The moors and the theology of writing stories

Over the past week, I've been working on adding a little blog roll page...and I think I'm done for the moment, so it's up! I have a feeling I'll be tweaking it... 

I haven't been able to bring myself to add blogs of people I know. Maybe I'll add a separate section? I don't know, it just seems a little creepy to publicly link to people you know on the internet... of course, is it less creepy to link to people you don't know? So maybe my thinking is backwards...

One blog I enjoy is Attic 24. It's crafty/yarny blog, plus she lives in England. I love international blogs that give you a glimpse into another world. I especially enjoyed one of her latest posts that featured pictures of the moor. I grew up reading Famous Five books (about four kids and a dog in England) that often featured adventures on the moor, so I love seeing pictures of it. Just beautiful.

Another one, Conversion Diary, just had a fantastic article on leading a purposeful life. I feel like I've been seeing a lot of internet buzz along this line, but this post really spoke to me. I had just read recently about the rule of only using dialogue in a story if it moves the story line forward, but hadn't thought about applying it to my life until I read this post.... So what's your story and what's your dialogue?

Also, talking about story writing... While reading Poe, which is written in the first person, I was stuck by the fact that I never seem to read books written in the first person. Twilight was the only book that I could remember reading that stands out in my mind as being written from the 1st person, and it seems like that's becoming really common, whereas formally most books were written in the 3rd person. Or maybe I'm just really unobservant about these things?

If my observation is true though, it makes me wonder about the theology of writing books. In writing narrated by a third person, with the focus being on a) the story and b) the creator,  does this style imitate reality? That we, too, are characters in a story which we are not writing?

It seems like writing in the first person ultimately points to humanism.. Everything in the book revolves around them... they are the center. Which with the decline of Christianity in our country, could explain a movement towards writing in the first person.

Of course, blogs are mostly written in the first person....eeks. So um, never mind, right?

Or it made me wonder if most books (especially older) books were written in the 3rd person so it was much more natural to read it out loud? I dunno!

Puttering & Tasmania

This afternoon mostly consisted mostly of puttering outside. I'm into puttering right now. The word (I like saying it) and the action. Usually I'm faster than puttering, but with my shoulders and neck still recovering from moving hay, I'm puttering.  Today I focused on fixing some panels on the hot tub so it can get stained and sanding the back door so it can get painted. I've been itching to get to these projects for the last two weeks but it wouldn't stop raining long enough! The word puttering never fails to remind me of Patrick McManuses chapter on puttering.

This evening some awesome guys from our church came and helped prep the yard for The Party. Pretty nice of them. I swear our life revolves around the garden until The Party so it's a relief to have extra help. :)

I think I'm kind of digging this random items style of writing.

I came accros this website today about Tasmania Parks (picture from website). After looking at it and Wikipedia I now want to visit Tasmania. I love how the photo above says, "Winter Wonders - Rug up and step outside!" English never fails to amuse me.

I also clicked for the first time on a Pandora ad. Of all things, for these. I've never paid much attention to rings... they always seem to look the same, but these actually looked like they took some serious skillz.

And I discovered one of my new favorite all time blogs. It's called Scouting NY. I've always thought that location scouting for movies sounded intriguing but after reading this blog I think it's moved into my top five of favorite jobs. Number one being Queen. Haha, not really.  Basically scouting sounds kind of like being a real estate agent but you don't have the pressure to sell anything. I also love New York City so it's a double plus.