On In-Betweens OR Did You Ever Notice that the Sky is All the Way to the Ground?

This girl's always been obsessed with horizons. With in-the-middles, with midnights and sunrises and sunsets and half-finisheds and works-in-progress. But now that she's got a couple of halfways and almosts of her own, she isn't having as much fun.
Tonight, I'm standing in the middle of the last year of my life (and the kids and the chaos and the My-God-is-So-Big and the buses and my director watching every move) and my forseeable future (and orientation and textbooks and webadvisor and professors and student IDs and I think I accidentally picked the dumb English class). And multiple hats in one day make the head spin and a foot in both worlds just feels torn in two.
And the lingering in the old is making me tired and antsy, and the fear of the new makes me want to drop anchor, and the feeling-bad-for-leaving gets worse when the boss pokes fun, but I read my syllabus and I'm just. so. excited.
And maybe I don't like in-betweens as much as I think I do.
But like I read yesterday on my favorite blog, it's the in-betweens where God's presence is found. It's in the present moment, between the sky and the ground, between yesterday and tomorrow. And it's the rushing-through and the looking-back that can unplug us from being Spirit-empowered, but now-living keeps us in tune with God. I'm trying to be grateful for each day as it comes.

We're having a revival this week. Three nights, kid's program, guest speakers, whole nine yards. Last night was the start, and we had all of the kids and none of the help and things got a wee bit crazy. They do that sometimes. I'm usually okay. Actually, I was okay tonight. We talked about Jesus and nobody got hurt. 100% success.

On People Younger Than Myself Starting To Encounter the World the Way It Is

Please, world, just be perfect and safe and clean and bright and without ugliness or dirtiness or things that sit on consciences like sugar and caffeine on a sleepless, empty stomach, for my little siblings. For the sake of my brothers and sister, who I'd like to be able to run barefoot in all places without being afraid of stepping on sharp things that will hurt them and make them bleed or germy things that will make them sick or dirty things that will make them feel dirty. Who I'd like to be able to feel always perfect and safe and clean and bright and without ugliness or dirtiness or heavy, sick, unsettled consciences.

The world doesn't work like that, does it? There are germs and sharp things and dirty things, there have always been germs and sharp things and dirty things, and there will always be germs and sharp things and dirty things. So God? If You won't take away the germs, give them, give us, give us all stronger immune systems, stronger defenses. Protect soles and souls like callouses, but keep them soft as infants'. Make us always brave and bright and innocent, even in the face of the scary and the dark and the dirty and the ugly. Don't ever let us be afraid of the ugliness, or of ourselves. Do not let the world weigh too heavy with us. Let us wear Your forgiveness and Your holiness like armor, like skin, like favorite clothes that make us feel strong. But more than anything, God? Stay with us. In Your strength and Your gentleness, like the sunshine, never let us feel alone. Teach us to guard our hearts and minds, and to live in this world without being of it. Let us pass through mud and mire and emerge unsullied. 

"Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching." Hebrews 10:19-25

The Classics Club

I've been meaning to do this for a while, never seem to have the time. But I'm leaving in three weeks, and I want to have it done by then.
For anybody who doesn't know, The Classics Club is, well, here's a handy little quote from their blog: "The Classics Club is a club created to inspire people to read and blog about classic books. There’s no time limit to join and you’re most welcome, as long as you’re willing to sign up to read and write on your blog about 50+ classic books in at most five years. The perk is that, not only will you have read 50+ incredible (or at the very least thought-provoking) works in five years, you’ll get to do it along with all of these people."
So, essentially, five years, fifty books, with reviews posted here, my personal blog. I think I can do that. Five years is a really freaking long time from now, and I have no idea at all where I'll be or what I'll be doing in five years, but I'm game for trying.
I'm mostly doing this to make sure I keep reading. Because the next nine months are going to be really busy for me, and it might be easy to let things like that, things that are so important to me, die away. I want to keep me, and the things I do in in my me time. I want to keep my eyes on the eventual college-bound, "High School English Teacher" goal. This'll be good for that.
Technically speaking, I should do about ten books this year. I might not have that kind of time. I'm gonna shoot for a minimum of three, and if I have to play catch-up when I finally come home (wherever home is by then), so be it. Que sera sera.
I like the idea of signing up to be a part of something bigger than just me (didn't mean for that to sound deep); it'll keep me accountable, to a degree. Make sure I ACTUALLY do this reading thing. That sounds nice. Better than just posting a reading list here all by my onesie and trying to keep up with it. My one hesitation, though, about joining the official Classics Club is that it's a community. Lots of bloggers talking to each other, sharing a love of the classics. This sounds awesome. However, I'm already not sure I'm even going to have time to keep up with my personal blogs, social networking, etc. I don't know how often I'll have access to the internet. Or a computer. It's all a little unpredictable. So, as much fun as featured posts and weekly group round-ups and read-a-thons sound, I really don't think I'll be able to be an active, participating member of this community. I feel really bad about that. But I think I'd rather go for it and try my best rather than not try at all. Hopefully my efforts will be met with understanding. Don't know how it'll go, but worth a shot, right?
Here's hoping! Official entry post/list to follow. :)

Public Service Announcement

So...NaNoWriMo starts in two hours.
*explodes*
For the record, I might not be blogging much over the course of the next thirty days. Then again, I might be blogging more than usual. Procrastination is a lovely thing.
Do feel free to join me, though. There should be a link to the home site on that > side of this post. Or, alternately, the young writer's program for young people. Also, follow @NaNoWriMo and @NaNoWordSprints, as well as the #NaNoWriMo hashtag on twitter for to-the-minute updates, and read the Office of Letters and Light (the nonprofit behind NaNo) blog for inspiration. Figment's got an official Figgie-Wrimo group; and the NaNoWriMo forums are endlessly helpful and supportive. Also, feel free to look me up on either website, Figment or NaNoWriMo, username Zoie Gale. If the thought of participating in this psychotic thirty-day mad-dash for 50k has even crossed your mind, do it. No, seriously, do it. You'll be glad you did. I've never once regretted it. If it's nothing else, it's a whole lot of fun, and it's not too late to sign up. :)
Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I'm gonna go snag a couple hours sleep before locking myself in the bathroom and converting the bathtub into a writing haven.

Lust for Life

(Post title being a reference to the biographical novel, bearing the same title, of the life of Vincent van Gogh, written by Irving Stone)

 I've been thinking about Vincent van Gogh. And about sunflowers. About how he's the reason that I love sunflowers. Because they make me think of the person I'd like to be. I'd like to be the sort of person who would've stood by him. I'd like to think I would've stood by him. Because he was spectacular, even though he was different and difficult and tragic. He deserved to have somebody stand by him, just one person to take his hand when the rest of the world turned their backs on him, to make his life better and brighter when it was dark, to give him hope and strength and quiet the demons in his head. And that's the person I'd like to be. I'd like to love the different and the difficult, and to be able to see the spectacular in the different and the difficult. 

I've been thinking of Vincent van Gogh. You know he started out his life wanting to be a missionary? His whole heart wanted to serve God and help people, and he was so willing to give up what he was born for to do it. He wound up in a mining town, trying to preach hope and redemption to people who had literally no way out, and he made himself sick trying to help them, gave them everything he had, down to the shirt on his back, to try and make their lives better. And he just saw too much of pain and hurt to go on believing in a good God. And then these people, the mission board, decided that he wasn't good enough to do what he was doing, and that was enough to make him snap, to turn his back on God. I've wondered why God would let that happen to someone who loved Him and only wanted to serve Him, but then I kind of realized: it took snapping and turning away from God for him to make a selfish decision. Without that, he never would've chosen to do what made him happy for the rest of his life. Cause he didn't paint for anyone else, not a soul ever told him that was he was doing was good, was worth it. He did it because he loved it. And think of what the world gained because of it? Maybe God let him go, pushed him away, to let him do what he was born to do, and to give the world a gift. Maybe what we think of as the selfish decision, can sometimes be the most beautiful thing of all.

Defy the Dark - Redux

Back and ready for the flailing. 
Since we last spoke, I've been back over the piece, stripped out twenty-eight more words to be within the 4,000 word limit, tagged, published, and entered the story, and refreshed my page on Figment about five-million times hoping for reviews.
Not that they matter, 'cause it's not a heart-hogging popularity contest this time (not to be rude, I promise). The powers that be have sworn to read every single entry, which is nice. And, while peer reviews are great, I'm not allowed to edit a single word of the prose. So no matter how glaring a grammar error somebody points out, I can't go fix it. Still, affirmation, you know.
The actual writing of the piece was a roller coaster. As great as the prompt was ("It's not about the darkness, it's about who we are when we defy it," or something like that), I had ABSOLUTELY no inspiration. I went through about thirty useless ideas I didn't care about before deciding to go back to the beginning, use a little bit of ALL the ideas, and just throw something together.
So then I spent three days on Nana's couch (still haven't covered the living-with-Nana thing, have I?) tapping it out. Four-thousand words later, here I sit. I wrote through mind-numbing frustration, a darling little cousin who I love very very much but who didn't exactly help the focusing idea ("Whatchya doin? Are you STILL writing? Don't you want to play a game?"), sharing a room with a brother who wants all lights, laptop included, off at ten-thirty, a blinding, teeth-hurting headache, a pulled muscle in my side, Mum ("You haven't done anything all day!"), my own self telling me it wasn't worth it and wasn't any good and that I had no chance. Twitter and Tumblr (I think I updated my Twitter about fifty times) were both a help and a hindrance: standing at the ready when it got to be too much and I needed a break, but also standing at the ready to distract me when I felt like procrastinating. I think I skipped upwards of six meals and lived mostly on tea (new, lovely, loose-leaf tea, bahaha). I even survived a college-themed melt-down, and kept on writing, can you believe it?
I wouldn't have survived it without White Noise Radio, Write or Die, Edit Minion, Owl City, or my frightfully long Youtube music playlist. The internets must love me.
And, now it's done, and I'm about to gnaw my arm off waiting for the results. I know I'm just one name in upwards of a thousand; the chances of my winning are, shall we say, negligible. But, fingers crossed anyway!
You wanna know what's funny? I'm all of a sudden wildly looking forward to NaNoWriMo.

Defy the Dark

Quickly and without details posting my entry for the defy the dark contest. Will give full griping, chattering, and generally carrying on. figment.com/books/420364-Old-Magic

......I might've just gotten my first rejection letter.
Okay, I did just get my first rejection letter.
From a magazine I sent a story (funny, I don't even remember which story) to a couple months ago.
"...We appreciate that you think enough of...to want your work to appear in our pages, and we reviewed your submission respectfully and with care but decided not to accept your work for publication..."
It's funny, my little brother is asking me to explain to him why this is a good thing, and I can't entirely explain it, but it definitely, definitely is.
May it be the first of many. Meep!

To Love an Artist

So I watched that movie about Vincent van Gogh; and consequently realized that he lived in the Victorian era.
Which would be the same time that my dearling little main character Katie, the one in the Sherlock Holmes story, would have walked the earth.
They were on the same planet at the same time. Ergo, they might, potentially, have met.
I decided to run with it, because I like Vincent van Gogh, as a person, a heck of a lot better than Sherlock Holmes. And it would, admittedly, be nice to see what my Katie would do in a situation with someone who is free of Sherlock's, well, shall we say, emotional constipation.
I started working on what I thought was going to be a bit of a character study, or something like that; short and cursory, to get a feel for how these two (my fictional character and a historical figure I like/respect/admire) would interact.
It turned into a 1600 word short story. With a plot. And stuff.
And the scariest part is, I actually like it. I hate it when I like stuff I write. There's that whole "murder your darlings" thing, and whatnot.
So anyway, if you'd like to read the story, entitled "To Love an Artist," you can find it on my inkpop profile. I wouldn't suggest spending much time over there, or (heaven forbid) reading anything else I have up, but I'd like to share this one with you guys and sixteen hundred words is a bit overkill for a blog post. So anyway, without further ado, To Love an Artist.

I have been one busy girl these days, so it's been hard to get to my blog, like, at all. This might've been obvious due to the length of time that my most recent blog post has been on Steven Moffat's birthday. So . . . yeah.
Happy day-after-Thanksgiving. Leftover sweet potato casserole and college football . . . my idea of a party. I'm not being sarcastic. For as much as I don't really care about sports, watching my family watch football is entertaining to say the least.
We're all feeling a little throwback this week, me, Mom and Dad, and the siblings are "out of town" staying with my grandparents. Out of town being, half an hour from home, so maybe we're overstating the situation, but there's an element of "over the river and through the woods" that makes it all okay.
Really, it's a change of scenery. And after two years of essentially the same thing, a change of scenery is enough.
It's been a really sweet time so far. Watching movies together and playing cards and just kinda chilling. "Family" devotions have taken on a fun group discussion feel, with Nana and Papaw sitting in. Interesting conversation this morning, about me and Mom and Dad's whole "Model is Broken" approach to church and Christianity. So yeah.
Joy's bridal shower was last weekend, which was also a sweet time. Little buttons you have to give up if anybody catches you saying the groom's name and swapping funny stories about the happy couple and identifying yourself by your relationship to the bride (Ahem, Bride's best friend, tyvm. Hahaha.) Cake with edible ball-bearings and the classic maid-of-honor role of scratching down who gave what. All a little stereotypical, but definitely in a good way. :)
My story (You know, Sherlock Holmes and the undisclosed title and whatnot?) is going well. Really well, actually. Never easy, but well.
And speaking of Sherlock ('cause aren't we always?), the season two of the new BBC series hits in (drumroll please?) JANUARY of next year. Very big grin.
Just finished Frankenstein for school. I can Quite Honestly say that I enjoyed it the LEAST of any book I've read this year. Paradise Lost included. It literally went flying across the room when I was done with it. The ending was (for the sake of spoiler-free-dom) Horrible. Just horrible.
But I get to read Gulliver's Travels next week, so it's all okay.
Aaaaand, I think that's it for now. Gotta go help with stuff. Thanks for reading!
~Ella

Really?

Because that's what I'm saying to my life right now. Really? I mean, really?

Dallas. That one word can mostly sum up what's going on in my head. Well, that plus another couple, but more on that later. This summer, I'm (HOPEFULLY!!!!!) going on a two-week missions trip. To Dallas Texas. Now, not only is Dallas the furthest from home I've EVER been, it'll also be the longest amount of time I've been away from my family. I'm seventeen, so you wouldn't think that'd be too terribly big a deal, but, well, it is.

But I'm So Incredibly Excited. I don't think I've been more than an hour without thinking about it since I decided to go. At Acquire the Fire (whoops, kinda skipped that part. Again, more later), they introduced us to this group called Global Expeditions. They're mission is taking students all over the country and all over the worlds to serve God. In Dallas, we'll be helping in homeless shelters and soup kitchens, volunteering at church plants in apartment complexes, and helping with (*gasp*) Vacation Bible Schools. :D Fingers crossed I get accepted for the trip, and that I can get the funds up.

Dance Camp. Second thing on the brain. Nope, not the camp I went to last year. That part's already settled. Me, Joy, Corinne, and a few others from the group at church are definitely going.

The un-settled part is this new . . . thing . . . that the pastor wants to do. He wants our church to have a dance camp for our area, and he wants us (Me, Joy, my parents, and the dance group's adult mentor) to figure it out. And the adult mentor wants me to do it, with Joy's help. And I'm like, "Come again? Whadjya say? 'Cause I don't think I heard ya right."

I mean, my super-dancer extraordinaire aunt puts on a dance camp every summer, and it takes all she has to pull it off. True, ours would be considerably smaller scale, but, um, yeah.

But, anyway, that's DEFINITELY!!! not a definite yet, so I'm trying to put it out of my mind, and, for that matter, not tell anybody about it. Oops. (Good thing nobody reads my blog!)

Other thing (and this is slight), is the band Red. Yes, thaaat Red. The band I'd love to hate, and kind of really hate that I love. Stephen had the bright idea ('cause him and Andrew are all tight and stuff now) to lend all his Red cds to my little brother to download them onto our computer. There's so much it won't even all fit on my iPod. This=Ella's brain is broket.

Oh, yeah, and Friday starts the Screnzy. That's right, folks, Script Frenzy '11 starts This Friday!! But then, that's really not that big a deal.

What is a big deal is that Mom and Dad are going out of town for the weekend, and dropping us at Nana and Papaw's Friday around noon. I therefore have to get my three-ish pages done before we leave, since it's my turn to go first this year. I will then pass the torch to Joy, who will write on day two, and so on.

And now I'd best be going. Andrew wants the computer. Probably to listen to/work on playing some of aforementioned new music. Yay.

Au revoir!