An E-magazine dedicated to writing about faith and flying in a complex world
Contents:1. Ezine subscription info.2. Wingspread reading and signing event3. New article: Valentines Alligator Hunt4. Writer’s Corner5. Favorite quotes and books
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Subscribe to this Wingspread E-magazine (free), sent direct to your email inbox, about twice a month. Click here http://jimhurd.com to subscribe. You will receive a free article for subscribing. Please share this URL with interested friends, “like” it on Facebook, retweet on Twitter, etc.
Wingspread: Of Faith and Flying: Reading and signing event:Wednesday, Feb. 25th 6-8 p.m. Dunn Bros. Coffee Shop, Northdale & Foley Blvds., Coon Rapids, MN. All are welcome!
Wingspread is a memoir about how childhood faith led to mission bush-piloting in South America.Buy it here: jimhurd.com (or at Barnes and Noble, Amazon.com, etc.) See pics related to Wingspread: http://www.pinterest.com/hurd1149/wingspread-of-faith-and-flying/
New article: Valentines Alligator HuntIt’s Valentines Day in the States, and tonight Barbara and I have ventured deep into the Venezuelan rainforest. Will this be the night we get engaged? …
Read more here: https://jimhurd.com/2015/02/09/valentines-alligator-hunt/(*Request: Please leave a comment on the website after reading this article. Thanks.)
Writer’s Corner:
Some ideas to help you revise your own stories:
Think about one single person as a target audience. How would she/he read your story?
Is your story cohesive? That is, is it about one thing? Does each paragraph point to the one single topic? If it’s about two things, write two stories.
Can you add dialogue to your story? Readers like dialogue.
Make certain every word does its work. If it doesn’t, cut it. You should easily be able to cut your story by 10%. A good rule is, the fewer words you use, the greater impact they will have.
Wondering how to clean up your writing? Read my “How to revise an article” at: https://jimhurd.com/category/writing/
Writer’s Word of the week: nominalization
Generally, nominalizations end in: -ion, -ness, -ance, -ence, -ness. These suffixes turn a word into a noun, a “dead” noun. A good rule: Go through your story and turn these words into powerful verbs. Example: “The assembly line used automation.” Change this to: “The factory owners automated the assembly line.”
Favorite quotes:
A story is the shortest distance between a person and the truth.
Fr. De Mello
Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.
Groucho Marx
The Good News of the gospel, therefore, is not that God came to take our suffering away, but that God wanted to become part of it.
Henri Nouwen
He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know.
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
Thank you for sending me a copy of your book – I’ll waste no time reading it.
Moses Hadas (1900-1966)
My all-time favorite books on writing:
William Zissner, On Writing Well.
Brenda Ueland, If You Want to Write
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