March is here!

February ended with the 29th day of the month. 2020 was the last leap year, and I remember it well. A friend of my dad’s visited us, he’d been born on leap year day 1952. This gentleman was in his late 60s, but he’d only had 17 birthdays!

I tend to treat the leap year as any other day, except that I must remind myself to date everything February 29 rather than February 28.

February is gone and now March is upon us. I’m looking forward to the first day of spring. Outside of the cold days, there wasn’t much snow. I just want warmer temperatures.

My writing? I’ve been revising, and I’m at an interesting place, where my two different critique groups have totally different perspectives on a manuscript. It’s a challenge because one group is better than the other at certain types of critiques, but another group is better at understanding inspirational fiction.

I think I’ll go with the group that better understand inspirational fiction. I don’t necessarily want to go mainstream with my writing, but I want to meet the conventions of what readers and writers in the subgenre will understand.

Beyond that, I’ve been revising this for some time now, and I want to move on. I can continue to revise on my own then find a developmental editor. Otherwise, my writing class will be coming to an end soon, and I recently submitted my last excerpt. I suppose I’ll go forward with showing this to my critique groups.

With those two projects moving along, I haven’t done much with the third project. Perhaps I’ll get the momentum again once I feel like the first manuscript is complete.

My ministry is going well. It was a good month for it, visiting churches in my region, and learning more church history, for example, the Philadelphia 11 documentary, about women in my faith tradition. There’s an online viewing taking place soon: link.

I saw the film at a local college. I really like how our local district is grounded in the community and institutions here. What that means is I can always learn about what’s happening in the greater community, including ministries, interfaith dialogue, and opportunities for collaboration with secular groups that share our vision.

Check out this church history book about my faith tradition. It wasn’t published in the US but was put out by a Dutch company. It looks interesting, but they are charging $119 for both the paper copy and the e-book! I don’t think so.

I also had a fun opportunity, visiting a synagogue in our community. I’d never done that before but had learned a lot about Judaism. A member of my home church regularly studies Torah with them. I want to do that as a supplement to my regular readings as per my daily prayers, just so that I can read how they interpret the Old Testament.

I borrowed this book, and I’ll return it the next time I go back there.