Making Dreams Come True – Part 1

On a recent Sunday morning, my pastor talked about the gap between where we are and where we want to be in our spiritual journey, and how we usually know what needs to be done to close the gap. However, more often than not, we fail to take the required action. Since this sermon followed a sermon on giving, I suspect the pastor was sneaking in another stewardship talk to get us to give more. That is, close the gap between what we think we should give and what we actually give. But, I'm just guessing. He didn't mention giving at all. In fact I'm not sure what he said next because I couldn't get my mind off the idea of taking action to close the gap. I realized this idea could apply to most life situations, such as jobs, marriage, parenting, and all aspects of life. This reminded me of a time in my life when I was nudged by another sermon to take action and do what I'd always dreamed of doing.

My dream was to write a novel.

I did more than dream.  I started two novels back in the 1960's. One about my experience in the Marines Corps and the other about a bookmobile librarian who traveled around town helping people. I wrote five or six chapters of the first one and a chapter or two of the second one. At the time, however, I was too busy raising kids and working to take do much more.

Many times over the years I'd get the writing bug and try again. I did get a short story published as well as a non-fiction computer book along with a bunch of non-fiction articles. But the novel idea eluded me to the point where I decided to wait until I retired to accomplish that dream.

Still too busy.

That didn't work. After retiring from my full time job with the Austin Fire Department in 2001, I continued to work there part time for a couple of years. I also taught part time at the Austin Community College, sang in the Austin Lyric Opera Chorus, and volunteered too much at church and other non-profit organizations.

About this time, I had read most of the Christian fiction by Jan Karon and could see how my bookmobile novel idea could work. Jan Karon's Mitford Series books were about a sixty year-old Episcopal priest in a small town, while my story was about a sixty-five year-old librarian in a small bookmobile. Also, I saw an increased interest in Christian fiction. Readers were looking for good, clean novels.

It was too late.

Even so, I did nothing about it. I even started telling myself it was too late. I had waited too long. I was too old.

Then, one Sunday morning my pastor, said something like this, "Trust God with your dreams and he will help you achieve them."

I felt strange, as if God was talking to me about the bookmobile novel. I had this life-time dream and I had given up on it and now it was so clear to me that I could do it, with God's help.

I believe what my pastor said came from Psalm 37: 4. "Take delight in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart." I'd heard this before, but it had never been clear to me that it could mean achieving dreams.

I didn't have to do it alone.

The only thing that had changed was that I now knew I wasn't alone. I had God on my side to help me achieve my dream. To remind myself of that, I wrote a prayer which I printed and taped to my computer monitor.

Dear Lord, be my source of inspiration. Give me the words you want the world to hear. Help me create the story and the characters to convey your message in such a way as to be desirable to the business world of publishers. Guide my hands and stay in my mind and my heart while I write and while I edit.

Well, it wasn't as easy as that. In the next post, I'll tell you what happened next.

Carbonite is Great for Multiple Computers

I probably should be getting a kickback from Carbonite since I talk about it so much, but I pay for it just like everyone should.

Because I teach computer science classes at Austin Community College, I get a ton of computer-related questions from friends as well as people I barely know. Today, it happened on the trail where I walk. I ran into my friend Ron who I hadn't seen in about a year. He's a retired chaplain with homes in Hawaii, Colorado, and Texas. He'd just arrived here in Texas from Hawaii last week and was having problems reading a flash disk he brought with him. He said he had all his data on the flash disk, including documents and photos. He was especially concerned about a tax form he needs before he goes back to Hawaii where his desktop computer is.

The problem is his laptop says the flash disk is bad and must be reformatted. He knows that a reformat will cause all the data to be lost. He said he'd talked to the computer club here and tried the flash disk on other computers, but nothing has worked. Some there was some talk about a recovery software package, but it didn't sound hopeful.

I suggested he find someone in Hawaii to access his desktop computer and send the files to him here, but he'd already thought of that. The only friend there who could do that for him is in the hospital.

Since I couldn't think of anything else to do, I told him about my experience with Carbonite in hopes that he could prevent this from happening again. I tried to do it in a non-critical way.

I have three computers with the online backup system Carbonite. It is so easy to use I sometimes forget it is there. The other day I wanted to move a file from my laptop computer to my desktop computer. Often, I use a flash disk to do this. Sometimes, I'll email it to myself. But on this day, the laptop was turned off, so, while sitting at my desktop computer, I logged into Carbonite.com, opened the file from my laptop and saved it on my desktop computer. Simple, huh?

When I told Ron about that, he said he'd check it out. I know it's too late for the problem he's having now and perhaps we'll find a solution for that yet, but using Carbonite is an ideal solution for transferring data from computer to another, across the country or within the same home.

For more information, click: Carbonite.

My New Profile -- Changing Churches Is Tough

Our church friends become family after a while. There are many reasons for leaving a church, moving to a new city or across town. Or, perhaps you just find a church that better fills your needs at this time in your life and you decide to make the change. Whatever the reason, leaving can lead to a feeling of loss and a period of grieving, no matter how happy you are at your new church. It's not just the church activities you miss, it's the friends you were used to seeing week after week, some twice a week.

We identify with our churches to a point where they can become a part of our identity. That happened to me recently. Although it has been several months since we switched churches, I noticed my blog profile hadn't been changed. Now it has.

Here is my new blog profile:

I am a Stephen Leader, a Stephen Minister, and a member of First United Methodist Church in Georgetown, Texas. While singing with the Austin Lyric Opera Chorus, I was in 42 productions. Along with my wife, Celeste, I sing with the San Gabriel Chorale and we have been in several Berkshire Choral Festivals. I am an Adjunct Professor at Austin Community College where I teach computer courses. I received the adjunct teaching excellence award in 2005. I am a member of the American Christian Fiction Writers, the Writers League of Texas, and the San Gabriel Writers' League. I have a Master of Science degree from the University of Houston and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of California at Long Beach. Awards for Where Love Once Lived include First Place -- 2007 SouthWest Writers Contest in the Inspirational/Spiritual Category, First Place -- 2007 Writers' League of Texas Novel Manuscript Contest, Romance Category, Third Place -- Fourteenth Annual Lone Star Writing Competition, Northwest Houston Chapter of the Romance Writers of America, Inspirational Romance Category and Finalist -- 2006 Yosemite Writers Contest Novel Category.

I'd love to hear about your experiences in moving from one church to another.

Planning a Subsequent Book In a Series

Where Love Once Lived developed over a long period of time because it was my first novel and, quite honestly, I didn’t know what I was doing. Vengeance Is Mine, may second effort, was much easier because of the experience I had gained with my first book. However, it has mostly new characters. Although there are references to a few others, only Liz, the librarian plays a part in both books. At the time I wrote Vengeance, I noticed a methodology emerging, but I didn’t stop to record it.

All I remember about the method was starting with an Excel worksheet with a row for each scene. I was aiming for a particular market with a maximum of 80,000 words and knew from my first book that a  scene length of 2,000 words was about right. So, I started with 40 scenes. Next, I identified the first ten scenes as Act I, the next 20 as Act II, and the last 10 as Act III. For more information about acts, see Elements of Fiction Writing - Beginnings, Middles & Ends by Nancy Kress.

By the way, the completed manuscript contains 72,334 words divided into 44 scenes.

With Vengeance Is Mine off to the publisher for review it is time to start Do Unto Others. This is the second in the bookmobile series, so I already know the characters. There will probably be a few new ones pop up and some of the ones from Where Love Once Lived will get bigger parts this time. I have a story question developed as well as the gem of an idea for each act. So I can start writing as soon as I organize the scenes.

I teach Microsoft Office at Austin Community College and, while teaching a class on integrating PowerPoint and Word, thought of a new way to get started on this book. Instead of Excel, I’m outlining with PowerPoint. Why? Because PowerPoint slides are so easy to move around using the slide sorter view.

This is similar to the way writers once used 3 x 5 cards for scenes and taped them on the wall as a guide to follow. Perhaps some still do that.

The title of each slide contains the scene number. Then there are bullets for POV, Time, Location, Goal, and Conflict. This is as far as I've gotten in my new method, but I'll continue to share the process with you as I go. Just so you'll know, my plan is to create 40 scenes, sort them as needed, then there is an automated way to convert the slides to a Word outline. Once in Word, I will convert the outline to hidden text to use as a guide for writing the book.

Do you have a method to share?

Austin Community College Newspaper Article

Here is an article published in the Austin Community College newspaper today.

Religious experience inspires novel - Accent

Let me know what your think of it.

I Love Carbonite

I hope everyone noticed I was missing from the blogosphere last week. My hard drive finally quit. I thought the freezing up problems I’d had were due to the Texas heat, but changes to the environment didn’t help. The drive had to be replaced.
With three computers in a house of two people, one computer being in the shop shouldn’t have been cause to cancel a week of blog posts. But, it was. My notebook computer is old and slow. Besides the screen is too small for my aging eyes.
Being a computer short and having to rely on my old notebook was just the excuse I’d been looking for to buy a new notebook. Or, should I say netbook. I’m not sure what all the names are and I teach computers at Austin Community College.
While my desktop was in the shop getting a new disk drive, I bought another very small system with the CD drive separate since I only use it to load new software occasionally. It’s small, but the screen is more readable than my old one. And, it is fast. I don’t have to start Microsoft Word and go get a cup of coffee while it loads.
Laptops, notebooks, netbooks, that’s a story for another day. What I wanted to tell you today was about my experience with restoring my files. Since I have been using Carbonite for several years, everything I had on the desktop was backed up online.
When I brought the computer home from the shop, all I had to do was log in to Carbonite and tell it to restore. Thirty-six hours later my 79,000 plus files were all back into place.
Let me know if you've had experience with other online backup systems and we'll spread the word.

Where Love Once Lived Press Release

I won't show you what I got from the publisher, but what you see below has been changed greatly. When I first saw what CreateSpace came up with, I knew something was wrong, but wasn't sure what it was. So, I sent it to Bonnie Hearn Hill, who has seen many press releases for her books and who once worked as a newspaper editor. I thought she might have a good example I could look at. Instead, she rewrote my press release, using Microsoft Word change tracking so I could see exactly what was added, deleted, and changed. I made a few changes after that and here is the final (let me know what you think):

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Novel portrays romance rekindled

Author says faith inspired award-winning love story

AUSTIN, Texas – Where Love Once Lived by Sidney W. Frost follows a man at a crossroads as he seeks to regain the love of his former college sweetheart.

Forced to leave Karen by circumstances beyond his control, Brian returns to his hometown after 30 years to find Karen doesn’t want to deal with the memories of his painful and unexplained departure. She has worked hard to put her love for Brian behind her and rebuffs his advances. Brian can see that winning her over again isn’t going to be as easy as he had hoped, but he’s willing to do whatever it takes.

“The story of Brian and Karen shows that, with God’s help, it’s never too late to find happiness,” says Frost. “My hope is that their story makes readers laugh, cry and learn a little more about God’s love.”

Frost was inspired by his faith to create Where Love Once Lived. The importance of a relationship with God is a major theme in the book. In the novel, Karen’s faith in God grew stronger after Brian left, leading to fulfilling work as a lay minister. As she becomes reacquainted with Brian, Karen begins to share with him the strength that can come from faith. Brian, who had turned away from God, eventually comes to realize that the void in his life was not just the loss of Karen but also the loss of God.

Where Love Once Lived is available for sale online at Amazon.com and other channels.

About the Author

Sidney W. Frost earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Long Beach and a master’s degree from the University of Houston. He currently works as an adjunct professor at Austin Community College. Frost is an elder in the Presbyterian Church and has been a member of several choral groups, singing in numerous productions with the Austin Lyric Opera Chorus. The novel won first place in the inspirational/spiritual category of the 2007 SouthWest Writer’s Contest and first place in the romance category of the 2007 Writers' League of Texas Contest.

MEDIA CONTACT:

Sidney W. Frost
E-mail: sidfrost@suddenlink.net
Phone: (512) 694-6449
Web: http://sidneywfrost.com
Blog: http://christianbookmobile.blogspot.com/

REVIEW COPIES AND INTERVIEWS AVAILABLE

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More About Software and Writing

I told you about how I use Microsoft Excel to summarize scenes in my novels, Where Love Once Lived and Vengeance Is Mine. That made me think about how I use hidden words in Microsoft Word. At the beginning of every scene, I include the following information formatted as hidden:

• Time (day of week, date, time of day)

• Weather (temperature, rain, etc.)

• Scene number

• Scene setting

• Scene goal

• Scene conflict

If you're not familiar with hidden text, read up on it in Word Help. It can be quite useful. You'll also need to go to Word Options to turn on display and print for hidden text. If you want to see the manuscript without your notes either on screen or in print, modify the settings

Sometimes the date doesn't matter to a story. However, I included it anyway to add realism. I don't always include the year, but it helps to know the month and day. Same for weather. You can use the real weather for a particular day by looking it up online, or use some imaginary dark clouds or rain to add a mood if it helps your story.

One problem with using hidden text in this way is that when scenes are added, deleted or moved, the numbering has to be changed. However, if you do this in conjunction with the Excel scene summary I described previously you can make the change there first.

I teach Excel, plus the rest of Microsoft Office at Austin Community College, so feel free to ask if you have questions.