Through the valley and up to the peak,
I trust God to guide me, for I am weak.
Whether we are traveling through the valley or climbing the mountain, we must choose God as our source for daily strength and courage, Jesus as our redemption and hope of eternal life, and the Holy Spirit as our guide to continue the journey.
Traveling into depths of a valley or canyon can be dangerous, and the journey may be as frightening as it is confusing. Am I going in the right direction? How do I get to my destination on the other side? Are dangerous animals pursuing me? Psalm 23:4 defines the valleys of our lives. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, . . . ”
I wrote this poem to help define my vision and writing:
I look into the valley I must cross,
The valley of despair and loss.
I stare at the mountain I must traverse,
The mountain of hope and purpose.
To reach the top to view the expanse,
will be a climb of challenge, not chance.
Through the valley and up to the peak,
I trust God to guide me, for I am weak.
When writing a novel, every scene must help develop the plot or provide significant context. Often scenes must be deleted as the novel is edited because they don’t do enough to help the story develop. Some are harder to remove because they have personal meaning. The following scene was one that brought back a wonderful memory from Grand Marais, Minnesota, but I removed it from the book. While it provided a minor visual context, it didn’t do enough to help move the story along.
I attended the writers conference from May 16-19. The intense four day conference, held at the YMCA of the Rockies in Estes Park, provided a wide range of writing sessions, workshops, panels, and clinics. I signed up for the continuing session on Advanced Fiction Writing taught by Dave Lambert. The lectures covered so many aspects of creative fiction writing that I sometimes thought I was in a graduate level writing course at a university.