A Lesson In Overcoming Discouragement

Writing can be so discouraging.

Now, I really don’t mean it the way you are probably thinking. I absolutely love to write. Writing helps me relieve stress and lets my imagination run free. It’s the thing that makes me happier than just about anything else.

But on days, no weeks, no months like I’ve had, it can be very hard to fit writing into my crazy schedule. With school, work, and my other commitments, it sure is hard to sit down and put fingers to keyboard. When I write, I like to devote hours or days to it, but when I only have a stolen hour here and there, it’s so hard to get into.

I have two novels that I am not quite halfway through writing, but in times like these, that terrible doubt, that tells me I won’t ever finish them, comes slinking back into my mind. This doubt convinces me that I’ll never have enough time, energy, or the ability to finish either of these projects.

That’s why writing can be so discouraging.

Writing a novel is hard work and when it’s just a ‘hobby,’ it feels impossible.

I’m not giving up, though. I’ve gotten this far and maybe my first novel won’t be done this year, but I know I will finish it.

Times like these have definitely taught me that we go through phases in our lives. There is a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to search and a time to give up (Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8). For me, this is just a time to focus on school and my education and as much as that can pain me, it’s just what I have to do. One day, it will be my time to write fully and completely, but I’m not got into be discouraged that that time isn’t now.

Pro-Life Series (Day 2)

I’m still talking about this article, where a woman who was Pro-Choice decided to become Pro-Life and why.

In the article, she mentions the Supreme Court case, Stenberg v. Carhart. This case dealt with the legality of partial abortion, but she mentioned it in her story because of some of the shocking descriptions in it.

From her article (the text in single quotes are taken directly from the court case):

“‘[W]hen you pull out a piece of the fetus, let’s say, an arm or a leg and remove that, at the time just prior to removal of the portion of the fetus…the fetus [is] alive.’ He said that he has observed fetal heartbeat via ultrasound with “extensive parts of the fetus removed.’”

According to the decision in Roe v. Wade, the fetus can be aborted until viability, which is the ability of the fetus to live outside of the womb. This is said to be at about 28 weeks, but could occur as early as 24 weeks.

Seeing this, I did a bit of research on what the development of a baby is at different points in the pregnancy...

At the embryonic stage, starting at five weeks, the placenta (the sac that holds the embryo/fetus) develops and the embryo starts receiving oxygen and nutrition through it. At eight weeks, the arms and legs are growing. The feet and hand ‘buds’ have appeared. The mouth and nostrils are starting to develop. Teeth are developing under gums. Eyes can be seen. Just one week later, at nine weeks, cartilage and bones begin to form.

Do I need to continue?

At ten weeks, the embryo is now called a fetus. Muscles starting their development. The jaw is in place and the nose and ears are clearly visible. Fingerprints are evident in the skin.

All that is just by ten weeks. Ten Weeks! That’s still 14 weeks earlier than the earliest cut off for abortion. That’s three and a half months earlier. That’s almost as long as one semester in college.

I just can’t wrap my head around how people don’t think of embryos and fetuses as babies. Yes, they can’t live outside of the womb, but babies and toddlers can’t live by themselves either. If you go by the thought that an embryo/fetus isn’t a living baby because it isn’t self sustaining, then if that definition is applied to babies/toddlers they shouldn’t be seen as a living human.

What also really caught my attention is that by ten weeks the fetus has fingerprints. Fingerprints.

Fingerprints are used in our society to identify people. Fingerprints are part of a person’s identity. How can a fetus (a baby) have an identity, but not be alive?

How is it okay to abort a human that has developed cartilage, bones, muscle, teeth, a mouth, a nose, ears? Those are all very human aspects, but the fetus and especially the embryo are seen as not a actual life. How in the world doesn’t that make any sort of sense?

Pro-Life Series (Day 1)

A few years ago, I read this really amazing article, where a woman who was Pro-Choice changed her views and became Pro-Life. This story is so well written and really examines so many things that I didn’t fully think through at the time, but found really relevant.

Here’s the article. It’s really worth reading if you have a bit of time.

On the first day of talking about this, I really wanted to address the quote from her husband:

“‘It just occurred to me that being pro-life is being pro-other-people’s-life,’ he quipped. ‘Everyone is pro-their-own-life.’”

This really expresses one of the biggest things that I grappled to in all the time I have believe that abortion is wrong. I’ve always (albeit maybe harshly) thought that women who believe abortion is okay are selfish. They are saying that the growing baby inside a woman isn’t actually a living thing. They equate an embryo to a random grouping of cells. Cells that are nothing more than some strange phenomenon, not possibly the start of a new life.

Getting away from the typical arguments, this quote really shows the different mindsets of the two groups on this severely polarizing issue. Pro-Life people are for other people’s lives because they don’t want to see that innocent growing baby be killed. Pro-Choice want the women to be able to decide that being a mother isn’t for them. (Now, I’m purposely not addressing the issue of rape and pregnancy because that’s going to be a whole other post.)

As a Pro-Life believer, we see that random collection of cells as the beginning to something amazing: a new little life that should be cherished and protected. We can’t separate the cells from the person as easily as others because we believe the two are so interconnected with one another that there’s no possible way they could be independant.

We see the act of abortion as selfish because what other explanation can you give to the willful abandonment of the pregnancy that creates a baby? Would you rather be a murderer? No, and I know that women who choose abortion aren’t murderers and aren’t, in their mind, trying to end life. They are just pro-their-own-life.

NaNoWriMo Changed My Life

I have no idea why I suddenly wanted to write about NaNoWriMo. Maybe it’s because after 55 days of having not touched my NaNo novel, I finally wrote more of it. Maybe it’s because Camp NaNoWriMo is coming up in April.

Last November, I, sadly only for the first time, heard about this amazing thing called NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). I had been working on a novel since high school (I started it about four years ago) and I thought maybe this NaNoWriMo would be just the kick I needed to finish it. So I signed up and started preparing for the 50,000 word sprint.

I ended up deciding to work on a new project and shelf that first novel until later. Being in college, I didn’t quite manage to get all the way to 50,000 words (at the end of November I only had 28,000 words), but I can’t fully express how much I absolutely loved NaNoWriMo.

NaNoWriMo really kicked my desire to be a writer to the next level. I finally started thinking that this dream of mine could actually, one day, happen and it reawakened my love for writing.

Since NaNoWriMo, I’ve started thinking more about a writing career: how to get there, goals, aspirations for future projects. I couldn’t be more excited for the future.

As of today, I still only have a measly 35,600 words on my NaNo novel, which isn’t even halfway to my end goal, but I’m not giving up. I’ve also had to learn how to have a lot of grace for myself and not get frustrated when I have to take a break from writing because school really is the top priority.

I’m so excited for April and July because of Camp NaNoWriMo! Hopefully this time, I balance homework and writing better than in November…

Breaking News and the Lack of Accuracy

For my Reading and Writing for Emerging Media class, we have article that we have to read and then respond to. This is the response to one of those instances where I really felt like expanding more on the response I submitted:

Maybe it’s just my distrust of the media that I’ve adopted over the past few years, but I’m not at all surprised by these articles.

[These are the articles we had to read:

 Question Everything You Hear
When News Breaks
The Pressure to be the TV News Leader Tarnishes a Big Brand 
]

News has become a business and everyone is looking to get the latest scoop. They want to be the first to report it, so people will get used to looking to them for the latest events. The more people that look to them for information, the more money they make.

It’s a terribly sad fact that accuracy has been thrown out the window. I really wish that news providers would go back to the system of reporting facts above having the bragging rights of being the first on the scene, but I don’t believe that the media will shift back that way unless people stop consuming the incorrect information, which won’t happen because no one can tell that the broadcasted ‘facts’ are incorrect when its dealing with developing events. Without the push to change, news outlets won’t see the need to check facts for breaking news because their viewers are still consuming the news they give their viewers, so I don’t see that they really ever will.

People want to be in on the latest trend and that includes knowing the most recent news, so there will always be a market for breaking news. We like to show how much we know and we want to be the smartest and most informed. That means that we will tune into the breaking news stories or do a bit of research online so that when these new topics come up in conversation, which it will, we can show how informed we are.

I definitely think there are people who just want to know information and that’s why they like the news, but I still feel like there is a large group of us (I say us because I know I can fall into this) where we hear breaking news stories and become proud when we can impart some of our knowledge on the issue to others.

This could even be expanded outside of breaking news. So many political debates, I feel, are fueled by this need to be right and show how your informed opinion makes you know best. We all have such varying opinions and that’s why politics is such a precarious topic.

Getting back to the original point of this, reporting news isn’t going to change because people won’t change this system that they helped craft into being. News consumption changed with the birth of the internet and people want more information, faster. In order to keep up and be the best, the news media had to give something up: accuracy.

It’s a system that I wish could change for the better, but I don’t see how it can.