Gleaning Through Your Words--By Linda Kozar

Do you ever spend all day writing what you think is utter brilliance, then read through it the next day and hit the delete button?

Are our tastes that arbitrary? Remember your teachers, professors and the dreaded TAs in high school and college? Their taste in the written word always seemed to be arbitrary. And sometimes editors seem to share that trait.

Perhaps mood is a factor. What might be seen as insightful one day seems like drivel the next. Could the gulf of opinion be due to an upbeat frame of mind or a cynical one? I'm not sure.

Sometimes the opposite is the case. If I free write all day and think I've written nothing of any noteworthiness, I might look at it the next day with a bit of admiration, wondering where those sparkles of thought came from.

And I've learned to delay the delete button. Instead, I save everything. The odds are that even if 90% of what I wrote is awful, there will still be 10% to salvage and use. That's the way I look at it, anyway. Also, I know my mood will change. The words I might have cast off one day, might one day reach someone else's heart in a way they did not reach mine.

So save what you write. That's my advice. Save it, shelve it and go back to it later to glean through. Whether you favor cream-filled or caramel chocolates, your favorites are sure to be somewhere in the box.

Linda Kozar

Linda Kozar is the co-author of Babes With A Beatitude—Devotions For Smart, Savvy Women of Faith (Hardcover/Ebook, Howard/Simon & Schuster 2009) and author of Misfortune Cookies (Print, Barbour Publishing 2008), Misfortune Cookies, A Tisket, A Casket, and Dead As A Doornail, (“When The Fat Ladies Sing Series,” eBooks, Spyglass Lane Mysteries, 2012). Her latest novel Strands of Fate released October 2012 (Hardcover/Ebook, Creative Woman Mysteries). She received the ACFW Mentor of the Year Award in 2007, founded and served as president of Writers On The Storm, The Woodlands, Texas ACFW chapter for three years. In 2003, she co-founded, co-directed and later served as Southwest Texas Director of Words For The Journey Christian Writers Guild. She and her husband Michael, married 24 years, have two lovely daughters, Katie and Lauren and a Rat Terrier princess named Patches.

Represented by: Wendy Lawton, Books & Such Literary Agency

Member of: CAN (Christian Authors Network), RWA (Romance Writers of American), WHRWA (West Houston Romance Writers of America), ACFW (American Christian Fiction Writers), Writers On The Storm, The Woodlands, Texas Chapter of ACFW, Toastmasters (Area 56) The Woodlands, Texas, The Woodlands Church, The Woodlands, TX.