by thinkingfromhope | Jan 21, 2020 | 10x your Hope
10 Writing Tips I Use Everyday
By Jennifer Lindberg
Whether you are a writer or not. These tips can help you in any correspondence you need to write.
Here’s my 10 best tips garnered from more than 20 years of writing experience.
*Your first draft is always dreadful, appalling, or dire. You must re-write it and hope there is one gem of a sentence you can keep.
*Print out the copy of your website, flyer, ad, and email funnel into a Word document. Highlight everything you think is good. Whatever you don’t highlight get rid of it. What you keep– this is your gold!
*Read it out loud. If it doesn’t make sense re-write it. If you are pausing where there is not a comma reconsider if you need a pause and add a comma.
*Play a little game my editor taught me at the newspaper. See how many words you can take out of each sentence with it still making sense. Your story (content) should shrink and your message gets louder, clearer, and more engaging.
*Kill the LY’s. Adverbs are not your friends and lead to flourish. You can aim at poetic but be clear.
* Take time to find new words and adjectives. The thesaurus is your friend. Don’t be lazy about it, but also don’t use obscure words that your audience won’t know.
*Tell the truth. People know.
*Intent of your story must be clear. Don’t confuse your reader but focus. If the intent of your writing is humor don’t make it a tragedy.
*Show don’t tell. How do you show sad, happy, or surprised? The corpse wore red. This conveys an image that sticks in your head. It also happened: https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/7127873/aretha-franklin-different-outfits-open-casket-funeral/
*Search all sentences and begin with an action word. Discover why Jennifer Lindberg writes well. Taking home two first-place news awards, the upstart journalist said, “I am honored.” That sounds better than: A local journalist took home two first-place news awards, stating, “I am honored.”
Bonus Tip: If you find yourself skimming a sentence or paragraph so will your reader. Re-write it!
Leave a comment with your best tips. Learning new tips is continuing education!
by thinkingfromhope | Jan 20, 2020 | 10x your Hope
By Jennifer Lindberg
www.thinkingfromhope.com
I heard about a man that froze to death on a small-town street. A place of little more than 13,000 souls. A place where most people don’t get lost in the crowd, except homeless men in alleys.
“We have to do something,” said the local priest, Father Richard Eldred of St. Vincent de Paul Parish, a church named after a saint known to pick up the poor out of gutters, out of alleys, and bring them into the light of day.
This little town in southern Indiana did something bold. They closed down the town square in front of the courthouse, set up tables and ladled up spaghetti dinners to feed a crowd that would feed a mission: a new men’s shelter in Bedford, Ind. It took an entire Christian community who set aside any theological differences: Catholic’s, Salvation Army, Baptist, and more. Dozens of churches sat down together to eat a meal together, to share fellowship and save the least of their brothers to fulfil Christ’s mandate in Matthew 25:35
“For when I was hungry, you gave me meat; I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you took me in.”
Can I get an Amen? A Glory, Glory, Hallelujah!
The King of Glory just made mercies new through the hands of believers. The death of a homeless man rallied a small-town of Christians, of families, of everyday folk who have lived there all their life surrounded by friends, family, and familiarity. They didn’t know more homelessness had come to their city. There had been a woman’s and children’s shelter for some time, called Becky’s Place funded through Catholic Charities in the Archdiocese of Indianapolis. Then a new urgent need emerged and they rallied. One man might have died but no more. One dead man’s voice alerted the entire town.
A simple spaghetti dinner raised $17,000 to establish the Men’s Warming Shelter. The town stepped in and gave them a building for $1 a month. The City of Bedford also pays the utilities.
Whole-hearted living is visible here and the shelter is warming more than cold feet. It’s warming hearts and souls whose hope was bruised. Now hope is on the mend.
It’s cold outside. Will you give a blanket of hope that warms more than the body, but also the heart? The Men’s Warming Shelter email is: menswarmingshelterofbedford@gmail.com or 812.675.2682 or on their Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/search/posts/?q=Mens%20warming%20shelter&epa=SERP_TAB
by thinkingfromhope | Jan 3, 2020 | 10x your Hope
By Jennifer Lindberg
LET’S STARVE WORRY AND ANXIETY
There needs to be a practical application to “Be Still and Know that I am God.” Here’s how I’m doing it inspired by Cardinal Sarah and Madeleine L’Engle.”
By Jennifer Lindberg
The cat came with me and not just any cat.
I’d wanted be alone in my being space, with my view of the ridge and the trickle of the creek as I sat underneath my canopy of trees. Of all the cats, it was Sonny, the loner cat who never allows anyone to pet her but still meows for her milk.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with her,” I mused as she let me rub her and stayed close to my chair.
I don’t know what’s wrong with me either though. Having sick children for 12 days – big families swap everything before it gets to the last person –with the flu, pneumonia, croup and one hospital stay made for the most stressful time of the year. We missed all the awe and wonder of the Christmas Masses and the splendor of the large Nativity set our church puts out each year with the procession of the little children laying Baby Jesus in the Manger. I missed the beauty and tenderness of the liturgical season. My faith got a severe test. Could I still find beauty when things were this dour and we were isolated from community due to sickness?
God works all things for our good and this extreme pause in our activities made me focus on something I was neglecting: true self-care to be able to respond with courage, gentleness, and deep charity to everyone around me despite circumstances. My faith doesn’t depend on my circumstances it is said and that’s true. But if I’m not taking care of me, –loving me as Christ commands to be able to love my neighbor –than everything is off-balance. Enter: being time and a being place to strengthen my resolve. As New Year’s Eve Resolutions swirl, I’m taking a new look on the word resolve. It’s a life habit that needs formed and mine this year is that I’m resolved to see beauty in all things by learning stillness and calm. It’s my 2020 Vision for the New Year.
To do that I need a being place where I can just sit quietly and do nothing, or write, or ponder, or just gaze at the sky. I need a place where I can be kind to myself. “Be Still and Know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10) has to have a practical application in my life as a wife, mom, freelance writer, and friend.
If I don’t take care of me, then I have nothing left. My resolve has no reserves! I think a lot of people confess to being uncharitable to others and their family. They wish to act and be better, but few people confess to not loving themselves! It’s not about over-indulgence or vices, but it is about living Christ’s command to love our neighbor as yourself. We need to be kind to ourselves and speak well of ourselves. We are often so hard on ourselves when we don’t need to be and that in turn can cause us to be harder on others.
My being place and being time might look different from your being place and time. I live in the country with an expanse of woods behind my house and that’s where I go. Madeleine L’Engle went and sat on a rock by a pond for her being time. She wrote about being time, just a few sentences in her book, Walking on Water and in one of her Crosswick journal’s. That one little sentence about being time has intrigued me. Cardinal Robert Sarah in “The Power of Silence,” writes about the vocabulary of nature that God has given his Creation. None of this a new concept. The Bible tells you go to a still room and shut the door. Today, there’s a million programs for wellness. Wellness or self-care often gets mixed up with being active. Stillness is rather neglected– we have to do 100 push-ups and get a new gym membership to feel we made a resolution. We have to feel active. I am active. I take long hikes, chase after six kids, run a business, and manage a large household and homestead. I am not still enough to really hear the voice of God sometimes. I am not still enough to really ponder the awe and wonder of each and every day. I am not still enough to see the beauty in others and really rejoice in that.
My resolution is to build stillness in my life for the fruits of calm, hope, joy, and beauty. Carve out a small spot for you somewhere in nature. Visit your church when no one else is in there. Be resolved to find some stillness for your being time. Follow along on my being time journey and how I’m using mixed media to stimulate creativity in my writing at: thinkingfromhope.com Comment on how you find being time in your life to stimulate your creativity. What’s your 2020 Vision for the New Year?
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