2/4/13: Walking and looking for...what?

The GREATEST SECRET of life...we all find exactly what we're looking for...ultimately, whether our lives are good or bad, ugly or beautiful.
      --The Walk. Richard Paul Evans.

What am I looking for? Goodness and beauty and, ultimately, the Source of all goodness. Is writing a valid avenue for that search? I sure hope so. There are days when I wonder if I oughta be investing my energies in another arena...but, there are times when someone says, "David, I was just reading one of your daily devotions, and it really moved me. Thank you." That's when I remind myself that, per my theology, there is a definite adversary out there who wants to oppose anything and everything good.

How to tell when it's satanic opposition? If what we're pursuing would be something undilutedly good for self or others, then it's like spiritual forces that are working to make the way dark, the road steep, and the headwind to be numbing.

That's when that old-fashioned perseverance comes into play--gotta keep on going, walking one footstep at a time, one after the other. Whew. Hang in there gang!

If you haven't read the author cited above, I do recommend him. Some might say he's a bit schmaltzy, but I don't think he's just sugar and bubblegum--there's a core of truthful seeking and seeking of truth, and a heart that wants to do right by people and that is willing to admit that not all the answers are simple to find or enact. Refreshing.

Any books or an author that has led you to walk further down the road? Care to share?

2/2/13--Hacking Away.

Higher emotions are what separate us from the lower orders of life. Higher emotions...and table manners.
        --Deanna Troi, Star Trek Next Generation Commander.



What separates a hack from a higher order writer? I have a lot of possible answers...

--not belching at the table (sorry--my Grampa Thomas always threatened to get the Emily Post ETIQUETTE book out of the bookcase but I never saw it happen!)

--clarity

--good grammar

--characters that are believable, with quirks that make them interesting and dialogue that sparkles

--the ability to create a suspension of belief for the reader...that is, my alternative to reality is so good that the reader jumps on in with both feet and stops listening to that whining little voice that says, "It's only make-believe."

--the simplest and best answer: does the writing move the reader, eliciting empathy or action or laughter or tears or refreshed spirit or firmed-up resolve?

 I just read the third book of Richard Paul Evans' WALK series...and the author does a great job of delivering his message with simplicity, amidst a plot with enough twists and turns to hold my interest. Am also rereading THE HOBBIT--wow, talk about eliciting empathy, with a plot that lures me onward in a phantasy-land that is oh-so-believable. Tolkien, a definite hero, and the author of 4 of the 10 books I'd pack for my life-long exile on a desert isle! (I know, you'd rather be on the dessert aisle!)

Silly puns (is that a redundancy?) aside...read anything lately that moved you?

Magic

Real satisfaction came when inspiration and effort magically took flight.
Maryanne O'Hara--Cascade.


Think back to the last time you took that magical flight Ms. O'Hara describes...was it at work? At play? Or, at that marvelous junction where work and play and inspiration and the Holy Spirit all join hands in a synergistic symphony of joy?

Sadly, my experience with "work" is that magic rarely occurs in the presence of plodding daily details, especially when overseen by administrators whose concept of creativity involves ensuring that we stay inside the lines when coloring. Perhaps that's why true creativity, business breakthroughs, iconoclastic outbreaks mostly take place in small businesses, in entrepreneurial climates, in "skunk works" (labs that are not necessarily operating within the bosses' rules), and in basements or garages.

Happily, my experience as a writer does sometimes achieve this delightful creative storm...in fact, as I prepared my sermon on Psalm 121 (preached 1/27/13 @ Faith Presbyt Ch)...I almost felt guilty, the study, writing, and preaching just flowed like water downhill! All kudos to the Source of all inspiration, might I add...okay, I must add!

Sometimes, writing has this magical flow...such as my book of children's Christmas stories (THE ANIMALS OF CHRISTMAS)--these stories just came to life with vigor and humor and charm. Other times, it isn't bad once I get started, but getting started--WHEW! I feel like I'm battling my way through a million cobwebs: individually, nuthin; collectively, feels almost impossible to get a move on. But, with perseverance, the cobwebs yield and then I'm off and running. How true of so much of life, it's the getting off the start-line that's the absolute toughest part. And, how true and often that a mere cobweb of a hindrance keeps me from starting any project, simple or complex!

Howzabout your experience? Had a "wow" lately when things just fell together, and you stood back, amazed and pleased and proud? Fought (or are fighting) huge cobwebs?

We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.

   We don't stop playing because we grow old;
           we grow old because we stop playing.


What's the diff twixt work and play? Is it a vast gulf? Are there times when it's only a wide ditch that a bold leap might span? Might the issue be that it's our attitude that needs an adjustment so that work and play have greater overlap?

Writing has to be filed under the "work" heading: if one is going to construct good sentences that weave together into cogent ppghs that synergize to create a great story--you betcha it's work!

BUT...a playful attitude helps a lot--why be perfectionistic with the first draft? I just play with words, both for meaning and for sound (alliteration, assonance, consonsance) and for the flow of the sound and the meaning. Editing time--there's where the perfectionism comes to the forefront...with icy gaze, pretty phrases that are cluttering up the tidy and simple meaning need to be axed.
     "But, it was witty and pretty and..." sez Smitti.
     "Ix-nay, it was too much icing and not enuff cake!" says the editor. "Much too often, books and periodicals are not adequately edited...and I mean for more than just spelling and grammar! There's too much language when 'just the facts' would have been better. Other sentences just go 'thud,' forcing the reader to reread the prior sentence or the prior ppgh--when that happens, unless the reader is young or distractable, I put the blame on the writer! K.I.S.S. is still a fundamental and simple truth!" the editor said, shaking his head and disappearing into his lair with a parting growl.

If dogs and cats and bear cubs and otters play, and human kids play...seems to me it just might have something to do with the imago dei...or is that just a crazed thought? [Your thoughts welcomed...there's a spot below for comments--that's sorta the idea of a blog--that we converse!]

Is play always frivolous? Look at the industrious approach taken by a child who's building (or breaking!) something orfiguring out a game or device...the kid is focused, delighted, and isn't happy to be interrupted!

I think that play is something either programmed or needed by all of us. Sure, there are time to be plodding and focused and not-very-playful with detailed, finicky undertakings...but life is too short to not try to add a measure of fun to every task. I think Mary Poppins had it right, "A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go do-own..."

Hmmm?

---------

Okay, I've had a few mnths to digest this blog post...so, ten months later, here's my response:

--Drawing on my own experiences, when I am "at work," I may be productive, but the productivity is rote and necessary. Creativity and fun are not part of most people's "work vocabulary."
--When I don't approach writing as play--I end up writing very little.
--When I do approach writing as work--I'd better be in editor-mode.
--I haven't produced much creativity lately...perhaps 'cuz I'm focused on marketing my last book.
--Time to go play at my writing--see ya later.

Creativity 3

Creativity is more than just being different. Anybody can plan weird; that's easy. What's hard is to be as simple as Bach. The simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.
--Charles Mingus, jazz musician/composer/conductor.


Creativity.

I believe we all have it.

For some, it is like their shoe size: wide and long.

For some, it is like their arm span: wide-reaching.

For others, it is like their heart: deeply hidden yet full of delight... if someone would only care to tap into that wellspring of life.

For all of us, creativity is like garden soil that offers a productive medium... when cultivated and watered and fertilized and spoken to lovingly! Cultivating yours? Talking nicely to yourself...and to others?

Some folks believe that creativity must be weird (as Charles Mingus rants, above.) Certainly James Joyce, whose seminal work, ULYSSES, which has been deemed unreadable by many critics, epitomizes that. Here's a quote from that work:

“Her antiquity in preceding and surviving succeeding tellurian generations: her nocturnal predominance: her satellitic dependence: her luminary reflection: her constancy under all her phases, rising and setting by her appointed times, waxing and waning: the forced invariability of her aspect: her indeterminate response to inaffirmative interrogation: her potency over effluent and refluent waters: her power to enamour, to mortify, to invest with beauty, to render insane, to incite to and aid delinquency: the tranquil inscrutability of her visage: the terribility of her isolated dominant resplendent propinquity: her omens of tempest and of calm: the stimulation of her light, her motion and her presence: the admonition of her craters, her arid seas, her silence: her splendour, when visible: her attraction, when invisible.” 

Can you figger what James Joyce is talking about? Or, has he driven you loony? Let me know what you think.