Let Us Be Deliberate

 Getting sliced open for spine surgery is much like Adams’ experience in Eden. You both are put to sleep not knowing what waits for you post-op.  You both wake with less bone. Adam gets the perfectly paired partner and you got eight titanium screws. The big picture outcome for both operations is a flourishing life.

No nature or nurture debate for these two. The opportunity for Adam and Eve was for exponential development. Basking in God and nature the world was theirs. They could be their full selves. We on the other hand (thanks in part to those two) struggle to integrate soul and spirit. Increasing in soul formation and personal flourishing is always a battle.

“We plow the fields and scatter the good seed on the land,’ is a chorus from Godspell. The ground for growth is always available. The internal decision to flourish or atrophy (life on cruise control is an illusion) is one made minute by minute. I’m entering into a season of that choice now. Some days I don’t work the croft and the crop suffers.

In the face of death let us be deliberate. The seasons come with challenge; children, money, sickness, depression, celebrations, birthdays and weddings. Flourishing means showing up for surgery. Searching for openings and walking through them. Per Pressfield,  “We have a job to do, a calling to enact, a self to become.”

Photo by Wim van 't Einde on Unsplash

Shooting For Fame Completely Misses The Mark

Chariots Of Fire from Anchorsaway Ministries on Vimeo.

I’m never going to be a famous writer.  But the idea of fame completely misses the mark.  It. Is. Not. Even. Close.  I won’t be famous because I won’t leave my life and live out of a car ( a la Steven Pressfield) with only essentials and a lap-top to spend all my time typing up stories and writing my first novel.  I won’t be an Annie Dillard stealing away to a cabin for a year to write.  So many authors have stories like this.  But I confuse the act for the art.  I miss the heart of the writer which is the reason they break away.  The art drives them.

My search for a Pressfield quote led me back to The War of Art.  I am reminded; the art is the most important thing.  I write to write.  I’ve been writing since junior high school (a poem was a great way to sway a girl to go out with you).  Through junior high and high school I kept a journal.  I am compelled to put pen to paper, a need to process and synthesize life with ink. 

The struggle is to make time for family, and bills, and all the life interruptions while still writing.  This is where I feel I’m not dedicated or disciplined enough.  I choose other things over writing.  One doesn’t become a famous writer without writing.

Its not about fame.  Its about creating.  God is a creator.  We are created in His image.  Using what we’re given blesses Him that gave it.  Through my writing others come alive!  The pursuit of fame is a dead end.  Pleasure is the right pursuit.  I am reminded of two quotes from the film, “Chariots of Fire.” 

Harold Abrahams: If I can't win, I won't run!Sybil Gordon: If you won't run, you can't win.”  
Eric Liddell: I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run I feel His pleasure.”  

I choose pleasure and hope you are lifted along as well.

NaNoWriMo- 3 Things I Learned

“Like a body rising to the surface from great watery depths so Kendall began to wake up,” is one of my favorite lines I wrote for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) this year.  The challenge is to write a small novel, 50,000 words or greater.  I wrote 25,000 words; my first attempt at a lengthy story.  My novella is called, “The Making of Clay,” and it follows Clay and his wife Kendall through a character arc involving fracking, kidnapping, OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), guns, drugging, and a small deli.  In the process of writing for NaNoWriMo I learned (at least) 3 things.

           

Writing is hard work.  It’s a cliché for a reason.  On the one hand the process is engaging, engrossing, challenging and soul-stirring.  The meat of the process involves hammering out a story with plot, characters and setting---all that stuff we learned about in elementary school.  For myself that part of the process was the most difficult.  For example at one point I had all the characters established along with how they were connected to each other.  The problem was that the storyline necessitated them coming together.  I wrestled for days before I came up with a device that would motivate them to be in the same place at the same time.

My appreciation for professional writers greatly increased in this process.  As did my questions about how they write.  In a tome of say six-hundred pages; such as a Ken Follett novel,  do the writers keep a chart of characters physical traits: eye color, type of lips, body shape?  Do they map out intersections that characters will go through?  I can’t comprehend that they would keep all that info in their head. 

           

Anything can be found on the internet.  I investigated wheat farming and found that much of the world’s wheat is produced in China.  I researched rape drugs (ala Bill Cosby) and even found sites that described the best way to kick open a door.  A believable story involves some aspect of research whether it be via interview or internet. 

“The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying. (Steven Pressfield, The War of Art).”  My daughter said to me, “Dad, I feel like you and Glenn (a close friend) always choose these high goals and then you don’t finish them!”  The point I told her is to have the goal and go for it.  The sad thing would be to never dream the dream or set the lofty goal.  This process reaffirmed for me that anybody can write the novel, travel the world or paint the painting.  The problem is that most people don’t do the work.

I will participate in  NaNoWriMo again next year.  I’m shooting for 50,000 words.  I’ll dig in on November 1^st and push hard til the 30^th.  It was a disciplined challenge.  The process and fruit of the process were well worth it.  I’m already wrestling with story ideas.  The process continues---the work goes on.

            “This is the other secret that real artists know and wannabe writers don’t. When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us. The Muse takes note of our dedication. She approves. We have earned favor in her sight. When we sit down and work, we become like a magnetized rod that attracts iron filings. Ideas come. Insights accrete.” ---Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles

           

           

            

The Writer As Recluse

Anne Lamott says that, “Being a writer guarantees that you will spend too much time alone, and that as a result, your mind will begin to warp.”  I suspect that the writer is wired to be alone.  For instance Annie Dillard took up residence on an island and wrote, “Holy The Firm”.  For two weeks Philip Yancey “holed up in a Colorado cabin” to ponder the questions raised in “Disappointment With God.”  Do we get alone to fuel our writing or does being a writer make us comfortable being alone?

In his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in Literature, Hemingway wrote, “Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer’s loneliness but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.”  This is the struggle we as writers face.  Most obvious is the fact that we sit at the computer alone.  Sure my wife sits in the same room reading but I lose sight of everything but the flow of ideas in my head and the letters on the page.  Ideally we write uninterrupted and each idea is immediately set to ink.  The thoughts themselves spring best as they bubble up in quiet; at least that’s how it is with me. 

We aren't all a Steven Pressfield, leaving behind our families to live from our car with a typewriter so as to spend our days writing.  A healthy life is spent in community after all.  I’ve a wife and child I love and friends whose fellowship I enjoy.  Still one has to admit; though it took Pressfield seventeen years he’s cranked out twenty-one books including The Legend of Bagger Vance, Tides of War, The Virtues of War; A Novel of Alexander the Great and Gates of Fire.  There may be something to the ‘lonely life of the writer.’

For those like me that aren't as talented or as driven as a Pressfield or a Dillard there will be this ongoing struggle to live our lives out in fullness and develop depth to our art.  The battle for us will be to balance the beauties of normal life alongside the voice that ever calls us to write.  The skirmish for those that love and live with us will be to have more of us vs. loosing us to write.  For we write best alone but we live best in community.  I trust that somehow in that tension God will allow me to create my best pieces and share them with the world.