Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: Art (01/18/07)
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TITLE: A Jot and a Tittle (and the art of cheating) | Previous Challenge Entry
By cindy yarger
01/18/07 -
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I finished my entry for last weeks challenge this morning in my head, on the way home from dropping my kids off at school. When I finished my early morning chores, I sat down and typed my entry, only to find that 200 other entries had already been submitted. The pearly gate was closed and it was simply too late to enter. I had waited too long to conclude my story.
I must admit, hopeful soul that I am, that I prayed that today’s new contest would be “cheating”. You see I had it all planned out. I would enter my freshly completed “writing” entry with a new intro about cheating. Can you see what happened (very logically of course) when I opened up the challenge entry and saw that the subject was “art?” Hey, I’ll take it!
So you want to know how God is in all of this? Well He showed up (actually He was always there but I just happened to notice) somewhere towards the end of my second paragraph. A spiritual message in my own “art of cheating”! That just shows me that He is a much better artist than I am and that He can use anything/everything on the colorful portrait that He’s creating of me.
A JOT AND A TITTLE
Writer’s block! Writer’s block!
What in the world does one write about writing?
I can see it flowing, not in words, but in form.
I can see it BOLD.
I can see it small.
Writing. Isn’t it unique that writing is both necessary and also one of the most creative outlets available to man?
Words are powerful. They can warm hearts, steal souls, cut to the quick, offer hope. They can promise, they can pledge, they can lie.
Remember long ago your own pride in these words? “I can write my name!”
There are rules to writing like my dilemma above. Where does one put the question mark when the quote is a statement but what proceeds it is a question? I wasn’t sure so I guessed.
A good writer usually follows all the rules in his writing. A great writer can break a rule and somehow get away with it!
In “Finding Forrester” the main writer character says that “the first draft is from the heart, you re-write with the head.” He states that “the first key to writing is to write not to think.” Now before you get too excited, remember he also wore his socks inside out!
Seriously, I believe that writing involves a good deal of mechanics but just as much (and a stronger point for me) it involves one’s soul. The writer has an opportunity to place a lot of himself in the words that he chooses to share and in the way that he shares them. One can share who they are, who they want to be, who they wish others were and who they hope they or others may never be.
Alas, my pen, it speaks to me. “If only the subject was ‘rambling on…..’”
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I did cheat. It was an art. It is too late. But in it I’ve learned that the pearly gates will stand open for me because that part of my life is complete. In that, I should remember, the thousands more that are still entrapped in the art of cheating. For the most part they have no clue as to the outcome. For the most part they will wait until it is too late. And that should break my heart because it does break the heart of God.
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