How can I enrich my writing with details from the five senses?

When I studied Christian spirituality at Creighton University, I learned an ancient technique of meditation Ignatius of Loyola (16th century) called "contemplation."  Using the same technique, you can ponder your scene and enter into an imaginative experience from which you can gather compelling details.  The techniques I'm giving you below are geared for meditation of the events in the life of Jesus, but meditating on the event in your story that you wish to explore will also work.

St. Ignatius of Loyola taught a form of meditation with scripture he called contemplation.  It is a way of entering into a Gospel story and experiencing it as if you were there.  As a result, the story and the people in it, especially Jesus the Christ, come alive and interact with you.  The result can be transforming.

The imagination turns out to be a powerful way of knowing. Using this power that you have, you can pull together images or data that might seem to be worlds apart and make coherent sense of them. Great scientists and inventive technologists say that, after you’ve gotten all the information, then real knowing begins: you have to re-envision things, see them anew, differently. That demands imagination.

So you use this great God-given power in prayer. You are likely to have a common problem with this power: It is unruly. Our imagination turns to fantasy on the slightest provocation—leaving the real world behind and enjoying a never-never land. You probably know that the great religions have developed ways of taming and focusing the imagination, and some of their disciplines are aimed at that. Here is one proven way to focus your imagination in order to come to know, love, and follow Jesus better.

1. Read a gospel passage slowly.
2. Quiet yourself
3. Imagine an object in the scene
4. Enlarge your vision to things near the object and finally to the whole setting
5. Imagine the whole setting as vividly as possible
6. What kind of place is it? Clean or dirty? Large or small? What about the architecture? The weather? Time of day or night?
7. Let the whole scene come to life
8. See the people. What are they doing? How many people? How are they dressed? What are their concerns? What are they saying? What are they doing?
9. Enter the scene. What are you doing there? Why have you come to this place? What are your feelings as you survey the scene and watch these people? What are you doing? Do you speak to anyone? To whom?
10. Notice the central figure. Where in the crowd is this one? What do you say to this one? What do you ask? How does this one reply? Spend as much time as you can getting as many details of this one’s life and person as possible. What sort of an impression does this one make on you? What are your feelings while you converse with this one?
11. As you are speaking to this one, out of the corner of your eye, the Holy One approaches, (Jesus). What are the Holy One’s actions and movements. Where does this one go? How does this one act? What do you think the Holy One is feeling? What does the other say? How does the other respond? What happens?
12. Dwell on the Holy One. This Holy One turns to you, engages you in conversation. Talk to this one about what you have experienced. Ask any question you wish. Listen to the Holy One’s response.
13. What are your feelings?
14. Spend some time in quiet prayer with the Holy One.

Should You Self-Publish?

Generally publishers are not interested in a self-published book.  However, if you can be sure of selling 3,000 to 4,000 copies, you can show the publisher you have a market.  The people I know who have been successful at this sort of thing are very out-going, good marketers, self-promoting with high-energy. 

12 Reasons Agents Dump Your Book

Here are the most common reasons an agent puts down your book:
1.  It has a prologue which gives information that happened a significant time before Chapter 1.  Instead, make it Chapter 1.
2.  Descriptions go on and on without any action.  Instead, work descriptions into the story rather than having them stand alone.  Here's a good example from Frederick Buechner's, Telling Secrets:  "One night we went to compline in an Episcopal cathedral, and in the coolness and near emptiness of that great vaulted place, in the remoteness of the choir's voices chanting plainsong, in the grayness of the stone, I felt it again--the passionate restraint and hush of God."
3.  It has a ragged, fuzzy point of view.  Instead, have a series of significant, meaningful scenes, each moving the story forward to its conclusion.
4.  The opening is predictable.  Instead, start with something surprising, or a brand new way of expressing your idea, or a metaphor that is compelling and readers can easily relate to it.
5.  It begins with, "My name is...."
6.  Nothing happens in Chapter 1.
7.  The writing is full of cliches, time-worn patterns of speech; or the reader is led to believe one thing and then tricked, such as, in the last chapter the whole story turns out to have been a dream.
8.  The main character in Chapter 1 dies.
9.  The characters in the story are too perfect, no flaws, ... boring.
10. The writing has inauthentic dialogue.  No one really talks that way.
11. The story goes on and on and no plot is in sight.
12. All the information about the characters is dumped in the first few pages.  Instead, flesh out the characters over time in what they say, do or don't say or don't do.

If Asked For A Synopsis

If an agent or publisher finds your submission intriguing, they may ask you for a synopsis.  For the best chance of having yours read, make it one page of four to five paragraphs, although it could be as long as four pages.  The first paragraph should have a "hook," something as engaging as your opening scene.  The next paragraph or two
should contain a mixture of character sketches and why they are worth reading about, interlaced with the plot highlights.  Then the core conflict should be expressed.  Note that conflict can be between persons, a conflict of values within a character, and even conflict with the environment such as in a mountain-climbing story.  Finally, the conclusion of the tale needs to end the synopsis.  It is even better if you combine the explanation of the conflict and the conclusion in one paragraph.  While you may hesitate to tell the whole story in brief, giving away the ending, no self-respecting agent or publisher will bother with your synopsis if you don't give it to them.

Why I Disappeared for Two Weeks

How good it is to be on the recovery side of pneumonia!  What seemed to be nothing more than allergies turned into something very sinister.  Did you know you can have pneumonia and not have a fever?  Well, I just learned  you can. Thank God I'm attuned to my body and noticed that I'd taken a turn for the worse.  That got me in for a chest X-ray which confirmed the diagnosis. A bump on the road was confusion over medication.  My doctor prescribed doxycycline hyclate (dh), 100 mg.  The pharmacist declared that wouldn't help me heal from pneumonia.  The paper that came with the medicine warned that I mustn't take it with penicillin, but my doctor already had me on penicillin for a sinus infection.  Neither pharmacist nor doctor seemed to be able to help me understand just how to take the dh.  I was frazzled to say the least and feeling rotten anyway.  What to do?  I called my daughter who has "suffered much at the hands of many doctors" and she cleared it up right away--actually dh is often prescribed for pneumonia.  And, after getting clarification from my doctor, I could ignore the warnings on the paper the pharmacy gave me.  After the first dose I began to breathe easier, and now a week has passed and I'm back on my feet blogging, or is that back on my seat blogging???