Chin Up and Write On

Every now and then, I have to remind myself why exactly I’m doing this writing thing. There are times when I look at my screen, look at sales, look around myself at other writers who are so much better, and think: “Who the heck am I kidding?”
I gotta keep my chin up. After all, I didn’t start writing for the marketing or the sales. I definitely didn’t start to be brilliant. I’m not on that kind of mission at all with my work. I started to be honest – to tell a story and say something meaningful. I started because my God is a god of stories. And, significantly, I started because I had to write myself out of a particular struggle I was going through. Being honest, escaping my nightmare, was only possible by penning a complete fantasy – and yet, one that didn’t take place in an idealistic world. Now that I’ve done that, whenever I have long weeks of anger and just despair, I go back to it and write again, because I honestly can’t think of anything so healthy as that. It’s a way of reminding myself what’s important in life – a positive way of releasing negative energy.

Another thing I’ve been doing recently is encouraging myself by thinking back to where I started and when I started. By looking back at this story (my own personal writing tale), I begin to understand how far I’ve come. When I get down, I just remember: I’ve been here before. And just like before, I’ll keep writing through it, keep penning my way to a new sunrise, keep talking with my God through the power of story, an avenue He Himself has given me.

When You Feel Like Giving Up (#amwriting)

Let’s have a show of hands for all the authors who ever felt like giving up. Today, I was chatting to someone at an authors’ meeting. The man in question said that he gave up for five years, because he just couldn’t see the end achievement. It was so far away. All an author sees at this point are the words on his or her screen – a messy Word document that no one cares about. There comes a point for every author where they just can’t figure out how to continue their work. And it’s that point that will either make them or break them.
The man I was talking to picked up his work again five years later and produced a beautiful book on the history of a particular town in New Zealand. The assortment of photos and the elegant prose made for a fantastic book. Now he knows what his work had the potential to be. But before any of us get there, we suffer.
There’s a kind of magic at the stopping point. And that’s what this article shares with you.

Rachmaninov’s Piano

An old and new kind of magic
Is the music of Rachmaninov,
A man of pain and purpose,
Who knew the grief of the heart,
And the power of the will.
I will listen and have my fill
Of chords of blood and sunlight,
Of anathemas in the night
Of the cries no one hears
Of the beauty, crystal cold,
Written in tears.

Here was a man who went to Hell
And was retrieved after three years.
Here was a man who –
Perhaps without a thought for God –
Was gifted by His Creator some of heaven’s
Greatest paeans and the prophets’ greatest laments.
Here was man who wrote from the depths of his soul
With dark, navy lines, profound and intense.

The Change

In a world of bloated black trees

And great rubbery flowers

She walks,

And the wind does not stir so much as speak.

 

It is in this world that she

Was almost consumed by the carnivorous

Plants and

Voices that come up out of cracks in the ground.

 

People wear their souls in their faces,

And her face has become

Hardened,

The eyes flaming; and now she listens to metal.

 

 Once she knew life is suffering.

Now she knows life is suffering.