The Writer’s Stream

Sometime ago a magazine asked the Swiss theologian Karl Barth what he would do if in the light of past experiences he was only now beginning his work as a theological teacher.

Karl Barth graciously declined saying his method had never been to work to programs but rather his thinking and writing and speaking had issued from living encounters with people and conditions that spoke to him.

Barth said he felt like a man in a boat which must be rowed and steered diligently but which swims in a stream that he does not control. It glides along between new and often totally strange shores, carrying him toward the goal set for him, goals which he sees and chooses only as he approaches them. He said, “As I see it now, my theological career has been a succession of present moments.”  ~Geoff Pound

HT: Stories for Speakers and Writers

One of this Generation’s Best Writers on Writing

“Let’s get one thing clear right now, shall we? There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers; good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky: two previously unrelated ideas come together and make something new under the sun. Your job isn’t to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up.”

“When you write a story, you’re telling yourself the story…When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story.”

“I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs, and I will shout it from the rooftops.”

“I’m convinced that fear is at the root of most bad writing.”

“Words create sentences; sentences create paragraphs; sometimes paragraphs quicken and begin to breathe. Imagine if you like, Frankenstein’s monster on its slab. Here comes lightening, not from the sky but from a humble paragraph of English words. Maybe it’s the first really good paragraph you wrote, something so fragile and yet full of possibility that you are frightened. You feel as Victor Frankenstein must have when the dead conglomeration of sewn-together spare parts suddenly opened its watery yellow eyes. Oh my God, it’s breathing, you realize. Maybe it’s even thinking. What in hell’s name do I do next?”

“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. …If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. …Description is what makes the reader a sensory participant in the story. Good description is a learned skill, one of the prime reasons why you cannot succeed unless you read a lot and write a lot. It’s not just a question of how-to, you see; it’s also a question of how much to. Reading will help you answer how much, and only reams of writing will help you with the how. You can learn only by doing.”

“Some of this book—perhaps too much—has been about how I learned to do it. Much of it has been about how you can do it better. The rest of it—and perhaps the best of it—is a permission slip: you can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will. Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink. Drink and be filled up.”

“You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or even despair–the sense that you can never completely put on the page what’s in your mind and heart. You can come to the act with your fists clenched and your eyes narrowed, ready to kick ass and take down names. You can come to it because you want a girl to marry you or because you want to change the world. Come to it any way but lightly. Let me say it again: you must not come lightly to the blank page.”

~Quotes from Stephen King, in his book, “On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft”

Source: Wikiquote

A First Wednesday In March

Another guest post from my talented brother John.  I have re-read this five times since he emailed it to me late last evening and I am still thinking about the truths throughout.

Final night of a five-day trip to Geneva. It is raining. I have reason to be grateful: I brought my raincoat and umbrella 4,100 miles and they will see some action. Everything has meaning, relevance. The raincoat and umbrella? We all carry baggage… may that which we carry be on us for a reason.

I have packed and loaded many journeys with unnecessary baggage: With a pair of shoes I was too lazy to use; books I hadn’t had the time to read. One time, I took a laptop to Paris and didn’t bother to remember the power chord.

This time, I managed to pack a single oxford shirt that I didn’t need. A few measly ounces of unneeded baggage. I can live with that.

There are other lessons in this rainy evening. My journey, rather, my destination. I didn’t have one when I set out. I had a goal, but no clear view of what achievement looked like. I just wanted an hour or two to run away from the hotel room that had become my eight-hour office after I had already completed my eight-hour day. I needed to use the raincoat and umbrella. I needed to eat.

I walked past pizzerias and pubs, Chinese and Italian. The Four Seasons was packed with cigars and suits, and scotch. It smelled like the life I’m scrambling away from.

I stumbled upon a decidedly Swiss, decidedly local hole in the wall. A beautiful black woman, glowing and towering, greeted me. I put my index finger in the air and she asks me “one?” But in French. The menu, as well, is in French.

And life is like this. An American in Switzerland in March with no socks with his jeans and v-neck, stabbing his eyes into the jibberish on the menu. Squinting for the familiar. “Fromage” marches into view. I know that one. I Google a few more on my blackberry and come to decide on the second item. It turns out I have asked for an orange fondue pot, and a side kettle of little oval potatoes that at first look like sausages. And bread.

I was afraid things wouldn’t be this simple. When I first tried to order just a glass of water to drink, I had nearly led this woman to the brink of insanity.

“Water.”

“Biere?”

“No. Water. Vasa, Agua.” I don’t know how to say water in French. “Wa-ter. Phsssh,” I say, making a wavy motion with my hand.

”Vodka?”

“No. Water.”

She waves me back to the kitchen and bar area, where bottles of wine, soda, beer, liquor greet me. I turn on the faucet.

“Water,” she says. She brings me a 12-ounce bottle of something called Henniez. Gas bubbles suction themselves to the inside of the glass. It’s taken me years to figure out the simple truth that although it will be harder for me to get to sleep on unassuming beverages like Henniez, it will be a hell of a lot easier for me to get up in the morning.

Drinking this water, looking at this food – it translates a message that had long been unreadable for me. We spend our lives scraping away things we don’t understand, as if we are digging for dinosaur bones in a giant desert, only to decipher little chards of the familiar. And so, the potatoes, the bread, the pot of boiling cheese. It is amazing what we can accomplish with the aid of even the faintest sliver of light in the most dark and mammoth of caves. We get a pot of fondue on a rainy night. Or salvation.

I think about the thousands of people who have stumbled into this restaurant, drunk on something liquid or emotional, and failed to notice the cows. Check that – goats and cows. They are all over, and yet, for the first thirty minutes of my stay, they were nowhere. Silent. I sat at my table, eating these potatoes and bread and cheese and started to notice them at my table, lining the sides, wagging their thin little shreds of tail, even as they remained still. First, the cows, painted in a line around the perimeter of the table, came into view in a single file like they are being led off to be milked, or slaughtered. Little furry factories of cheese, and filet mignon.

I ignored them at first, having been so occupied by the task of ordering water and stabbing at the menu. But now, alone with my thoughts and pad, I notice they have invaded the place. The walls are two-tone temples to cows. The top half is plaster painted a splotchy yellow, very Sante Fe or Tuscany. As if someone threw a million sponges dipped in mustard against a white wall. The bottom half is wainscoting, painted black and white cow print. Was it really that subtle that it took me thirty minutes to notice? I also missed the upside down fondue pots, also dressed in cowprint, hanging on chains and serving as single-bulb chandeliers. I also missed the goat figurines on the built-in bookshelves. The goats are wearing sweaters and seem to be imitating people. C.S. Lewis. Charles Darwin. Arnold Palmer. Frank Sinatra. And I missed the quarter-scale goat that sits on a shelf three feet from my head.

Amazing, in five days leading up to my meal here, I was thinking about this moment. The ripping open of my chest and the digging out of words that my heart housed in a shroud of hurry and task. Amazing, I was afraid of what I would find. And yet, what I found, was nothing but what is present. Simple. Those of us who live pensive lives, pregnant with thought, composing prose in our minds, cannot really control what we find upon the evacuation of our hearts. Like a man who practices how he will propose to his love, only to forget what he wrote on that wrinkled paper and instead spills out a reservoir of passion as he cries and asks for her hand, the contents of our heart are only known when they finally hit the page.

~John D. Stoll

if it’s rules you are looking for

Besides the fact that Mark Twain sported a pretty cool mustache, he was a damn good writer.  In his essay, The Literary Offenses of James Fenimore Cooper, he lays out the following:

1. A tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere.

2. The episodes of a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help develop it.

3. The personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others.

4. The personages in a tale, both dead and alive, shall exhibit a sufficient excuse for being there.

5. When the personages of a tale deal in conversation, the talk shall sound like human talk, and be talk such as human beings would be likely to talk in the given circumstances, and have a discoverable meaning, also a discoverable purpose, and a show of relevancy, and remain in the neighborhood of the subject in hand, and be interesting to the reader, and help out the tale, and stop when the people cannot think of anything more to say.

6. When the author describes the character of a personage in his tale, the conduct and conversation of that personage shall justify said description.

7. When a personage talks like an illustrated, gilt-edged, tree-calf, hand-tooled, seven-dollar Friendship’s Offering in the beginning of a paragraph, he shall not talk like a Negro minstrel at the end of it.

8. Crass stupidities shall not be played upon the reader by either the author or the people in the tale.

9. The personages of a tale shall confine themselves to possibilities and let miracles alone; or, if they venture a miracle, the author must so plausibly set it forth as to make it look possible and reasonable.

10. The author shall make the reader feel a deep interest in the personages of his tale and their fate; and that he shall make the reader love the good people in the tale and hate the bad ones.

11. The characters in tale be so clearly defined that the reader can tell beforehand what each will do in a given emergency.

An author should…

12. Say what he is proposing to say, not merely come near it.

13. Use the right word, not its second cousin.

14. Eschew surplusage.

15. Not omit necessary details.

16. Avoid slovenliness of form.

17. Use good grammar.

18. Employ a simple, straightforward style.

one of a kind

…if you enjoyed the Anne Lamott interview, you are sure to enjoy one of the best writers of our generation—Philip Yancey.

be your creative best—part 5

A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.   -G.K. Chesterton

      

Look for a story.  Stories have the power to change lives. 

For years now I have been scratching out notes every chance I get.  As a result, I have a dumpster full of notes I carry around with me every where I move.  People often ask me when they catch me writing away, What are you doing?—especially when I scribble all over the palm of my hand because I don’t have a notepad handy.  I’ve borrowed more scratch paper than an average household uses in a life-time. 

I’m constantly on the lookout for a good story.  

I have read wonderfully written books that are entirely unsatisfactory to me because I do not believe that the author was writing a story. The author was writing a book. There is a great difference.   -Kaitlyn Ramsey        

I’d say we get too hung up on finding the story, as if it were hiding—when there are countless stories waiting to be told if we’d only open our eyes and see them. 

One of modern day literature’s most prolific and genius writers died on the twelth of September—he was 46 years young.  David Foster Wallace was tormented for nearly twenty years by depression and ended his pain by hanging himself at his home in Claremont, California—only to be found by his wife of four years.  Tragic story.  The NY Times described Wallace as a writer [who] mapped the mythic and the mundane.  I’d like to think of myself in those terms, a writer who unwraps incredible insights within the most ordinary of circumstances. 

To often however, it’s the extraordinary we either botch up or shrink down to bite sized pieces.  

Wallace was a crafty storyteller, and it was largely his hunger for finding a story that set him heads and shoulders above his peers.  He is quoted as saying, We’re not keen on the idea of the story sharing its valence with the reader.  And maybe that helps to explain our hesitancy to use story in our writing.  We’d rather spout off our opinions about a story or write a dissertation about the lessons to be learned from a story—rather than simply tell a story.  

Are we are afraid our readers may take it the wrong way?  You may remember that people misunderstood Jesus, but he didn’t throw in the towel on the art of storytelling.  I’ve had several folks give me a hard time about sharing stories that extol the wonders of God’s grace—they’ve said I’m giving people the wrong idea and that people will abuse grace if you share it too much.  We share it too little really, people will abuse anything they want to abuse.  So I won’t stop talking about grace just because a few religious types get all bent out of shape. 

We need to tell our stories despite the naysayers.          

Tune out the noise and get found in your writing.  You have to listen to write anything of value.  

Getting quiet is imperative when it comes to listening.  And great writers have learned the science of not only listening well—but of listening to the sounds that count.  Wonder and beauty and mystery aren’t always hanging out in the broad day light.  We have to peek around in the shadows, the margins, and the back rooms if we are going to uncover it.  It’s nearly impossible to develop any kind of narrative when you are steeped up to your eyeballs in the details of every day living.  You have to unplug.  Go sit out in a field if you have to.  

If any man wish to write in clear style, let him first be clear in his thoughts; if any would write in noble style, let him first possess a noble soul.    -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Ernest Hemingway’s friend and long time fishing partner, Gregorio Fuentes, had this to say about Hemingway’s inspiration for one of his most famous works (The Old Man and the Sea)—When we went to sea, we found the old man and the sea. We found him adrift on a little boat with a big fish tied there… 

It is imperative that we find our own sea, whatever it may be.

We must learn to crowd everything that distracts us.

Devote yourself to your holy must.  If writing isn’t flowing through your veins and taking up space in your brain—it isn’t for you.  Get out while the gettin’ is good and do yourself a favor.  Save yourself the thankless hours invested and the gray hairs and the endless pots of coffee and the sleepless nights.  Find your passion—what you excel at, what you can’t live without.  And if you are gonna stick it out as a writer, some good questions to ask yourself are obvious ones: What will I write about?  What is it that I have written about that has most enlivened me?  What is it that I most wish to say and if I don’t say it, will most regret not having done so? 

Write about those things.

Just like an uncaged bird has little capacity in his life for anything that doesn’t include flying—so it is for the serious writer when it comes to writing.  Good writing is rarely the byproduct of a mere hobby. 

You can have so many irons in the fire that you can’t keep any hot. 

One desire has been the ruling passion of my life.  One high motive has acted like a spur upon my mind and soul.  And sooner should I seek escape from the sacred necessity that is laid upon me, let the breath of life fail me…   -Abraham Kuyper

Can we say that writing is a sacred necessity for us—a holy must?

 

Let me close this short series of posts by stating that what I have shared certainly didn’t come to me on my own—I have much credit to pass along but wouldn’t even begin to know where to start.

be your creative best—part 4

Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.   -C.S. Lewis

 

Be humble enough to be teachable.  You don’t know it all.  You may be as gifted as anyone and you might work your tail off when it comes to preparation—but even you can be better.

It never ceases to startle me when a fellow writer can tell (with such ease) the rest of us how much we stink.  There’s nothing like a haughty writer who wants to show off his acumen while showing up someone who may not be as far along.  Disgusting I tell you.  Insecurity sure breeds ugliness.  So few of us lend a hand to one another, but we sure are quick to step over one another.  Why can’t we be in this together?  Surely there’s room for the both of our contributions.  You don’t have to like or appreciate my style or content—but we can respect one another.  

The older I get the more I realize the validity of the fact that the less I know, the smarter I become.  I don’t write fiction, but that’s not to say I can’t learn from someone who writes the stuff.  As I study writers who are and were the best in class I am only challenged to raise my own game.  

I’ve found the really tricky discipline to writing is trying to play without getting overcome by insecurity or vanity or ego.   -David Foster Wallace 

There is a story that goes something like this—This guy’s strolling down the street when he stumbles and falls into a manhole with walls so steep he can’t get out.  A doctor passes by, and the guy shouts up, Hey you, can you help me out?  The doctor writes a prescription, throws it down in the hole and moves on.  Then a priest comes along, and the guy shouts up, Father, I’m down in this hole.  Can you help me out?  The priest writes a prayer, throws it down in the hole and moves on.  Then a friend walks by and the guy excitedly shouts up, Hey, Joe, it’s me.  Can you help me out?  And the friend jumps in the hole.  The guy says, Are you nuts?  Now we’re both down here.  The friend says, Yeah, but I’ve been down here before—and I know the way out. 

Learn from the masters—they have wisdom to impart. 

Incorporate your every day life into your writing.  Without experience we have nothing to give our readers. 

My favorite person in the bible is David—with Jesus as the lone exception.  I relate with David on several fronts, but my partiality concerning David comes down to this: He is real, raw, unpackaged and he lived life wide open.  He’s what I consider to be an every day guy—and that despite his being a king, a giant-killer, and a man after God’s own heart (that, according to God).  And despite all of that, David’s story is about his ordinary life—his time in hiding, his time on the run, his time as the hunted, his time with his kids, his time with friends, his time in battle, his time in prayer, and his time in bed with another man’s wife.  David lived an expansive life and in turn he was able to write fully (take a peek at the Psalms if you don’t think so). 

David’s personal journey was a story at every turn.

The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.   -Augustine

Our own lives are books in a sense and those of us who do not live our lives only have blank pages with nothing to write on them.

Pay close attention to your life.

Make honesty your policy.  Being transparent with our readers takes work—it can be like pulling teeth for some of us.  One of the things I most respect about the writers I follow is their willingness to let their hair down.  The point isn’t to be self-depreciating (although it works for some)—the idea here is to tell on yourself from time to time. 

I know a number of pastors, I have met a good many and sat under the ministry of several.  My favorite, Dr. Richard Alberta (Brighton Michigan), is a bit of a know-it-all, but he can sure let the cat out of the bag on a dime when it comes to what he is really like.  And due to this transparency and willingness to be vulnerable, you just can’t help but appreciate him all over again every time he lets you in on another secret of his. 

Now, don’t mistake what I am trying to express here as the equivalent of airing out all of your dirty laundry.  That is not what I am promoting.

There is something else which has the power to awaken us to the truth. It is the works of writers of genius. They give us, in the guise of fiction, something equivalent to the actual density of the real, that density which life offers us every day but which we are unable to grasp because we are amusing ourselves with lies.   -Simone Weil 

Tell the story as it is, not as you wish it were. 

We do our readers an injustice by not leveling with them and by portraying a make believe world if you ask me.  If it is relief from the pressures and stresses of life that we can provide for our readers for a moment or two, as well as some perspective—we will have reached our goal in some regards.  But if it is escape from reality we offer—we give them no hope at all.   

Don’t tone down your writing in the name of God—the bible isn’t a sanitized book for goodness sakes!  I am not suggesting you be crass or vulgar, but I am saying we need more transparent writers today.  And while we are on the topic of honesty—don’t take yourself too seriously. 

Be sure you can demonstrate some genuine humility if you want to be any kind of a reputable and respectable writer.  

Be bold and speak truth—even when it stings to do so.

More to come in part 5.

be your creative best—part 3

Write everyday, line by line. Page by page. Hour by hour. Do it despite fear, for above all else, beyond imagination and skill. What the world asks of you is courage. Courage to risk rejection, ridicule and failure. As you follow the quest for stories told with meaning and beauty. Study thoughtfully, but write boldly. Then like the hero in the fable, your dance will dazzle the world.   -Robert McKee     

  

Use your God given imagination.  Jesus had an imagination.  Just a casual glance at his countless parables and constant use of imagery bears this out.  Jesus spoke the language of the people he hung out with.  I figure the least I can do is follow his example if I am going to talk about him. 

Merriam-Webster defines imagination as the act or power of forming a mental image of something not present to the senses.  Being imaginative requires stepping outside of the box and drawing a picture our readers can identify with.  If we hope to gain an audience it begins by being unique.  I write about Jesus and every once in a while a reader will comment to me that they find my writing unchurchy and not awful religious.  In other words—I don’t strike them as typical or predictable.  Well, I try darn hard not to be either.  I spent a few years on staff at a church and I went to as straight-laced of a bible school for my training as you will find.  It’s taken work to exterminate the Christianeze from my vocabulary.  My readers can do without the shalt not’s and beseech thee’s—modern day English is permissible.  

Now, some might accuse me of watering down an ancient message or of tinkering with timeless truths—let them say so.  They might even call me a heretic for being halfway innovative.   An ageless message isn’t made any less potent by being made contemporary.  We can be creative and faithful.  We can talk about salvation without speaking in King James.  We don’t have to alter Jesus to be relevant.  I just refuse to re-tell the stories using tired and worn out religious lingo and jargon.  And no, Velvet Elvis isn’t on my list of book favorites (not even close—I found the book extremely disappointing actually).

An author should never conceive himself as bringing into existence beauty or wisdom which did not exist before, but simply and solely as trying to embody in terms of his own art some reflection of eternal Beauty and Wisdom.   -C.S. Lewis, Christianity and Literature

Imagination can be confused with being inconclusive.  For my fellow writers who are Christians, this can be something we fear—not giving the right answers.  Well, I would submit that it’s less answers we need to give and more of Jesus we need to lift up.  We can be imaginative while not becoming wishy-washy.  It’s okay to not spell every last detail out—Jesus was fond of making his listeners do a little thinking.

Be imaginative and refuse to fall into familiar ruts.

Imagine before you sit down to write.  

Courage is not recklessness.  Being courageous means getting outside of yourself but somehow remaining within.  

Being different just to be different or being wild just to get attention isn’t to be mistaken for being creative/imaginative—recklessness isn’t to be confused with courage.  A writer who makes any kind of impact has to be courageous.  It takes guts to speak the truth, make folks laugh, and speak to hearts. Writer’s who never risk never amount to anything.  Be prepared to get a rejection notice, or a thousand of them.  Your toes are gonna get stepped on and maybe even your neck.  If you can’t develop thick skin it’s gonna be a painful ride.  From Herman Melville to Edgar Allen Poe, legendary authors have continually had their greatest works shot down before they ever got off the ground.  Anne Frank (The Diary of Anne Frank) received the following love letter in response to her work—The girl does not, it seems to me, have a special perception on feeling which would lift that book above the curiosity level. 

You can’t roll over and cry Uncle! the first time you get your feelings hurt—instead, roll up your sleeves and go back to the drawing board.

Never let the fear of striking out get in your way.   -Babe Ruth

Courage isn’t the absence of fear Twain once quipped. 

I’d say courage is going anyways.

Originality or bust.  I’d venture to guess that Frederick Buechner never set out to become the next G.K. Chesterton.

There has already been one Shakespeare—no one needs another.  All someone has to do is go pick up one of his classics if they want to read the best when it comes to Shakespeare.  You can’t compete with an original.  You can merely be one.  I have several writers I admire tremendously and even those I emulate in a sort of way, but to attempt to imitate any other writer is my undoing.  Frauds are found out eventually.  No one much cares for a copy-cat anyways—I mean a single Michael Jackson was plenty enough.  Michael Jordan you say?—as cool as a second MJ might have been, another one would have been overkill. 

To learn from others and follow some principles that others have passed along is fine and dandy, it can serve most helpful.  I have spent over a decade in sales.  My own father is one of the best sales professionals I have ever met.  I also did time in sales management, so I have seen a few seasoned pros. 

What I have noticed about my dad over the years is that he is not afraid to be himself.  He refuses to be any one else—he’s made being the best he can be, his craft if you will.  And he can be a little odd (I like to say that normal is a setting on your dryer).  He grows tomatoes outside his office window by the entrance to the store he works at (something no one else he works with would dare think of doing).  He wears some ties that make his shirts scream in disgust.  The knit stocking caps he wears to work during the winter couldn’t make the Farm and Fleet annual catalog.  And to top it off, he can’t spell two words correctly in a row.  But one thing my dad is if he is anything: Original.  His customers love him and have continued to drive across town to see him year after year, decade after decade.

Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that. Don’t be impressed with yourself. Don’t compare yourself with others. Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life.  -Galatians 6:4-5, The Message Bible   

I find that I write my most striking and unconventional stuff when I am simply and unapologetically me.  Some people may find me as interesting as a mid-term exam, I have learned to accept that.  I’m not about to start trying to be anyone else to gain some token approval.

Refuse to try and be someone you are not.

Be you and don’t apologize.

More to come in part 4.

be your creative best—part 2

You would think the community that is convinced that its origin is in the Word made flesh that finds its text for living in the written word, that constantly uses words in preaching and teaching, would hold writers in high esteem…      

But all of you know, to your chagrin, that with very few exceptions, it doesn’t happen.   -Eugene H. Peterson

 

You are an artist, not a grave digger.  Digging graves can’t take all that much creativity really.  Being a writer demands it. 

You can’t expect to capture let alone mesmerize a single reader without a fair share of the stuff that makes life, let alone story—interesting.  And if it is an audience you want to reach, well, you’ll need more than a teaspoon full.  I enjoy watercolors and have purchased an original or two over the years.  One of my teenage daughters is a pretty gifted painter.  I am no painter myself, but I undertand the basics.  A good painter uses variation—colors, depths, and tones to set the mood.  More or less—expression.  A talented painter has a mess of colors all over the place and uses them all at once. 

We live among a generation that is bombarded virtually every waking second in one way or another with textures and visuals of every shape, flavor, and size.  We may not compete with Hollywood when it comes to special effects—but we can be smart.  We don’t have to be drab.  The world is full of words, and throwing together some snazzy lines or assembling a couple crazy paragraphs isn’t going to cut it.  That’s the simple task.  We need to be forever creative. 

You have to be creative for more than a moment—it takes more than stringing a few electric words together to write a good piece.  You can lose your reader faster than you ever got her. Pixar co-founder Ed Catmull shared the following a couple weeks back with the Harvard Business Review—and while he shared it about the roll creativity plays in a motion picture studio involving hundreds of creators, how much more we should heed the advice as one single writer (Pixar is no small player when it comes to creative films—i.e., Toy Story). 

Creativity must be present at every level of every artistic and technical part of the organization. The leaders sort through a mass of ideas to find the ones that fit into a coherent whole—that support the story—which is a very difficult task. It’s like an archaeological dig where you don’t know what you’re looking for or whether you will even find anything. The process is downright scary.     

Being creative as a writer is your life-line—and as Donald Miller puts it, you have the freedom to do so.

It’s not enough to make it a priority to relate with your reader—you have to be artistic as well. 

Make every word count.  Words should pack a punch, soften a blow, and do everything in between.  You have to select the right ones if you want to land your message.  The witty Mark Twain—Use the right word, not it’s second cousin, and, The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.  

Any pretender can write a little.  It takes a contender to go twelve rounds.  Grabbing the attention of a few readers is swell, but the question is—Can you keep it once you earn it?  Can you say something that continues to resonate—something that is useful, meaningful, moving, unique, and even beautiful in it’s own way?  

…I started to sense that words not only convey something, but are something; that words have color, depth, texture of their own, and the power to evoke vastly more than they mean; that words can be used not merely to make things clear, make things vivid, make things interesting and whatever else, but to make things happen inside the one who reads them and hears them.   -Frederick Buechner, The Sacred Journey (p.68)   

The words you choose matter.

Refuse to save the china for a special occasion.  A grave mistake we make is holding back.  You have one chance to make an intitial big splash—don’t make it a thump.  The piece you write today might be your break tomorrow, don’t make it your death notice. 

Come out at the onset and write your best stuff.  If you don’t use the china now you may never get the opportunity again.

When you write––explode––fly apart––disintegrate! Then give time enough to think, cut, rework, and rewrite.   -Ray Bradbury

If you have the ability to hit it out of the park—don’t wait till the next time you come up up the plate.  The game could be done and over by your next turn up to bat.  There is absolutely no crazy reason (let alone sane one) to skip putting your best foot forward right out of the gate.  Your title, opening line, first paragraph—they need to arrest something within your reader.  If you can’t make an impressive first impression to begin with you certainly won’t get a second chance.  How many television programs have you passed on because you weren’t pulled in?  You just flipped the channel and found something more interesting (I am dating myself here).  How many movies have you had to see because the trailer reached out and grabbed you?—colossal flop or not. 

An extraordinary opening lets your reader know you mean business.  Give your reader permission to take your writing seriously by taking it seriously yourself (not to be mistaken for taking yourself seriously).  You don’t go to a dance to sit, unless you aren’t a dancer—what’s the point of going?  If you aren’t going to take off the gloves, masks, and anything else you need to take off to write something worthy of your readers time—save it.

Write like you mean it—put it in the right field seats.

Start strong and finish well.    

More to come in part 3.

be your creative best—part 1

You have creative license—you have freedom.  -Donald Miller   

 

When I was a ninety-eight pound junior higher I decided I’d try my hand at writing.  I was already a pretty decent baseball player by that time and had a firm handle on public speaking, so I figured writing might be up my alley.  My young writing career was short-circuited by my freshman year in high school and I can’t quite tell you why other than the fact that I was pretty much a derelict student.

I now think I have a hint as to why I dropped out so easily after taking journalism and getting involved with the squirrely yearbook club—I found writing as formal, dull, dry, and boring as the stingy-legalistic church I was drug to Sunday after Sunday.  It wasn’t fun.  It had no sex appeal.  The rules sucked the life out of it for me.  At least in sports you could be creative and stay within the rules.  

To me, writing was for students who had no zest and no drive—I didn’t get it.  

Writing was downright dreadful.  

Writing, and more specifically—creative writing—has become of interest to me again.  I have spent the last several years toying around with ideas for a book and I blog like a freak.  For weeks now I have been tossing around this post and it hasn’t been a lack of time that has hindered me—I just have been too lazy to carve out the time necessary for this (although, this post needed to ruminate for more than an afternoon).  Of late, I have taken in a little Eugene Peterson (which is quite customary), I am currently reading Frederick Buechner’s Sacred Journey for the second time, and the other day I listened to Donald Miller on the desperate need for employing great story/narrative—all three writers, legends in my mind.

Needless to say, I have been building a case as I have been reading—and listening to my own thoughts as to what it is I wish to say in regards to some of my takes on what constitutes a good piece of writing.

When given the choice—take the narrow road.  I was rummaging through a blog tonight about writing and I was struck by the author’s zeal for Stephen King’s material as well as for Stephen King the writer.  King had made such a lasting impression on the blogger (Maclean Patrick), that I got the feeling he was gearing up to launch a new fan website.  Patrick more or less praised King’s keen ability to flesh out a story and bring it to life, and he was going on about King’s ability to properly break the rules and be most effective in doing so (I suppose it stands to reason that the best rule-breakers are those who know a fair amount about the rules to begin with). 

Patrick concludes, Study the craft and then break the norm, make it your art-form and I bet you would develop into a unique writer of your own.  Sound advice I’d say.

…Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. 

-Robert Frost

Great writers, like great leaders, must go it alone if they want to go at all.  And if you want to be a writer you better plan on missing out on a few things—cause you will. 

Writing can be a lonely occupation.

Find out what makes your readers tick.  I relate with folks who are more apt to remember their morning coffee than their 6am prayer ritual.  You could easily say I am from the wrong side of the tracks spiritually. I write for those who feel patronized, marginalized, disenfranchised, and ostracized, shoved aside, looked past, forgotten, and even demonized by religious folks.  It could it be my lack of schooling or my mixed bag of denominational pedigree that is to blame.  I attended a bible college instead of a full fledged seminary.  I have been a rebellious Nazarene, a zealous charismatic, and a misfit Presbyterian.  My time in the pastorate was short lived as I sensed a need to provide for my own family and I have struggled to forgive myself for not trusting God more.  I have played the prodigal and never have been able to make up for it, much to the chagrin of those who wanted me to pay (which by the way, God doesn’t require that we make up for).  I have been the consummate outsider, and frankly, I have been treated like one at times (but don’t feel sorry for me, I have treated others far worse).  I write to let others know that it’s okay to have these feelings of inferiority, Jesus receives us irregardless.

Lewis has taught me a style of approach that I try to follow in my own writings. To quote William James, “… in the metaphysical and religious sphere, articulate reasons are cogent for us only when our inarticulate feelings of reality have already been impressed in favor of the same conclusion.” In other words, we rarely accept a logical argument unless it fits an intuitive sense of reality. The writer’s challenge is to nurture that intuitive sense—as Lewis had done for me with his space trilogy before I encountered his apologetics. Lewis himself converted to Christianity only after sensing that it corresponded to his deepest longings, his Sehnsucht.

Lewis’s background of atheism and doubt gave him a lifelong understanding of and compassion for readers who would not accept his words. He had engaged in a gallant tug of war with God, only to find that the God on the other end of the rope was entirely different from what he had imagined. Likewise, I had to overcome an image of God marred by an angry and legalistic church. I fought hard against a cosmic bully only to discover a God of grace and mercy.   -Philip Yancey in Christianity Today (How C.S. Lewis shaped my faith and writing) 

And if you have read any amount of Yancey, you know he writes from this vantage point.  It is tough to connect with those you least understand.  Write from a position of commonality—i.e., a place of brokenness (and strangely the weakness here is instead a strength).  

If you can’t reach your audience you won’t reach anyone.

More to come in part 2.