#mechanicalism

Christianity is a strongly ethical faith. This does not, however, mean that Christianity is about a set of rules, in which Christians mechanically conform to a set of instructions [you can find that in the cults such as Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witnesses; other monotheistic religions such as Judaism or Islam, and the starkly in the practices of Eastern religions]. Rather, it is about a set of values which arises from being redeemed. [Alister E. McGrath]

Christians don’t achieve redemption or good standing with God by “being moral.” Rather, because they have been redeemed (forgiven and reconciled to God) by God’s grace through faith in Christ, they desire and strive to conform their [new, 2 Cor. 5:17] lives to divinely revealed moral values (Eph. 2:8-10; Titus 3:5-7).

Hi friend! Thanks for the ask! 🙂

I am very go with the flow and kind of messy with my drafting and outlining. For Bring the Gasoline, my rough draft was more of a "narrative outline". Sort of a bare bones account of what happened. I have a working outline for the story I update as I go, but it really only goes out a few chapters in meaningful detail, with the others as just mile markers summarized with a few bullets. The rest of it is in the rough draft and/or my brain. Outlining for me is sort of a back and forth thing. I take the sparse bullets from the outline, I put them in my chapter doc, I expand and write out each one, and then I go back to my outline and add more detailed bullets. It's a way for me to sort of check if I did what I set out to do in the chapter. Most of my chapters have 3 drafts, but some scenes or heavier chapters had 4-6. Chapter 8 of BtG had three from-the-ground-up rewrites of the entire thing, certain scenes went through more renditions, and I had some tweaking and polishing that happened before the final posted version. My one shot, Warm Bodies, had about four drafts that involved a fair amount of rewrites. Those two are probably the heaviest edited pieces I've written.

With BtG, the story has been in my head for so long, I really do have an outline even if it's not all bulleted out. For one shots, I usually have a concept, and just sort of see where the story takes me when I start typing. I'm definitely more of a pantser than a plotter overall.

Three things I associate with you:

- A FELLOW OT3ER!! I get so excited when I see someone else who shares the Deacon/Mac/SoSu ship 😭💜

-Quality blog and quality content for my faves. You're a bright spot on my dash 💜

Thank you for the ask!  I’m gonna answer the first one because I got another ask for 16, haha! 

11. Have they ever been arrested and why?