A Beautiful Day!

Today is a beautiful spring day. There are hardly clouds in the sky, and the sky is deep blue. My brothers are soaking up the sunshine, and getting some fun projects done before we move.

When they were working outside my window, I decided to take a quick break from school and get some pictures of them.

 

One was working on his crossbow (formerly a combined rubber band/arrow gun) made out of popsicle sticks, bike brake wire, and I don’t know what.

Another helped with the project, and the last one worked on stripping more bike brake wire to fix the brakes on his bike (at least, I think that’s what he was doing).

The last boy tried to scare me with an arrow and rubber band from the former rubber band/arrow gun, but I just took pictures of him. :)

 

And, realizing that wasn’t working, he picked up his bike and tried to get me to take a picture of his muddy bike tire (it didn’t work; I got a picture of his face instead).

Breathing the fresh spring air and looking forward to summer,
-Esther

P.S. We are planning, Lord willing, to move next week. This week, Mom was planning to get a good amount of packing done, but Sunday she came down with the flu along with one of my brothers. Then, another one came down with it the next day. Mom is finally doing well today, it’s taken a good three days for her to get over it. Praise the Lord, none of the rest of us have gotten it, and we’re praying we won’t! God is good.

Preparing to Edit

Today, I have officially started editing the 4th draft (or is it creating the fourth draft?) of my book.

A delicious cup of coffee (which has been long gone by now), some nice music playing, water close by, and lots of tools. This is the way I like to edit.

Although you can’t see it in the picture very well, the green folder has lots of other writing-related papers in it. The left hand side has miscellaneous research bits for different stories, along with a few helpful writing-related blog posts that I’ve come across in the past. The right hand side is devoted solely to things relating to A Living Shield. It has lots of research papers, history and bits and pieces of things about 66 AD. I also keep the tools I’ve used over the previous edits in there as well.

Editing tools, from left:

• Calendar of the time period (I found it here). I used this extensively when I was working on the the third draft. Since it’s in paper form, I can use a pencil and eraser wherever I need it. This is really helpful in keeping all the times and dates straight! This particular calendar has everything as it’s happened time-wise in the book so far, and currently is accurate. Except that I am changing things, so I needed a…
• New calendar. This is blank, and ready to mark up. I’m sure I’ll be changing some things date-wise as I go, so this will be essential.
• To-do list. This was something I made up in preparation for the 3rd draft. I didn’t use it much, but since I have it I’ll probably refer to it some. It is sorted by color according to how important the item is, which is helpful.
• Plot outline. This is something that I used a LOT last edit. I have everything sorted by chapter, then each bullet point is the synopsis of a particular scene in the chapter. With this, combined with Scrivener, it’s very easy to switch between parts of the book so I can focus on one thing at a time to change. This is just about a life saver.

And you can’t see it in the picture, but I have several other tools that I’m using quite a bit—pens (a friend gave me some fancy pens that I love using for things like this), a good sharp pencil, and two highlighters (which are two different colors). The highlighters were a birthday present, and since they are different colors I can use one to mark “very important” and one for “optional”. I used them to mark the places that really need attention in the plot outline.

Now, I need to get to work again.
~Esther

P.S. The ideas for most of the tools I’m using came from the book 2k to 10k: Writing Faster, Writing Better, and Writing More of What You Love. If you’re interested in getting some wonderful writing tips, then I’d highly suggest you buy and read this book.

Nelson Trip, part 2

Here I am again! I missed posting, but with all the things that have been happening lately I never got around to it. Doesn’t look like life will be slowing anytime soon, but I will try to get in time to write when I can.

As promised, here’s the second installment of our Nelson trip that we took back in May. I forgot until last night that some time ago I sorted out pictures for this post but never went any further than that! Oops. Here they are now, and hopefully I can get part three up soon.

The shells, stones, and sand were beautiful colors!

 

Walking around the point.

 

Once around the point, the boys began digging holes.

 

The children had a lot of fun.

 

Someone has stepped here.

 

 

 

 

Someone set up a flag.

 

I think they were trying to make a driftwood fort.

 

 

 

The sand and sea were such lovely colors that day!

 

 

 

 

Another oyster catcher.

After spending some time around the point, we turned around and began walking back. The children thought we hadn’t stayed there long enough, but they soon found other things to do. I’ll share those pictures next.

~Esther