writing

James’s Blog: Bad Examples.

Lioness Writing Ltd Author , , , , , , , , , ,
James’s Blog: Bad Examples.

One of the problems with having written a weekly blog for nearly three years is that you begin to lose track of what you have and haven’t already written. I’d love to not repeat myself, but the chances of that are pretty small. For example, have I written about motivation before?  I feel like I have, but I can’t rightly recall in what context, and even after three years I still don’t know WordPress well enough to do something like a keyword search of all my previous blogs.

I was thinking about motivation because I was wondering (again) how much motivation matters if the outcome is something good and worthy. I’ve written before about what a lazy writer I am, but if there’s one thing guaranteed to motivate me it’s reading a bad book that has been well received. It’s happened to me on countless occasions; I pick up a book with the ‘New York Times Bestseller’ seal of approval and find that it’s a bad book. I don’t just mean a book I don’t like, I mean a BAD BOOK, as in it’s horribly written. Nothing motivates me to sit down and write like seeing someone get paid lots of money for doing something I think I can do better. I think that all I really need in order to actually write a thousand-page novel is a steady supply of poorly-written bestsellers, though I’ll probably have gone insane by the time I have written chapter 6.

What I was wondering is, does it matter anyway? If I actually sit down and get something constructive done, does it matter if my motivation is hardly noble? Perhaps it’s actually God’s way of subverting my laziness, cheekily harnessing my own pride and greed? Maybe it’s really a self-destructive base for my writing – after all, can I really claim that my work is worthy if it’s initiated by something unworthy? And having thought about all that, what if my motivation is not really “I can do better” but actually “Readers deserve something better”? No answers today, just thoughts, but I can’t shake the feeling that God would rather I wrote than didn’t write. That’s enough for me at the moment, and I’ll let Him sort out the tangled weave of my motives when He gets round to it.

Hmmmmm. This definitely all feels familiar…

James’s Blog: Meta Edition.

Lioness Writing Ltd Author , , , , , , , , , ,
James’s Blog: Meta Edition.

I’m sitting in a cafe, with my notebook and pen, trying to come up with something for this week’s blog. I’ve got a hot chocolate in front of me, and I’m waiting for God to show up. Maybe He’s down the road, with the street preacher, whose muffled but earnest words drift in through the open window. I feel guilty. Why aren’t I out there, on the street, preaching instead of sitting here with an empty page and a hot chocolate? Mentally I list the reasons, both good and bad. I offer up a quick prayer for the young man trying to get something of God’s love out into the world.

I ask myself why I feel guilty. I wonder if it’s got something to do with my view of God. I imagine myself in one of those fairground mirror funhouses , but instead of rows and rows of mirrors distorting my image, I’m looking at dozens of distorted images of God. Is that what it’s like? I scribble that down.

Thoughts and ideas zoom through my imagination, like wasps at a summer picnic. I spend a moment wondering if Belgian chocolate is really that much better than other chocolate, or if it’s just a triumph of marketing. I go back to the funhouse mirrors, and wonder if the issue is not so much false views of God, but rather false views of myself. I picture my own distorted image instead. That’s just as much a source of misplaced guilt and confusion as distorted images of God.

I look at what I’ve written. I feel like there’s something in the funhouse mirror idea and that I’m on the cusp of putting together a blog post, but the idea just won’t firm up. It’s a mist that disperses when I try to grab it. I’m distracted by the couple on the table across from me. She’s reading out the titles of articles in her magazine, while her husband (I assume it’s her husband) listens mutely. One of the articles is wondering about the real reason behind JFK’s assassination. I wonder what magazine it is, as the couple don’t look like conspiracy theorists. Maybe that’s what they want me to think…

I try to get back to the blog post. I write some more thoughts down. How do we view ourselves in the mirror of guilt? How does that distort who we are? It’s not real. It’s not how God sees us. I pause. I feel like that’s something it would be good to pray for – that I’ll see myself as God sees me, as I really am. I would pray right here and now, but I’ve just decided that I’m going to write this process up as my blog post, and I know that I’d only be praying so that I could write it down and put it in the blog because actually praying reads better than just intending to pray.

I momentarily feel a genuine yearning for the freedom of being ‘disillusioned’, and seeing myself as I really am, and seeing God as He really is. I reflect, not for the first time in my life, that it’s not actually much fun being a deep thinker. But we’re all complicated in our own way, and we all make things more complicated than they need to be. God likes simple things, I write. I notice that I’ve actually written “God likes simple things, I write”. I decide to stop before I get too clever for my own good.

The hot chocolate is gone. The street preacher might still be there. It’s time for me to go. I think God probably did turn up, in some way.

James’s Blog: One Trick Pony.

Lioness Writing Ltd Author , , , , , , , , ,
James’s Blog: One Trick Pony.

I think that, for many years now, I’ve really only had one message. I think about the lectures I’ve given, sermons I’ve preached and stories I’ve told in the recent past and – to me – they’re mostly variations on a single theme. My life consists of repeated attempts to find different ways of saying the same thing over and over again. It makes sense to me; I’m definitely more of a “Do one thing really well rather than lots of things badly” personality type. It’s also something I can imagine God saying to me: “James, I’m giving you one message to proclaim. Just the one, but it’s an important one. I don’t think you’re quite up to handling several things at once. Be as creative as you want in sharing that message, but try to stay on focus, OK?”

I’m sure that there are plenty of people who are expected to multitask, but it also seems totally consistent with God’s love of community that He would share the work out among His children rather than overload one or two and let the rest spend the day at the beach. Billy Graham is, I think, an example of someone who had just one job, and good things happened when he made that his priority. Pay careful attention to that desire to have a finger in every pie, because maybe it was never your pie in the first place. It’s just rude to stick fingers in pies that don’t belong to you.

So, what’s the one thing that God has given you to do or say? It certainly helps to know what it is, and you could do a lot worse than doubling down on it.

And the one message I’ve been repeating for the past decade or so? Well, I’m not going to just come right out and tell you what it is here, am I? Where’s the fun in that?

James’s Blog: Skimming the Sun.

Lioness Writing Ltd Author , , , , , , , ,
James’s Blog: Skimming the Sun.

I had a thought the other day.

There is really only one story – God’s story.

You and I create stories, but the only bits that will last are those that reflect the heart of God’s story. I don’t mean that only stories that talk explicitly about God are the only ones with any value, rather a tale’s worth depends on how much it reflects the story from which all other stories flow. Give me a yarn spun by an atheist with the scent of heaven in his nostrils rather than another two-dimensional moral diatribe written by someone with a fiery pen and a cold heart.

God’s story burns at the centre of the solar system, orbited by every other story ever created. There are stories that are popular and lauded, but are really nothing more than lifeless, icy rocks spinning out into the infinite void. Then there are others, small and ignored, that rotate so close to the sun that they burn with a lover’s passion and can’t be seen without looking at the source itself.

I hope that, whenever I write and whatever I write, I am in some way honouring the story that keeps me warm at night.

“Since all the world is but a story, it were well for thee to buy the more enduring story, rather than the story that is less enduring.”  – St. Columba

James’s Blog: Acts 2:32-37 for the Modern Pulpit.

Lioness Writing Ltd Author , , , , , ,
James’s Blog: Acts 2:32-37 for the Modern Pulpit.

32 “…God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of the fact. 33 Exalted to the right hand of God, he has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear. 34 For David did not ascend to heaven, and yet he said, ‘The Lord said to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand 35 until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.”’ 36 Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah.” Read more

James’s Blog: The Sermon as Art.

Lioness Writing Ltd Author , , , , , ,
James’s Blog: The Sermon as Art.

Over the years, the line between writing a story and preparing a sermon has become blurred. These days, I tend to take the same approach with both, which means that I spend longer editing a sermon than writing it in the first place. I revisit it frequently, toying with the order of paragraphs, or searching for exactly the right image or turn of phrase.

It’s not about ‘trying to be clever’.  The sermon – like every effort to communicate – is actually a work of art, and needs to be treated as such.

Art can be a spiritual experience for people. A poem, painting, story, film or sculpture has the power to give people a taste of what lies beyond themselves. This is one of the ways in which God has weaved revelation into the fabric of what it means to be human. The sermon is unique among art in that the explicit contract between artist and audience is that God is front and centre. Some people turn hostile if they suspect that you’re trying to sneak God into areas where He’s forbidden, but with the sermon you’re allowed to be blunt.

Because of this, I find myself squirming in the pew if I suspect that I’m listening to a preacher who takes more care over constructing e-mails than he does over sermons.

“It’s about God. It’s got nothing to do with me” is an excuse used by sometimes well-meaning, sometimes lazy preachers who think that God is a KitchenAid mixer – you just throw in the ingredients, and leave Him to it. This approach denies one of the fundamental concepts of the Bible, namely that God, as an act of love, freely delegates to us responsibility for His reputation and message.

It’s got nothing to do with human effort or creative manipulation, rather it recognises that art and communication have divinely-ordained rules. Don’t tell me that Jesus, who painted pictures of plank-eyed people, camels squeezing through needles, and angry vineyard workers didn’t take how he communicated at least as seriously as what he communicated.

I’m not saying that every preacher needs to be a poet, or that clever structure is an adequate substitute for a vibrant relationship with God. What I am saying is that every preacher needs to realise that things like language and format actually matter. A preacher doesn’t need to succeed in creating art, but a preacher needs to at least try.

James’s Blog: Creating Life.

Lioness Writing Ltd Author , , , , , , ,
James’s Blog: Creating Life.

I really needed my character to make that phone call, but it just wasn’t working. The story demanded that he pick up the phone and dial those numbers, but it didn’t feel right. So what do I do now, when I have a story, but a character who doesn’t want to play ball? “All right,” I said to my character, “what do you want to do then?” You can imagine my shock and disappointment when he took that scrap of paper with the phone number on it, scrunched it up and threw it in the bin. “What are you doing?” I said, “I need you to phone that number!” But it was no good. He wasn’t going to make the call. Read more

James’s Blog: Writers Wot Have Influenced Me – Part 5 of 4

Lioness Writing Ltd Author , , , , , , ,
James’s Blog: Writers Wot Have Influenced Me – Part 5 of 4

Flannery O’Connor

“She had never given much thought to the devil for she felt that religion was essentially for those people who didn’t have the brains to avoid evil without it. For people like herself, for people of gumption, it was a social occasion providing the opportunity to sing; but if she had ever given it much thought, she would have considered the devil the head of it and God the hanger-on. With the coming of these displaced people, she was obliged to give new thought to a good many things.”

The Displaced Person, Flannery O’Connor Read more

James’s Blog: Writer’s Block, Inspiration and Stuff Like That.

Lioness Writing Ltd Author , , , ,
James’s Blog: Writer’s Block, Inspiration and Stuff Like That.

I’m a lazy writer. Like many, I suppose, I depend on that mythical beast Inspiration to get me started, but when that endangered species is absent, then my passion and the words dry up. A huge part of writing is really just about discipline, and that’s my least favourite part. Read more

%d bloggers like this: