joy in having other writers in the family

I've just asked my daughter Sarah, who is in Uganda, the land of her childhood, if I can start sharing her poems etc. on my blog. After all, she tied for first place in the God Uses Ink contest for unpublished writers ages 14 to 19 for this year's Word Guild Write Canada conference. She would have been using her free prize admission to the conference herself (she'll use it next year) if she hadn't decided to stay on in Uganda. So I went with Jim this year again. He went alone last year. Jim is writing an epic historical novel...I am getting up the courage to help him with it. We have readings aloud every so often, and Rachel, our other daughter, an artist like Sarah, might do the illustrations for it. My problem is that I might be too hard on Jim and his writing, being an English teacher and former freelance writer and all that. But at the Write Canada conference this year Jim and I heard a common language we can use to work on his novel editing. Whew!! There was a great 5 session Continuing Class on fiction writing for idiots. What a huge help. I am also hoping to get into editing to make some money...small time editing first...might need to take a course or two to brush up on my instinctive sense about writing and my fanatical grammar and spelling sniffer, built into me... Yes, I DO know how to use a semi colon, and a comma...and I do say "it's" and "its" in the proper places, and I DON'T say "laying" when I mean "lying" etc....I hope that there is scope and hope for me beyond the blogging world...since my first "published" story...in the school yearbook in 1964 if you please, called "The Purple Blob"(about my Dad's wine making efforts and accidents) I've had a yen to be a writer of sorts....I think I need some more tickles on my funny bone...Sarah has a great pungent wit and sense of irony in her writing....I am learning lots from her too...seems my creative spirit was rather quelled as I grew up, despite being in the boomer generation.....it's comforting to know that if my daughters are such talented writers and artists it must have come from somewhere...Jim the engineer is branching into fiction...Meg the English teacher can branch into art and poetry...there's joy in knowing that being creative is really part of our "call" from God....we barely touch the surface of the possibilities God has for us...when we step out and risk and trust Him...and ourselves...