy-going, but there was a strong stubborn streak inside her that was the bane of her existence. "I'd wish that someone could get rid of that stubbornness for me," she'd say, twisting a bit of hair between her fingers before tucking it behind her ear, "except that no one would recognize me without it."


That was fun! Thanks for reading! God bless and see you next time.

Oh! Don't forget, we're heading into Week Two of the Writing Buddy contest. Head on over to Cat's Mathoms and let's see your submissions.

There's a Contest going on!

Hurry on over, peeps! There's a writing contest going on right now, and you are all invited. Remember, the winner gets an authentic little Writing Buddy made by moi, so it's extra-specially cool.

Hope to see you all over at Cat's Mathoms.

Cheerio!

MC Adoration

So, when do you start absolutely adoring your character?

Usually, the first glimmer of an idea that I get for a character has me falling in love with him/her. But I generally don't start adoring him/her until after I've had him/her suffer a couple of life's hard knocks. Then, it's like the real mettle of the MC emerges, the real character that has been buried under the calm of an easy life until that moment.

My character doesn't start proving himself/herself until I throw an element of suspense into the story, and see how he/she responds to it. Once I see how my MC takes stress, I can add a little more drama and see how he/she overcomes that.

Total adoration doesn't happen until the plot twists, and an unexpected blow sends the MC right off his/her head. I love to see how anger, stress, love, gladness, madness, and hate affect my MC's character, and it's such a joy when a voice whispers in my head, okay, now write this scene you didn't realise needed to be written. I love it when that voice materialized.

Usually, by the end of my novel, I have this MC on a shelf, my mental shelf of favoured characters. This MC will be one I'll go to and re-read over and over and over again.

How 'bout you? How do you fall in love with your character?