As a Christian, I have read the Bible a LOT. I try to do a full read through every year.
In doing this repeated practice, I have found that some verses just seem to stand out to me more than others.
I don’t know why this is, but I’m okay with that. I like to think that it’s God choosing these verses to communicate to me in a certain way.
My absolute favourite verse can be found in Isaiah 41:10, and it says:
“Fear not, for I am with you. I will strengthen you and help you. I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”
Having spent the best part of my life being bullied and put down, often scared to even go outside my front door, this verse brings me great comfort.
It isn’t necessarily the most dramatic, dynamic, or impactful of verses, but there is something in it that speaks to me deeply on an emotional and spiritual level.
I choose to believe that this verse is God, telling me that He is right beside me, and that it doesn’t matter what’s coming at me, because He will be there, and He will never let me go.
What are your favourite verses?
Let me know in the comments!
If you’d like to get updates from me once a week, you can click here… 🙂
Li Carter is a writer, artist and crafter. She lives in South Wales, UK, with her family, and five rescue dogs. She’s on Twitter @rbcreativeli , Facebook: Rainbow Butterfly Creative, and Instagram @rainbowbutterflycreative and is the author of My Only True Friend: The Beginning. She is currently working on a new series titled The QuickSilver Chronicles. She is the original Rainbow Butterfly, and wants to fill an ever darkening world with a little bit of beauty and creativity.
I’ve posted a lot about personal issues since I started this blog; about things like my health, both physical and psychological.
What I haven’t posted about is how I have extremely low confidence. I struggle a lot with this. I doubt myself, and question what I am doing constantly.
I am getting better with this, though. I am in the process of trying to learn to accept myself, with all of my faults (however many there are).
The thing is that I was made to be intrinsically ‘me’. Nobody else has the exact same blend of qualities that I do. No one else can bring what I can to this life, just like I can’t bring what any of you can.
We are all created to be completely different, whether this is in looks, abilities, emotions, personalities and talents.
We must all accept this, and learn to accept ourselves, with all the good (and bad) things that we bring with us.
We need to see that while we may be different, that doesn’t mean that we are wrong.
I have to be me. And you have to be you, because in the end, when it comes down to it, no-one else can be.
If you’d like to get updates from me once a week, you can click here… 🙂
Li Carter is a writer, artist and crafter. She lives in South Wales, UK, with her family, and five rescue dogs. She’s on Twitter @rbcreativeli , Facebook: Rainbow Butterfly Creative, and Instagram @rainbowbutterflycreative and is the author of My Only True Friend: The Beginning. She is currently working on a new series titled The QuickSilver Chronicles. She is the original Rainbow Butterfly, and wants to fill an ever darkening world with a little bit of beauty and creativity.
Anyone that knows me, knows that I am a big fan of Stacey Dooley. I have a LOT of respect for her, and know that I couldn’t do even a quarter of what she has done.
She’s not perfect, and I think she’d be the first person to admit that. She makes mistakes sometimes, but then, so do we all. I think sometimes, that she is judged a little too harshly by some people, bearing in mind their own track record!
Some people say that she’s just a ‘chav that got lucky’, but I think this is complete, ignorant, rubbish. The truth is that she had a humble upbringing, and that she was offered an opportunity, which she grabbed with both hands, and let’s face it, wouldn’t we all do the same, given half the chance?!
Stacey gets an awful lot of flack online from trolls and random haters. People criticise her for being young and ignorant. One politician, recently snidely likened her to a ‘white saviour’ when she shared a photo of herself with a young child of African decent, on one of her documentary shoots.
I often wonder where these people get their half baked views, and would be interested to see if, given the same opportune ity, they would take it in the brave way that Stacey does, and no matter what you think of her, we cannot deny her bravery for going to often ravaged, dangerous and possibly war torn countries.
I bought her book several months ago, and while I was excited to read it, I thought that it would be just the usual type of celeb autobiography. It wasn’t. It was far more than that.
Instead of focusing on telling us her entire life story, we see a far less self-centred approach in this book. Here we see snippets from the lives of the people that Stacey has met and interviewed over the years. We are given an intimate look into her feelings and thoughts, that perhaps, there wasn’t time to show on screen.
The book is split into sections, with each one focusing on the lives of seemingly ordinary people, caught up in terrible, and extraordinary circumstances.
In each one, we see the incredible strength of the women (because it is generally women involved in these documentaries). Stacey takes us all over the world, from Columbia, to Iraq, to Japan, showing us a small snippet of what it is like for these women.
Her honesty and compassion is clear to see, and the way that she can empathise with these people, even being moved to tears by some of the horrific stories, just shows her strength and ability as a documentarist.
This book is fast paced, and as a reader we are led from one situation to another. It is not an easy read. In fact, there were several times, when it got to be too much for me, and I had to stop reading for a while.
In conclusion, though, I feel that this book is an incredibly important one, and one that everyone should read. There were some people in this book, that I had never heard of before. For example, the Yazidi women. If you don’t know of them, then please google. I honestly couldn’t believe that I hadn’t heard anything about them on the news!
This book is one of the best, and most harrowing books that I have read this year, and I have no hesitation in recommending that you read it too.
If you’d like to get updates from me once a week, you can click here… 🙂
Li Carter is a writer, artist and crafter. She lives in South Wales, UK, with her family, and five rescue dogs. She’s on Twitter @rbcreativeli , Facebook: Rainbow Butterfly Creative, and Instagram @rainbowbutterflycreative and is the author of My Only True Friend: The Beginning. She is currently working on a new series titled The QuickSilver Chronicles. She is the original Rainbow Butterfly, and wants to fill an ever darkening world with a little bit of beauty and creativity.
If you’re a writer, you’ll know what I mean when I talk about “one of those days”.
The days when writing seems to completely elude you and you feel like you’re trapped and frozen with nowhere to go and nothing to turn to. The kind of days when you want to write, but the mere thought of it terrifies you, because you don’t feel like the words will come. You feel like you have nothing to say, and even if you did, it probably wouldn’t be anything worth reading anyway.
This, is your inner critic talking. This is the culmination of all of your doubts and all of the things that knock your self-confidence.
The truth is that you can write. You do have something to say, and it is worth reading.
The truth is that the very worst thing you could possibly do is to give in to the block. Because, one day will turn into two, and two will turn into a week, and so on, and so on.
The difference between a successful writer, and a wannabe, is that they showed up and did the work. They ignored that inner critic, and persevered with writing, even when the doubts flooded in, and when the muse went on strike.
The key thing to remember, is that each day that you show up to write, is a day where you are improving. It is a day where you are honing your craft, and exercising your skills as a writer.
So, when you’re having a tough day. Maybe you’ve hit a block in your wip, or the words just won’t come. Just try to give yourself a break. Give yourself permission to write something ‘just for fun’. It may only be a snippet, but you never know, one day, you might look back on it and see the potential in that piece of writing. It may even become the foundation of your next novel, short story, or even blog post.
Remember, no time spent writing, is time wasted, no matter how bad you may feel about it at the time.
If you’d like to get updates from me once a week, you can click here… 🙂
Li Carter is a writer, artist and crafter. She lives in South Wales, UK, with her family, and five rescue dogs. She’s on Twitter @rbcreativeli , Facebook: Rainbow Butterfly Creative, and Instagram @rainbowbutterflycreative and is the author of My Only True Friend: The Beginning. She is currently working on a new series titled The QuickSilver Chronicles. She is the original Rainbow Butterfly, and wants to fill an ever darkening world with a little bit of beauty and creativity.
I remember the You Say Which Way and Choose Your Own Adventure books from when I was younger. There was nothing more exciting than to be able to have an impact on the story I was reading.
I still remember the thrill of controlling the choices the characters made.
These stories used to be purely in book format, and at the end of a specific segment, it would give you two (or more) choices, and at the end of each, would be a page reference for you to turn to so that you could continue the adventure.
Nowadays, with the advent of ebooks, the ability to add hyperlinks and graphics is a game changer.
Books can become like an RPG game. These can appeal to all ages, and genders. They can be used in any genre, and can appeal to even the most reluctant of readers. These books make reading more accessible.
They are usually written in the second person, (you). This makes the reader a direct participant. Suddenly, you aren’t reading about a character, you are the character.
There are an increasing number of adult versions of the interactive novel, which rely heavily on the use of QR codes, and hyperlinks. These make the possibilities of storytelling even more endless.
Recently, I have been reading and playing about with an app named Twine. It is a bit of freeware, which is used to create RPG games, but can also be used to create interactive stories. The software itself is relatively simple to use, with only a small amount of coding (trust me, if I can work it out, you can!).
I am in the process of planning a middle grade novel, which I would like to turn into an interactive story. The main character is a dragon, who just doesn’t quite fit in to his world.
The thing about interactive writings is that they could be applied to anything. You could even start a blog series with different options for the reader.
The possibilities are literally endless!
And, as long as you have an idea, you can write one too.
If you’d like to get updates from me once a week, you can click here… 🙂
Li Carter is a writer, artist and crafter. She lives in South Wales, UK, with her family, and five rescue dogs. She’s on Twitter @rbcreativeli , Facebook: Rainbow Butterfly Creative, and Instagram @rainbowbutterflycreative and is the author of My Only True Friend: The Beginning. She is currently working on a new series titled The QuickSilver Chronicles. She is the original Rainbow Butterfly, and wants to fill an ever darkening world with a little bit of beauty and creativity.
I have always known that I am a writer. I think it’s something I was just born to be. I love reading. I love stories. Really, a life without stories, is more than I could bear to think about. It would be the ultimate torture. In fact, when I am struggling to write, it feels a lot like I can’t breathe; as if a part of me is crying, and I don’t know how to help it.
That’s the thing with writing. The stories inside you are desperate to get out, and the struggle is being able to actually get them out.
In thinking about writing, I thought I’d try to compile a list of reasons how you would know if you’re a writer.
1. You study people and things, constantly looking for inspiration and ideas.
Everything has a story, and you feel that it is down to you to discover it.
2. You always carry a notebook.
Whether paper, or digital, you need something with you to write down those little sparks of inspiration, before they flit away from you.
3. You have a notebook hoard.
This is a guaranteed sign of a writer. I’m serious. Dragons have nothing on writers when it comes to hoarding… Some of these may be filled, but others may only have half a page filled. You love them, either way.
4. You’re always reading.
This is the key to becoming a better writer. You have to read. There is no other option here. Read. Read a lot. Read everything and anything you can. Even if the story is bad, you may add to your vocabulary. There’s always a silver lining.
5. You keep a running list of characters, settings and situations.
Friends, enemies, natural disasters. They all go down. Your house, your school, the local park. These are all perfect story fodder, and you’re constantly adding to them as the ideas strike.
6. Your idea of a good night involves pyjamas, a blanket, snacks and your laptop/notebook.
Seriously, what else could anyone need? Am I right?! That draft won’t write itself, so a night spent like this, writing dangerously, is the perfect option for any writer.
7. You live in constant fear of your inner critic.
Mine is named Muriel. I wrote about her in this post. She is mean and nasty and loves to make me put myself down. She hates it when I’m doing well and writing easily. She loves to put doubts in my mind, and will, if I let her, stop me writing altogether.
8. You can detect spelling and grammatical errors like a cat can find the only person in the room that is scared of them.
Seriously, does the term ‘grammar nazi’ mean anything to you? And pfft! Who needs spellcheck?!
9. You spend half your time in a dreamworld.
Yep, you’re quite happy to spend hours at a time with your own imagination, working out plot holes and ways to make your stories just that little bit better- that’s if you aren’t just stuck in an entirely new story altogether.
10. You are happiest when you’re writing.
Writing is my happy place. It is my refuge. When I am happy, or sad, it is the first thing that I turn to. It is the first thing I think of when I wake up, and no matter how bad I may feel when I start writing, I always feel better by the time that I’m done.
So, there it is. My ten ways of knowing that I’m a writer. Can you think of any others? Drop them in the comments. I’d love to read them. 🙂
Rainbow Butterfly Creative 