BETHLEHEM.

Bethlehem.

It just sounds magical, doesn't it?

I don't mean magic in the way that it is normally defined. I'm not talking about what makes reindeer fly, or snowmen come to life. I'm talking about miracles, and true stories that stir an indescribable feeling in our hearts. Special times that we hold onto and treasure.

It's funny how there are certain words that don't just sound like normal words to me anymore. Bethlehem is one of them. Speaking the word, hearing it-- it carries such an incredible feeling, a supernatural feeling that fills our hearts with joy. When I hear the word, I think of a sacred night long ago, when a young girl found no place to lay her newborn baby but a manger. A shining star over the 
city. Shepherds leaving their fields to come and see the newborn king.

Maybe it sounds strange to connect such emotion to a simple word, but no name of any other city sounds quite so special as Bethlehem.

For anybody who celebrates Christmas, the name brings to mind the wonderful Christmas story and how this holiday began. For those of us who know that Child personally, all these centuries later... it brings to mind so much more than a story. It brings hope, love, peace, and yes, magic. Magic greater than Santa Claus could ever create.

There are some things I just can't describe. I guess the way this word, Bethlehem, sounds to me is one of them. Maybe I'm the only one who feels this way. But when I hear Bethlehem, I think of Christmas. Of all the Christmas Eves I've listened to my parents read my favorite Bible story. Mary, whose world was turned upside down but who took it gracefully. Joseph, who stayed beside her and trusted God's plan. Jesus, that innocent baby who was born just to sacrifice His life to save us from our sins. A magic of its own kind.

So it doesn't matter where I hear the word or who says it. Whether it's on a Rankin Bass special about a long-eared donkey...

...or The Nativity Story...

... or one of my favorite Christmas songs...

Bethlehem is magical. And I hope you can feel the same magic I do.

And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem... (Luke 2:4)

A Review of Karen Kingsbury's/Hallmark's THE BRIDGE

Wow, you guys. It's almost Christmas. I can't believe how fast this holiday season has gone by. I feel like Thanksgiving was just last week and now here we are with Christmas next week!

Anyway, today I'm sharing with you guys about one of my new favorite Christmas stories-- The Bridge by Karen Kingsbury. (I'm going to be talking about the book and the movie.)

Last year I watched the two-part movie for the first time and really liked it. I remember really liking the actors (especially Katie Findlay) and of course I loved that it was about a bookstore. So this year I finally read the book and I loved it.

I'm going to be reviewing both the book and the movie and comparing them. I'll try to keep spoilers to a minimum (or at least warn you before I give any, ha).

THE BOOK

This book tells the story of Charlie and Donna Barton, a very special couple who runs a very special bookstore in Franklin, Tennessee: The Bridge. Here, people find not only book recommendations but loving advice and friendship.

Molly Allen and Ryan Kelly are music students who have an unusually special connection, and the Bridge plays a big part in bringing them together. But due to misunderstanding and deception, Molly and Ryan are torn apart. They go their separate ways and pursue their dreams.

Now, seven years later back in Franklin, things are going downhill fast for Charlie and Donna. The Bridge was hit by a flood and all the books were destroyed. Now the Bartons, already struggling financially, have to face the possibility of losing their beloved bookstore too. What's more, Charlie is in an accident and lands in the hospital. 

Ryan, having just come off the road, hears about the hard times the Bartons are going through and is determined to help. He encourages people to pray for Charlie and to donate books to restock the bookstore. Across the country, Molly hears about everything that's going on in Tennessee and can't help but go back.

Needless to say, she and Ryan reunite. And I'll stop there so I don't give anything else away.

I guess I was a little surprised with how much I liked this book. Partly because I really haven't read a lot of Karen Kingbury's books at all, and I don't usually read much in the romance genre. Or maybe because I always feel like when I watch a movie adaptation first, I won't enjoy the book the same way I would have if it was the way I first experienced the story. But I almost like the book even more.(More on why later.)

I just love the two couples in this book. Charlie and Donna are such good people, opening their bookstore up to everybody and treating them and thinking of them like family. And Molly and Ryan... they just have one of those relationships where, even though they're fictional people, you root for them and just hate to see them separate. They care so much about each other that they do what they think is best for the other person even though it means heartache for themselves.
The book nerd in me also loves how they connect over a book. Even though I've never read Jane Eyre, I love the quote "I would do anything for you, sir. Anything that was right" and how it was used in the story.

And the way this book ends, the way everything wraps up, is just so heartwarming and fulfilling. So much love and generosity and Christmas spirit and it's just so sweet. 

THE MOVIE

Like I said, I saw the movie before the book and loved it. The main storyline is the same, but there are some details that were changed for the movie. For example, Molly and Ryan are 25 instead of 29-ish, and they knew each other in college for two months as opposed to two years in the book. When they reunite Ryan's life is basically the same as it was in the book; he's been touring, playing for different people, but (mild spoilers ahead) Molly's is pretty different. In the book her father has died and she is running an animal shelter, and also playing in a symphony. In the movie her father is still alive and Molly is working for him, about to take over as CEO of the company, and dating Preston, the guy who she's been expected to marry basically her whole life.

I liked this part better in the book, because even after Ryan and Molly parted ways, they were still encouraged by one another to follow their dreams and make the decisions that were best for them and other people in the long run. It's just kind of sad in the movie to see Molly, mostly, having given in to her father's plans for her even when she knows that's not what she really wants.

But, like I said, basically everything else story-wise is the same. The heartwarming ending happens almost exactly the same way and is just as heartwarming.

The movie was released in two parts (which infuriated everybody who watched the first part in 2015 and didn't realize that they wouldn't get to see the next part until next Christmas), and I actually like that. There have been other movies that were made into more than one part and it was just unnecessary. But in this case, I felt like it was actually a really good move. Like I said, I love Ryan and Molly's relationship, and I think we needed that extra screen time to see them meet and have plenty of time to connect. In the book their entire relationship happened in flashbacks, which worked, but I love being able to experience it in the movie in "real time", if you will. At no time in the movie did it feel like they were just trying to fill up time because they made it into two parts. 

Another thing I loved about the movie, which I've already mentioned, was the actors. I think Wyatt Nash and Katie Findlay had really good chemistry, which is necessary because of the connection Molly and Ryan have. And Faith Ford and Ted McGinley totally fill the parent-like, loving roles of Charlie and Donna. Except for the fact that Molly and Ryan are younger and a little different in physical appearance, I can completely picture the actors from the movie in their respective roles when I read the book.

So, I guess when it comes right down to it, the book and the movie are pretty even for me. Both have their advantages, and regardless of whatever differences there might have been, I love the story. If you enjoy Christmas romances/inspirational stories, you should check it out. (... that felt like a school report. Sorry.)

Thanks so much for reading! I feel like this review was kind of allll over the place but I hope you enjoyed it. And I hope you all are having a fantastic holiday season! We're so close to Christmas-- everybody squeeze the last little bit of Christmas joy out of these next few days.

Have you read or watched The Bridge? What are some of your favorite Christmas stories (books or movies)? How has your Christmas season been? Any special plans? (I know that was a lot of questions, but hey, I love Christmas, so let's chat!)

Also, stay tuned for my special Christmas post on Christmas Eve!

Know the Novel Part 3!

Hi guys! Today I'm doing the third part of Christine's Know the Novel linkup. Although I didn't do the second part, I've had fun with parts one and three and I'm so glad I've gotten to participate!

Sooo, here we go!

1. Firstly, how did writing this novel go all around? The writing this NaNo went better than it ever has before. Which is funny because I was still behind the entire time (oops), but I was still writing consistently and the story was going pretty smoothly. (Minimal stopping and panic-planning.) And although I haven't actually finished this novel yet, I still have a good feeling about the rest of it.

2. Did it turn out like you expected or completely different? And how do you feel about the outcome? Pretty close to how I expected! It really hasn't veered off from how I imagined it at all, which is kind of nice because I was able to stick to my (vague) plan. I think it turned out pretty well so far.

3. What aspect of the story did you love writing about the most? (Characters, plot, setting, prose, etc.) I loved writing a character who has such a turnaround from when you first meet him. Archlan has to learn and go through so much and helping him make the right decisions and figure out what's really important.

4. How about your least favorite part? All those parts where the characters are just TRAVELING and there really isn't that much to say. I'm not Tolkien, guys. I can't get away with narrating every step they take.

5. What do you feel like needs the most work? Besides the overall yuckiness of first-draft syndrome? Probably the length. I know I should be focusing more on the just telling the story than just making it longer, but my books tend to come out a lot shorter than I'd like them to be.

6. How do you feel about your characters now that the novel is done? Who’s your favorite? Least favorite? Anyone surprise you? Give us all the details! Well, like I said, it's not done done, and there aren't really a whole lot of characters to choose from. So I would have to say that Archlan is my favorite, with Quinard coming in a close second. They became such good friends so fast and Quinard came in at just the right time, when Archlan really needed someone to be there for him. As for least favorite, it would have to be Rian, Archlan's girlfriend. She pretends to love him and maybe she does have some kind of feelings for him, but her band of thieves and basically everything else come before Archlan and she's just really not that great of a girlfriend. Or person.

7. What’s your next plan of action with this novel? Finish it, first. Ha. Then I'm not sure if I'll start editing (just because I'm so stoked about how this novel went) in January, or put it on the back burner for a little while and work on something else. (I'm missing my other babies.)

8. If you could have your greatest dream realized for this novel, what would it be? To see it get published and eventually made into a movie that makes people cry.

9. Share a snippet of one of your most favorite scenes! Well, it's pretty atrocious (remember first-draft syndrome?), but here's a short snippet from right after Archlan and Quinard met:

With frustration he let out a cry, and all the trees around him began to tremble as if a great wind had just blown through. They lifted their roots out of the ground, not moving from their spots but merely shifting their positions. The ground around Archlan and Hil shook as if an earthquake were touching everything but them.
 After releasing his frustration and emotions for a minute, Archlan took a deep breath, and all the trees grew calm again. There was a minor upset in the soil, but nothing too tragic. He looked around, took another deep breath, and was about to ride on.
 But he jumped when a voice cut through the silence. "Ho there, friend Archlan!"
 Archlan looked in alarm toward the direction the voice came from. There, riding toward him, was Quinard, looking a bit confused and quite awestruck. "What was that that just happened, pray tell?"

10. Did you glean any new writing and/or life lessons from writing this novel? Honestly, I think it would just be that the more I write, the better I'll get.

Well, there it is! Thanks so much to Christine for making this fun linkup and I hope we get to do it next year! ;)

And thanks for reading! Stay tuned, because I'm planning some Christmas posts I'm excited about!

Did you participate in Know the Novel this NaNo/year? Or any other linkups? Let's chat!

5 Things NaNoWriMo 2018 Taught Me

Hey guys!

Soo, we made it. NaNoWriMo is finally over and we can go back to our (mostly) normal lives. That may still include writing, but it might NOT include obsessive pounding on the keyboard to get your word count for the day and/or trying to catch up because of all the days you fell behind. (Or was that just me?)

Today I'm going to be sharing four things that NaNoWriMo taught me this year, or simply reminded me of. This was simultaneously the toughest and best NaNo I've ever had, and I feel like I grew a lot as a writer this November.

Soo without further ado (what does that even mean?): 

(This is my first banner! Needs some work, but it's not bad.)

#1 I NEED TO WORK ON MY PLOTTING SKILLS

I'm a pantser. And that showed when I went into this novel with a general idea of what was going to happen, but not a lot of information on some of the details. I didn't write bios about each of my characters; I just got to know them as I wrote them. I even made up a character mid-story. I formulated events that were never in my original plans (and, frankly, I didn't know if they were going to stick-- gotta get to that word count somehow) but actually seemed to kind of work.

And all that's okay, to a degree. And maybe for some people it's just plain okay. But for me, it just doesn't always work anymore. Like always, I didn't have a perfect outline for this story, therefore there was a lot of the in-between story that I wasn't sure about.

I always try to plan my novels, I really do. But the truth is, the last four novels I've started have been for NaNo and I've started planning them way too late, therefore I run out of time and greet November 1 with a minimally planned story.

And you know what? I never won a NaNo (until this year). So I feel something has to change. Next NaNo (and with any new novel I write) I'm going to start a lot earlier, planning and outlining. I'm terrible at outlining. But I'm going to work on that and other ways to plan a story, because I knew what needed to happen in this story better than I think I ever had before and it was a lot easier to write that way. I don't think I'll ever be a hardcore plotter-- maybe "plantser" is the right word for me.

(By the way, I don't mean to imply that if you don't win NaNoWriMo, that means you're a failure and need to change the way you write. I'm just talking about ME and what held me back personally from winning.)

#2 THE FIRST DRAFT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE PERFECT

Obviously we all know this. For me, first draft = messy writing. Bad jokes and awkward sentence structure. First drafts are just about getting the story down on the page.

But I'm mostly referring here to the actual story. If you're like me, sometimes you run into a place in your story where you're not sure what should happen next. So you completely MAKE SOMETHING UP that may or may not actually have any bearing on the story.

I'm not talking about completely changing the direction of your story (having your MC suddenly get the notion to start an animal rescue while he's supposed to be saving the world from Evil Villain is probably just a plain old waste of time). I'm talking about coming to a point where you don't know how to get from point A to point B so you create a possible bridge between those two events. I do this all the time. And I don't always keep what I write.

It might sound like a waste of time, but I don't think it is. First of all, speaking in NaNo terms, it gives you something to write/get your word count in. Second, it helps you move along with your story without stopping and getting stuck on one thing. Third, every word you write is like exercise for your writerly self. The more you write, the better you'll get at it, even if you don't use everything you initially put in your story. And lastly, it helps you explore different ideas for your story and come up with the right one. You might have heard the term "discovery writer". I think that's what this means-- instead of planning out every detail, you have to just write and discover your story.

Long story short, I think it's okay to write parts of your story that you might know for a fact are not going to stick, because it keeps you going, helps you decide what's best for your story, and you can always change it later.

#3 WORD SPRINTS ARE THE BEST

Y'all, word sprints SAVED me this NaNoWriMo.

Seriously, if it wasn't for those ten-minute spurts when I FORCED myself to keep from scrolling through the Internet and agonizing over the fact that I was so behind on my word count, I don't know what I would have done. Distractions are SUCH an issue, and word sprints helped me to shove those distractions to the back of my mind and not let them come back until that timer went off.

Plus whenever I finished a word sprint I rewarded myself with chocolate, so. That made it even better.

#4 I LOVE WRITING

We all knew this, right?

But seriously, this NaNo helped me remember how much I love to write and how special and important it is to me. It reminded me that I want to finish this story and all my other stories and see them on bookshelves one day. In a year where I've done very little writing, it rejuvenated my love for it.

#5 I CAN WRITE 50k IN A MONTH

Lastly, this NaNo taught me that I CAN win NaNoWriMo!

In my last post I told you guys how I won my first NaNo, on my fourth year of trying. Remember how I said earlier in this post how I got stuck and that kept me from winning? That happened EVERY time. By the third one, you can imagine I was getting pretty discouraged. Not because I couldn't finish NaNo, but because I couldn't finish my stories. Getting stuck is the worst, y'all.
But this year it rolled so much better. And while I haven't finished my novel yet, I made it to 50k. I carved out the time every day to write and I caught up at the end of it all just in time to win NaNoWriMo.

And it was fantastic.

This NaNoWriMo was so great. I already can't wait for next year (and I'm going to be better prepared ;))! And I'm ready to keep writing. I'm still excited about this year's NaNo novel Roots to Claim, and I'm hoping to finish it this month. With all the craziness of Christmas, we'll see. But that's my hope! I can't wait to finish writing Archlan's story.

Well, that's it for today! I hope you all had a great NaNoWriMo and for those who didn't participate, a great November! Here's to December! 

I WON NANOWRIMO.

(I wrote this late on the 30th. I know today's an irregular posting day for me but I wanted to get this up soon because, like I say in this post, I have some other posts I want to get up soon. Plus, this is kind of a special occasion, so I guess it deserves special treatment.)

Guys. 

I just won NaNoWriMo.

Wait a second, what?

I JUST WON NANOWRIMO!!!!

I just hit 50k a few minutes ago and I CAN'T believe I actually did it! It's almost midnight and I have to work tomorrow and I really need to go to bed but I'm still up because I am feeling so happy and excited right now. And I wanted to capture that excitement while it was still fresh and real.
So here's that excitement!!

You guys, I am so proud of myself and so psyched that I DID IT. It was such a surreal feeling when I updated my word count and saw that 50k. When I validated my novel and saw the "Congratulations, Wrimo!" banner and watched the winner's video... and I heard the words "A NaNoWriMo winner is YOU!"... Guys, don't judge. I may have gotten a BIT emotional.

 I've done NaNoWrimo three times before, but I've never won before. The highest word count I hit was 35k in 2016.
I always had trouble getting to my word count because I always got stuck. You guys, I get stuck SO BAD when I'm writing a novel. I don't what it is, but the hardest part about writing for me is figuring out what needs to happen throughout the story. I know the beginning, the climax, all those important moments. But everything in between? It's not that I don't like writing it, I just find myself CLUELESS as to what it should be.

This year wasn't perfect. I'm not going to pretend I came in with a big old outline, every chapter planned out. I'm not going to pretend I didn't get stuck a few times. (Although never as stuck as I have been before.) Guys, I didn't even have all my characters created and I made one up in the middle of writing.

I didn't have everything planned out, but somehow this story flowed pretty well for me. I'm a pantser (also known as a discovery writer, which is a term I really like), so full disclosure, I made a lot of stuff up as I went along. That's just me.

But guys. I WON.

I'm not sure when I'm going to get this post up because sadly I've been neglecting my blog lately. I didn't even try to get those other two NaNo updates up because I was too immersed in ACTUAL NaNo. But hopefully now I'll get back in full swing because I have some exciting posts coming up (At least they're exciting for me. xD)

Well, I'm going to bring this post to an end because I really do need to go to bed. I just wanted to share my fresh excitement immediately after my victory.

For all those who won NaNoWriMo: CONGRATULATIONS!!! I know how HARD it is, so you're SUPER AWESOME. And for those who participated in NaNo but maybe didn't quite reach 50k: CONGRATULATIONS!!! Because here's the thing: YOU WROTE. I know everybody's saying it, but seriously. You wrote something. You invested in your story, and you have more words than did when you started. I participated in NaNo three times without officially winning, and I still felt like it was a victory because I WROTE.

And you know what, even if you didn't participate in NaNo, congrats to all you writers!! Because writing is HARD and even if you didn't take part in the craziness that is NaNoWriMo, you deserve a medal.

Keep writing, everybody! And once again: CONGRATULATIONS!

(Also this is a really last minute thought but I just want to say that it's raining right now and raining is my FAVORITE writing weather and I love that it's raining the night I won NaNoWriMo. )