A Letter to the Church from the Lonely

Today is church day. It’s Sunday; that’s what you do. As I leave the apartment, there is one man slumped on the concrete steps outside the door, smoking. His eyes go from my Bible to my dress, then roll a little.

I don’t know his name and avoid looking at him. I’ve said exactly three “good mornings” and five “thank-yous” to people who live in my apartment building, and nothing more.

The church I picked from the Internet meets in a middle school, and it is my kind of church, filled with people who care about deep things. I can tell because I actually hear some guy with glasses say the word “exegetical” as I go past, the first I’ve heard it spoken out loud since leaving Taylor University. It sounds a little like home.

Inside, a guy with a banjo is playing somewhere. Lots of young people, everyone wearing jeans. In the auditorium, the chairs are a blessed shade of orange, the same tacky color of my home church’s pews before the remodeling, the color of community as I knew it growing up, the color of child-like faith. I actually smile, seeing their ugliness.

Hardly anyone is there yet, because I am perpetually early. So I sit down off to one side, right in the middle of a row so that people will hopefully have to sit next to me.

Except they don’t, because the auditorium isn’t full. There is plenty of space. So I people-watch for the next ten minutes. These are good people, I can tell. They smile like they mean it. They love their kids. They gesture as they talk about things of God, because they really care.

I hear snatches of conversation from people around me, but they’re talking over me. Maybe they are so involved in their small groups that they don’t know who’s new. I should go and find someone, but the auditorium is tiered on different levels, and for some reason, that makes it seem more deliberate, more intrusive. Besides, what would I say?

Jesus Doesn't Need Your Bucket

I was reading the gospel of John in a different translation than usual, and came to chapter four, featuring the Samaritan woman who met Jesus at the well. Jesus, with a great attention-grabbing opening line, says that he can offer the woman living water.

And she responds, “But sir, you don’t have a rope or a bucket, and this well is very deep.”

For some reason, this struck me as hilariously funny. The Son of God is sitting right next to her, promising her an eternal source of life and refreshment, and she thinks he’s going to be stopped because he doesn’t have a bucket.

Except I realized I say things like that. All the time. And I actually know who Jesus is, unlike this woman.

Basically, I want so badly to feel like I’m in control that I’m okay with limiting what God can do.

Not seeing the connection to the woman at the well story? Okay, let me explain. My need for control usually shows itself in two different ways: first, I try to get God the right supplies on my own.

Tips for Dealing with Distractions

When you're writing a first draft, a very important thing to do is tell the red pen inside your head to shut up. You do not need to be fixing typos at this point. That will slow you down, distract you. Did Frodo stop to sweep cobwebs out of Shelob’s lair on the way into Mordor? No. He knew his goal: get to Mount Doom.

Of course, there were also plenty of distractions that got poor Frodo distracted against his will. That’s the way life works sometimes. We can be as single-minded and determined as we like, but distractions will come up. Here are a few bits advice about how to deal with them.

• Good life rule: people are important. Especially people close to you, like your friends and family. Remember that guy in high school who ditched all his friends because he started dating his first girlfriend? Don’t be that guy with your novel. Be realistic in what you can accomplish without becoming an anti-social jerk.

• When people find out you’re writing a novel, they are going to ask you, “So, what’s it about?” I never have an answer for this one. Summaries, for me, come after I’m done. If you want to avoid answering this one 700 times, only tell a few people what you’re doing. That takes some of the pressure off anyway.

• Don’t beat yourself up if circumstances come up that make you put your writing on hold for a little while. A new baby, a move, a funeral, a summer full of activities and weddings and graduations…those things happen. If you can write a little bit even in busy times, that’s great. If not, just promise yourself you’ll go back to writing later…and actually follow through.

• It’s probably not a good idea to let someone read your novel before it’s done. The exception might be if you just want a yes or no answer to something like, “Is this interesting?” But, often, people want to give advice on how to improve. That’s a super important part of the editing process…but you’re not there yet.

• Writer’s block: This one cannot be shoved aside in just a sentence or two, because there are so many reason that writing might grind to a sudden halt. Lucky for you, I've already written a post about it. And another one. And I'll probably write several more in the future.

•  For many people, it helps to set aside a consistent time to write. Schedule it into your life. Maybe that’s unrealistic for you. But give it a try. And turn off your phone, for goodness sake. And social media. Checking Facebook every five minutes doesn't help with your word count.

•  Reward little victories. Celebrate every chapter, even if you don’t know how you could possibly write another one. With each sentence you type, you are getting closer to a goal that most people abandon somewhere before page five. 
   

Writing is hard work, and can be frustrating, time-consuming, and exhausting.

Maybe it shouldn’t be that way. Maybe writing should be…well…fun. When you loved to do something as a kid, you didn’t have to force yourself to do it. Writing can be like that. It won’t always be. But if you can get back to the place where it feels like snapping one Lego brick on top of another, slowly creating a more complex masterpiece, then do it.

Tune out the internal voices that say you’ll never be good enough for this. Don’t worry about what other people will think. It’s not the time for that, not yet, and maybe not ever.

Just write because you love it. Try things. Take a break from your novel and write something just for the fun of it. Re-read something that turned out just the way you wanted it to. Remember that you’re telling a story, and remind yourself why you want to tell it.

Why We're So Cynical

This is funny. Why? Because it’s true, and we like the fact that someone was willing to say it so directly.

We laugh because in this artwork the cliché kindergarten advice: “You can be whatever you want to be” is shown to be a cotton-candy fluffpiece of rhetoric that melts away in the dreary rain of reality.

Guess what, kids? Cinderella’s castle is mostly just an empty façade, constructed entirely for its commercial value. And that pretty woman in the ball gown? She’s not really a princess, either.

And this is a good thing. It would be delusional to live in Fantasyland. So we laugh at cynical drawings like these.

But sometimes I think we laugh because it hurts and we don’t want to admit it. We have seen dreams die. We have told ourselves we will never be good enough for something—marriage, a career, a goal, a eulogy filled with purpose and impact. We know people with the potential to be something great who have been shoved down by circumstances of life. We are surrounded by broken things and failures and big blank pages of our future stories that we have no control over. And it scares us, but we don’t know how to be scared.

13 More Places to Get Ideas

(See last week's post for the original thirteen idea sources.)

Museum Staff: If you find someone working at a museum or history society or any kind of group that specializes in a particular area, ask them, “What’s something here that you think most people miss?” or “Why do you care about this particular subject?” or “Who is the most interesting person/piece featured here, in your opinion? Why?” In my experience, museum people are usually passionate and love the fact that you’re asking them something other than where to find the bathroom.

Notes on Posters: Look at notices on bulletin boards and see if anyone has penciled in a witty comment, corrected grammar, or otherwise marked up the content. One of my favorite examples of this was a “Muslim Beautique” ad pinned up on the bulletin board in the prayer room of a mosque. The clip art of a woman’s face was scribbled out, with “Pictures are not allowed in the prayer room” written beside it. In another handwriting, it said, “Images not intended to be worshipped are halel [acceptable].” There’s conflict here. There’s a story.

Olympic Sports: Or any kind of competition, really. Observe how the winners react, and how the losers do as well. Is the silver medalist disappointed, and if so, what does that mean? Think about what might motivate the athletes besides the obvious lure of winning. What would those motivations look like applied to other situations?

Pop Songs: Look up the lyrics for the current Top Ten songs and pretend—I know it’s a stretch, but stay with me—that the people involved in the song are really, really deep and interesting and someone just wrote out a simple version of their story and made it into a song. What plot might be going on between the lines?

Questions: Think about what would happen if you put a jar that said “Questions for God” in a hospital emergency room. Or a jar labeled “Questions for Rude Customers” in a diner. Or a jar with “Questions for My Parents” in an inner city junior high. If people could write anonymous questions in any of these situations, what would they ask?

Twitter Is Not The Problem

 

I always thought Twitter was a terrible idea.

What could you possibly say in 140 characters or less that means anything? Why have we become a culture that collects tiny, vulnerable fragments of other people’s lives and judges them as worthy or unworthy based on how witty we think they are? How can we value questions without easy answers if we cater to attention spans that stopped reading this blog after the first sentence?

In some ways, I still have those concerns. But I also see the value in Twitter for several reasons I won’t get into here.

More importantly, though, I realized that my concerns about Twitter were completely hypocritical.

Let me explain.

Today, I started a Twitter account. (@mondayheretic after Be a Heretic Monday.)

Today, I also passed by hundreds of strangers in a big city, most of whom I will never see again. Some of them talked too loudly or smelled bad or didn’t do a good job of managing their children, and I resented them for this, or for the simple fact that they were in my way. I did not meet their eyes. I did not wonder what their stories were.

I smiled and said, “Have a nice day” to the sales clerk even though I really didn’t care if she had a nice day or not, and the smile barely flickered to my eyes before dying.

I experienced life in 140 characters or less, and I was okay with that.

13 Places to Get Ideas

Some days, you just don't feel very creative. And writers are notoriously bad at answering the question, "Where do you get your ideas?" so that's not very helpful. If you're in need of a new idea or want some fun story starters, here are a few places to look.

Advice Columns: Read a letter and the response, then think of what would happen if the person involved did the opposite of what they were told. Or read the response and try to figure out what the problem was. Imagine more details about the people involved. Put the letter in a different country or time period and think about how the advice would change.

Book Covers: Look at the cover of a book and cover up the title before reading it. Then invent a short description of what the plot might be based on the cover. Uncover the title and see if that adds another dimension to your plot or changes your original impression. Then compare the description on the back to the one you came up with.

Comic Strips: Find one of your favorites and ask the question, “What would need to happen to turn this strip into a tragedy instead of a comedy?” White out the speech in the bubbles and give it a try.

Discarded Paper: See the above book by Bill Keaggy. It contains his commentary on hundreds of abandoned grocery lists he collected from shopping carts. (My favorite contained the poignant line, “If you buy more rice, I’ll punch you.”) Give it a try—pick up a stray piece of paper you see at the store or on the street or tucked in a library book. See what you can learn about the person who threw it away. Make the rest up.