Little help here?
So I’m trying to figure out exactly what this blog will look like over the next couple of years. I’ve committed myself to putting some serious time into RLP. I thought maybe you could help me think about this.
RLP Discussion Forum:
The future of this blog
Search
Writing
Writing as letting go
The only claim I want to make about myself as a writer is that I have worked hard at it. I’ve written close to a million words at Real Live Preacher. And even my most casual pieces get read 8 or 10 times before I post them. There is no way to count how many times I go over my serious stuff. I don’t even want to know.
With only that claim to make, I’d like to offer some thoughts about creative writing.
The ideas come first. Not always, but usually. You have to be an idea person if you are going to be a writer. You have to love ideas as much as you love the words in which you clothe them. You must be always thinking, always looking, always peering into dark places, always curious, always
Searching for Real Live Preacher
I’ve been writing at Real Live Preacher without stopping since December 6th, 2002. No one would do this unless they were compelled to do it for some reason. Why would someone write this much? I don’t know. Because you have to, I guess. I feel committed to the writer’s life, which is about doing the work. Times will change; you will change; you will go through
Because There is Doing and There is Talking
Strong, calloused men of action are common in Texas. Indeed, it’s rather our masculine ideal. There’s something even romantic about it. You know - the strong silent type, as they say. Like a character in a Cormac McCarthy novel. These are not men of words. They can be good men or bad men or any kind of man in between. But if you find a good one, his goodness takes on an almost mystical air because you won’t hear him talking about it.
The idea behind these heroic types seems to be that there is doing and there is talking. The former is for strong ones of action and integrity. The latter is for them that can’t do much and therefore need something to fill the time.
I’m strangely drawn to these strong, silent heroes in books and movies. I don’t know why exactly. Maybe it’s a man thing. But I will never be one of those men because - for better and for worse - I am a man of words.
Words have always come easily to me. I began to speak early. I sometimes didn’t understand what I was saying, but I enjoyed taking words and phrases out for a spin, just to see how they sounded. I was a big talker for a little boy.
I was and still am liable to slip into speech patterns that catch my ear. I pick up on the cadence and personality of accents and dialects. I have an appreciation for the way people talk and how their inflection carries meaning. I love words. I love the sound and feel of them. If I hear a good phrase or an interesting snippet of dialogue, I’m apt to say it out loud to myself while I’m driving. I’ll play with it. Try saying it different ways.
When I stand to speak in front of people, I’m not afraid. I’m enjoying myself. I don’t feel alone because my words are there with me. They’re always there for me. I don’t know where the the words come from. They just come out.
Be Lonely, Straight, and True
If you want to write you must have faith in what is. You must respect what exists, because it has earned the right to exist. Of all the possibilities, of all the things that might have existed, this thing exists and you should write about it. Be fearless. Explain nothing. Justify nothing. See things as they are and write about them. Don’t waste your creative energy trying to make things up. Even if you are writing fiction, write the things you see and know.
If you want to write you must have faith in yourself. Faith enough to believe that if a thing is true about you, it is likely true about many people. And if you can have faith in your integrity and your motives, then you can write about yourself without fear. With the right kind of faith, you can be at peace with people knowing things about you and passing judgment on you. And they will judge you. Those who will never dare to write and who will never bare their souls in words will pass judgment on you. And the more hidden they are behind masks of lies and pretense, the more eager they will be to turn the spotlight on you. You will be a scapegoat. You will speak our sins, and they will lay hands on you and drive you into the wilderness.
This is old school. This is primitive. This is the way things are. We look for someone to bear the burden of our sins, then we drive them away so that we don’t have to look at them and can go back to our sinning with peace of mind.
But if you can live with all of this, if you can let people know things about you, keep your eyes on the ball, and keep moving forward, living hard and straight and writing about it, then you can be a writer. And maybe a writer is something you want to be.
rlp
Comedy and Horror
If I fired up my blog software and wrote with no editing, do you know what would come out?
Comedy and Horror.
Rabbits. Funny little bunnies running every which way. Hundreds of them. Little cuties that would wear you out. You would run in circles for awhile, trying to catch them, and then you'd fall down laughing and exhausted.
Idea creatures would rise up at your feet, snarling and swiping the air before falling back, half formed, their terrible growth arrested by my lack of attention. They would lurch through the bunny races, frightening everyone and slowly losing whatever…I…was going to…
And I would be angry. Very angry. My mouth would be a furnace door, and I would open it and blast the heat of my anger across the face of creation. Which is strange because as far as I can tell, I have no good reason to be angry. But I do get very angry sometimes.
And if I wrote without editing
It.
Would.
Beeeeee.
Sooooooooo.
Looooooooooong.
So long. Oh, God make it stop. You would chew your own leg off if I would just stop, but I go on and on and on and on, way past the point where I made a point and should have stopped but didn’t of course. Oh, so long that it just hurts.
The truth is - the real truth now - I’m ashamed of my scattered and unorganized little mind, and my horribble spelling, and the way facts and names disappear at the worst moments. I don’t have very many pegs in my head, I guess. Certainly not enough pegs to hang everything that needs hanging. Somehow my mind doesn't have pegs, but it has a lot of thoughts, so these thoughts just float around in there. I can't find my file allocation table. My mind is like RAM memory. It's fast, but there is no easy way to find out exactly what's in there. I’m so obsessively tied to my thesaurus and my dictionary and Google. I have special links on my desktop so I can get to them as quickly as possible. Otherwise I would be lost and stupid.
This Is What It's Like Sometimes
This is what it's like sometimes. It's like something you can't get out of your mind. It's like an obsession, an itch, a tick. It's like needing to chew a sore place on your tongue. It's like blinking hard to feel the pain of a sty. It's like having to pick at the loose skin by your fingernail.
There is a thing in your mind. Something has separated itself from the flow of ideas and caught your attention. “Write about it,” a little voice says. “Write about it. Write about it. Write about it. Write about it.”
You have no idea what will come of this. Your filters are shimmering like they are about to disappear into another dimension. It's not that you have become brave; it's that you have lost the ability to care. You might say anything. All you know is that you must write about it. And this need will not go away until you give in.
Write about it!
“What are you thinking about?” your wife asks, startling you. Somehow it seems wrong that there are other people in the world. Her question has no meaning. Communication has become a lost art. Your mind has a stutter.
How speak I words? Why speak I words?
“Oh, um...nothing.” You shake your head as though that might bring you back to the world. “Just, I was...Uh...just only thinking.”
Write about it!
At this moment, there is nothing in your life more important to you than this impulse, not your religion, not your wife, not even your children. Like the poor, these will be with you always, but this inspiration will never come again.
Write about it!
You close your eyes and sway at the keyboard like Stevie Wonder. “What am I thinking? What am I knowing? What am I feeling? If this thought were an object, how would it move in the world? Does it remind me of anything I've known before? Where is this taking me? What does it want from me?”
Write about it!
Works in Progress
“Bearing Witness,” a Foy Davis story set in Fort Davis, Texas when Foy was in 3rd grade. Part one is roughed out. Should be ready next week.
“Lenten Satchel,” a short essay on the strange items that make up my Lenten journey this year. Because of Tracy’s comment.
“Talk to the Hand” Finished. Posted 3-12 at rlp
“Last Things,” an essay about my final days at Covenant. Soon to be published by the Christian Century. Will be linked here when it is online at the CC website.
My Latest Book
I’m proud to announce that Turtles All The Way Down came out in November of 2009. This was my first experience with the Consafo model of social media community publishing.
2000 copies were printed. We sold well over 500 as advance purchases or in the weeks leading up to Christmas. This paid for the printing costs completely.