Collaborative Creations by Shirley Crowder

From time-to-time someone will comment on how difficult it must be to have to co-write with someone.

Guess what? It isn’t! Including the books with Harriet, I have collaborated with two other people on projects, and have worked well with them.

The most important thing in co-writing, after both of you being Christ-followers, is to share very similar theological beliefs and understanding. If these are too dissimilar, the final manuscript will be choppy and inconsistent in presentation of biblical truth throughout the book.

Practically speaking, there are a few things that help make the co-writing process work well.

• Pray for each other.
• Agree in advance who will write what portions.
• Leave your pride behind.
• Have the person with the most expertise in Word compile, make changes in, and maintain the combined document.
• Be sure to turn on “tracking” so it is easy to see what edits the other person made.
• Defend/explain why you think something you wrote should not be changed.
• Explain why you think something the other person wrote should be changed.
• Flexibility—be prepared for rewrites, edits, and delays.

As you work together, you read and edit each other’s work. The changes you each make in the other person’s writing will help give the book a more consistent writing style and presentation.

Finally, while there are portions of this process that can be tedious, like galley corrections, it is fun to work with another person. And, when you get stuck, they can help make suggestions that jump start your thought processes and make completing the piece easier.

Have fun and don't forget to laugh at yourself!

About the Author

Shirley Crowder is a biblical counselor and co-host of "Think on These Things," a Birmingham, Alabama, radio/TV program for women. She is commissioned by and serves on the national Advisory Team for, The Addiction Connection, and is the author of STUDY GUIDE ON PRAYER. Later this year, she'll be releasing a collection of devotions on prayer that she has co-authored with Harriet E. Michael. Learn more about Shirley at her Write Integrity Author Page.

Yoruba Proverb isn't Always True

by Harriet E. Michael

"Ogún ọmọdé kìí ṣeré ogún ọdún.”

This is a Yoruba proverb which translated into English says, “Twenty children cannot play together for twenty years.”

The Yoruba people are native to the country of Nigeria, West Africa where I was born and spent my childhood. They use proverbs often to explain the world around them. This proverb belongs to the category of “simple truth”—proverbs used to explain simple truths. It means people grow and make new friends. They move away and do not stay with the same group of people who were their childhood playmates. Some English expressions with the same meaning might be, “life goes on”, “times change and we must change with them”, or “nothing stays the same.”

Well, my group of childhood friends is the exception to this truth. Though we grew, changed, moved apart, and became very different individuals living in many different parts of the USA and even the world, we nonetheless managed to remain close friends. This unique group of individuals, who shared a common childhood in Nigeria in our beloved tropical homeland half a world away from where most of us live now, grew up calling each other’s parents aunt and uncle. Even as adults, we still feel a kindredship as though we are family—cousins perhaps.

One of my missionary cousins is Shirley Crowder. Some years ago, at a mission reunion, she handed me a book to which she had contributed. That was the first time I knew she was a writer. I don’t know when she discovered that I was a writer, too, but a few years ago, she suggested that we prayerfully consider writing a devotional book together. Through that experience, we learned that we work well together. We have similar views on scripture but different strengths when it comes to writing.

Since that first book, we have worked and continue to work together on other projects. She wrote a STUDY GUIDE to my book, PRAYER: IT'S NOT ABOUT YOU, and now we are working on two more books in our prayer series which will be released in the coming months by Write Integrity Press's nonfiction line, PixNPens.
So, I guess it could be said that I am once again “playing” with my childhood friend in spite of a lot more than twenty years having passed since we played together happily beneath the shade of mango trees.

About the Author:

Harriet E. Michael is a writer, gardener, wife of over 35 years, mother of four, and grandmother of one. Her first book with Pix-N-Pens Publishing, PRAYER: IT'S NOT ABOUT YOU, began an unexpected series she now calls the Prayer Project.

In coming months, this project will release its third book, a devotional on prayer. In 2018, she and her writing partner, Shirley Crowder, will release the final book, an anthology of prayer and the stories around them.

Learn more about Harriet and her books on her author page at WriteIntegrity.com.

NEW BEGINNINGS by Harriet Michael

Are you a morning person or a night one? I’m a morning person. I love mornings! They always beckon me with the promise of a new beginning. Mornings have a freshness to me as if they hold a secret promise of great things that might happen as the day unfolds.

Some years ago as I was researching and writing my book on prayer, I came across so many passages in the scripture where one Bible character or another rises early in the morning to do something God had called them to do that day, or to seek God in some way. Here are some examples, just to list a few:

Abraham rose early the day he planned to offer Isaac as a sacrifice according to Genesis 22:3. He rose early again the day after Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed and he hurried to a place where he could look down on the cities to see if they had been destroyed or not. (Genesis 19:27-28)

Joshua rose early to travel to the Jordon before he crossed over. (Joshua 3:1)

David rose early to obey his father Jesse and take supplies to his brothers in battle. (1 Samuel 17:20)

God instructed Moses to rise early when he was to stand before Pharaoh and tell him to let God’s people go. (Exodus 8:20)

… and on and on it goes. If you look for this pattern in the scripture, you will find it.

So, what’s the lesson here? Is this bad news for those of us who do not care so much for mornings and need a little time and maybe a cup of coffee before we can even begin to embrace the new day? I don’t think so. I don’t think the biblical point is to love mornings as much as it is to get on with whatever God has for you to do in life. In the Bible times, before electricity, if they were going to apply themselves in whatever action they felt God had asked of them, they’d better not waste any daylight; they better get on with it.

Today, doing what God has asked of you may require staying up late instead of rising early. But the point remains--embrace the day! Or rather, embrace what God is calling you to do, and get busy doing it, whether that means getting up early or sleeping late because you stayed up late the night before.

And since it is now January, the new beginning of a brand new year—embrace that too.

About the Author

Harriet Michael is the author of over 150 articles and devotions along with her recent release, PRAYER: IT'S NOT ABOUT YOU. Born on the mission field of Nigeria, she has a passion for the Lord and sharing His words.

You can learn more about Harriet at her author page on the Write Integrity Press website HERE, and buy her book in print or e-book HERE.

The Secret of My Birth by Harriet E. Michael

I had a very different childhood from many of you who. I was born in Nigeria, West Africa in the late 1950’s (yes, I’m that old, and I’m ok with it.) My memories of life in Africa are filled with running barefoot on hot days, the smell of the tropical rains, strange animals, that didn’t seem so strange at the time, and people with an assortment of skin colors pouring their love on me.

Joinkrama, where I was born, is located in what was then the Eastern Region of Nigeria but is today called “Rivers State” in the Niger River delta. Joinkrama is located in the small part of Nigeria that is in the tropical rain forest. It is an area of jungles. There were monkeys swinging in the trees outside of my house, elephants that occasionally tromped close enough to the village to be a danger to the villagers, and crocodiles in the river. The buildings were raised, for the occasions when the river overflowed its banks. It was in this remote part of the African jungle that I was born.

There are two stories about my birth …
One story has it that when my mother went in labor with me, she walked down a little jungle path to the hospital with my brother and sister in tow. According to this story, my father delivered me at the hospital and then sent us back to convalesce at home. My mother was sent home on a stretcher with me in her arms, carried by four men. Seeing us carried like that, the villagers assumed we had both died and began to weep and wail! Realizing what they thought, my mother quickly sat up, smiled, and waved so the people could see she was alive. Then, she lifted me up for them to see as well. The people’s weeping turned into dancing (literally) and they followed us home in a joyful procession! –that’s one story.

But my dad told me the other story when I was a little girl.
Daddy told me that the stork was on his way to London, England—to Buckingham palace—carrying in his beak the newest member of the royal family, a little princess. (Me, of course!) Unfortunately, he developed hiccups, just as he was flying in the airspace above Joinkrama. ... I don’t know where the stork lives, but apparently to get to London, it involves a trip over the Niger River delta. Overcome by one giant hiccup, the stork did something he had never done before—he dropped his bundle!

My father told me that he just happened to be walking home down that little jungle path when a bundle fell from the sky right into his arms! He said he knew immediately what had happened! …Now, my father never explained just how he knew all about the royal family, the stork’s hiccups, and so on, but my father is a man of integrity so I never doubted his story!
“So you see” my father would conclude, “You are really a princess!”

According to the Bible, I really am a princess!! I am a child of the King!
“The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God, and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with Him.” Romans 8:16-18

About the Author:

Born in Nigeria, West Africa, as the daughter of missionaries, Harriet Michael is a writer, gardener, wife of over 35 years, mother of four, and grandmother of one.

She holds a BS in nursing from West Virginia University but has discovered her passion for writing. Since her first published article in 2010, she now has over a hundred and fifty published articles and devotions.

Harriet is a member of American Christian Fiction Writers and Louisville Christian Writers. Her book, Prayer: It’s Not About You, a finalist in the 2011 Women of Faith book contest, is available at Amazon.

Follow her on:

Website: www.harrietemichael.com 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/harrietmichaelauthor

Blog: www.whatHehasdoneformysoul.blogspot.com

Road Trips: One She'll Never Forget

A Trip I’ll Never Forget

by Harriet Michael

Born in the jungles of the Niger River Delta, my memories of family road trips are filled with adventure. My parents were missionaries to Nigeria, West Africa in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. Road trips back then involved packing lunches, and drinks because there were no restaurants along the way. No, our roads had only bush, small villages, and more bush. Bush was the term for the Nigerian landscape.

Though we could sometimes fill our tanks with petrol, as it was called, the petrol stations did not have bathrooms. So, the bush was used for both our bathroom stops as well as lunch stops. But nothing is quite as wonderful as stopping along the side of a rural African road, parking under a lush tree, getting out of a hot car that had no air conditioning, and lunching on tomato sandwiches, peanuts, bananas, and cold Kool-Aid, from an ice chest. 

Most of my childhood road trips were hot. But there was one exception. Once when my father was traveling home from a preaching engagement with my little sister and me along for the ride; a rock from the dirt road flicked into our windshield. This was before the days of shatterproof glass and the rock shattered our windshield. Fearing glass would blow onto us as we traveled the rest of the way home, my dad stopped and carefully removed the entire windshield, one little piece at a time. 

This would have been a good idea, except for the fact that it was rainy season. Sure enough a sudden rain storm blew up and my father had to drive with the rain pouring in on him. He told my sister and me to get in the floor of the back seat so the front seats would partially block the incoming water. I remember thinking it was one of the grandest adventures I had ever experienced. My sister and I hunched down in the back, each behind a seat and giggled at each other as the water pooled at our feet. I don’t think it was as much fun for my poor dad though. He drove slowly on ahead in spite of the rain in his face. When we arrived home, we took warm baths and then my mom made hot cocoa. That too was an adventure! I had never had hot cocoa in Africa before ... or since.

****

Born in Nigeria, West Africa, as the daughter of missionaries, Harriet E. Michael is a writer, gardener, wife of over 35 years, mother of four, and grandmother of one.
She holds a BS in nursing from West Virginia University but has discovered her passion for writing. Since her first published article in 2010, she now has over a hundred and fifty published articles and devotions. 

Harriet is a member of American Christian Fiction Writers and Louisville Christian Writers. Her book, “Prayer: It’s Not About You,”a finalist in the 2011 Women of Faith book contest, is set for release in September, 2015 by Pix-N-Pens Publishing Company.

Follow her on:

Website
Facebook
Blog

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