The Challenge of Getting It Done
A little background on me. My name is Megan Cline and I have been writing since I was fourteen. I have entered a few contests over the years and my research paper on Celebrity Obsession was published on my Community College’s website in 2005. That’s the closest to publication I’ve had. My dream is to be a screenwriter or a television writer. To pursue that, I am currently pursuing my Bachelor’s degree in English and am on track to graduate in 2011.
My biggest challenge as a writer has to be getting it done. Just sitting down and writing. This has always been my challenge. I remember when I was a young teenage writer I would write all the time. I even snuck a notebook in my bible and would write during church. If I wasn’t writing, I was combing through magazines and catalogs to create the worlds my characters lived in through pictures. Maybe it was because I had more time to write. Perhaps it was the newness of my new found talent that made me want to pour my time into my craft.
Inspiration’s Whisper
CW members are back again with another installment to our [hopefully] monthly blog-chain. This month’s installment speaks about where our inspiration comes from. What do we draw from to pen those enigmatic characters that delight our readers and fans?
This seems to be one of the most popular questions asked of a writer (along with its counterpart on how to beat the writing blahs). With good reason! Aspiring and established writers both have grappled with our muse at some point in our lives, be it for poetry, songs, skits, non-fiction or fiction alike.
Inspiration. It is a multi-faceted… idea. Something that can be a challenge to pin down to a single answer. For me, I would like to give a nod to God as my Muse. That is, all inspiration stems from some aspect of Him, His creation, and the imagination and character that He instilled in me, His daughter.
Beyond that, Inspiration speaks to me both when I seek it out, and when I am sitting quite by myself happily jotting down whatever story has captured my fancy that day/week/month.
Muslim Brotherhood
The article below was copied from author Karen Hancock’s fantastic blog ‘Writing from the Edge 2′. She never ceases to amaze me on her intelligence, wisdom, and ability to do extreme research.
By Karen Hancock
Writing from the Edge 2 | Muslim Brotherhood
The other day I came across an article on Victor Davis Hanson’s Private Paper’s blog by Raymond Ibrahim, whom I’ve cited here before. This time he was writing about Cordoba House, the infamous 13 story mosque a group of probably Saudi-funded muslims want to build on a site two blocks from Ground Zero.
Given the muslims’ propensity for building holy structures over the top of other religions’ destroyed but sacred sites (eg, the Dome of the Rock built over the old Jewish Temple in Jerusalem), I cannot think their selection of location for this newest project to be mere expedience or coincidence. No, I have to believe it’s deliberate — a “trophy mosque” as one pundit put it — particularly in light of taqiyya which I also learned about from Ibrahim (and blogged abouthere.) Taqiyya is the muslim “doctrine” that it’s okay (even a duty) to lie to infidels if they are in a position of power and you, as a muslim, are not. According to the Koran and the consensus of Koranic scholars, faithful muslims are even obliged to be friendly with the infidels, to enter into peace treaties and so on, but only until they gain the upper hand. Then they are to demand the Infidel convert or smash him “with their clenched fists,” to borrow from a quote by Dmitrii Z. Manuilskii, of the Lenin School of Political Warfare, Moscow, made in 1931 .
