{"id":1861,"date":"2026-03-19T08:56:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T14:56:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.duchessmennonite.ca\/?p=1861"},"modified":"2026-03-19T08:56:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T14:56:10","slug":"secretarys-corner-69-march-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.duchessmennonite.ca\/index.php\/2026\/03\/secretarys-corner-69-march-19\/","title":{"rendered":"Secretary’s Corner 69 – March 19"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It always baffles me how much story writing consumes my life. If you happen to find yourself in casual conversation with me when a new story is in the works, you will hear about it<\/em>. It just sort of…burbles out. (Is burbles a real word? I\u2019m not getting the red squiggly line, so apparently it is…) Stories, for me, have a tendency to take over my mind. I am in a storyworld a ton, so my brain basically makes camp there and doesn\u2019t bother trying to leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I get random ideas at random hours of the day. Usually it\u2019s when I have the least access to a paper and pencil, so when I\u2019m half-asleep or washing dishes or something. I waver between wondering if the sentence I just wrote was ingenious or whether it makes no sense. I want someone, usually my sister, to read the story every few days because I can\u2019t tell if it\u2019s coherent. It\u2019s funny how writer-brain fills in all these details that make a dumpster-fire of a paragraph make sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I first started writing long-form stories, and getting farther and farther into them with 50 or 60 pages and 10+ chapters, I would often write for a few hours or so, then make my sister come read what I\u2019d just written. She had to come sit in my room at my desk, because the laptop I used at the time was…old, to put it mildly. The thing had no battery anymore because it had almost exploded and had to be plugged in 24\/7. It started whirring after an hour or so. It also had a twangy piece of plastic that pops out of the side and pokes you in the leg if you try to rest it on your lap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And when my manuscripts reached a larger size, they took forever to save…I was used to a quick Control-S saving my progress in a millisecond. Turns out that when it sudden is trying to add a thousand words to a 56,000 word document, it needs like fifteen seconds. And I had to save a LOT. Too many lost words had me paranoid. One time one of my siblings ran by when I was working on the couch and tripped over the power cord, consequently pulling it out of the plug… Just like that, a couple hundred words, down the drain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Needless to say, the first manuscript I ever finished, written entirely on that computer, was a labour of blood, sweat and tears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway…I\u2019m still a little like this. I want someone to read my writing frequently and tell me if it\u2019s good or not. Like, right away. If I give you a copy to read, I will be squirming until you tell me you finished it. It\u2019s kind of a problem. One thing that saved a bit of my sister\u2019s sanity was when I got my new writing setup, with a iPad and keyboard that *gasp* actually connects to the internet. I discovered that I can export my writing straight into an eBook format, which means I can just send it to people and they can read it on their phone like it\u2019s a real book. This was mind-boggling to me and so, so exciting. When I was in the airport the other week for quite some time, I could pull out my phone and read my writing on it within an app. I could make highlights and notes for editing purposes while also seeing the formatting in book-form. Word documents and books look very different, so it\u2019s helpful to see how things look in a professional setting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This little segment doesn\u2019t really have a point. I guess I need to work on not being completely consumed by what I\u2019m working on…but I think that might come with the territory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Writing has taught me a lot about patience though. You sometimes can\u2019t rush a story. The character has to walk the path the way they want to. Things don\u2019t always go the way I want. Sometimes I get writer\u2019s block. Sometimes there are other people who are going to be making noise while I\u2019m working. Sometimes my sister can\u2019t read my writing the literal second I send it to her. But it is still worth the time and mental energy spent. I always come out feeling so much better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It always baffles me how much story writing consumes my life. If you happen to find yourself in casual conversation with me when a new story is in the works, you will hear about it. It just sort of burbles out…<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1643,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[158,13,12,157],"class_list":["post-1861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-secretarys-corner","tag-allconsuming","tag-blog","tag-secretary","tag-storywriting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.duchessmennonite.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.duchessmennonite.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.duchessmennonite.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.duchessmennonite.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.duchessmennonite.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1861"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.duchessmennonite.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1861\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1862,"href":"http:\/\/www.duchessmennonite.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1861\/revisions\/1862"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.duchessmennonite.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.duchessmennonite.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.duchessmennonite.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.duchessmennonite.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}