I have reposted some original blogposts from here on the topic of writing over at the new blog. I may also repost the Kansas blogposts over at the new blog. I’ll continue to post theological, philosophical and socio-cultural reflections here.

What I had during that month was time. I also had an outline, which was basically just all of the scenes, numbered in order, with two- or three-sentence description. Both of those helped me quite a bit in being able to sit down at the keyboard and write, usually with little hesitation.

However, after a while, it sometimes became more difficult to sit down and start. It wasn’t exactly writer’s block (the outline helped with that). It was mostly a matter of motivation. What I began to do was to make every writing session a “free”write session (in line with Peter Elbow’s terminology, it might be more accurate to call it a guided freewrite). The rule was simple: start a new scene, or pick up where I left off, and type without stopping, even if I was typing total and complete gibberish. That helped a lot. I might have to whittle a 1500-word segment to an even 1000 words, but it was progress.

More recently, I have a slightly different technique. I’ve essentially returned to the same project (with a couple of major changes), but this time I’m experimenting with no outline, except for about five scenes spread throughout the beginning, middle and end of the book. When I sit down to write, unless I’m finishing up a scene, I literally do not have an idea what I’m going to write. I might take a couple of minutes to think about what I should write next, but other than that, I just put my fingers on the keyboard and write.

Along with intentionally eschewing an outline, I’m trying to write in a strictly limited 30-minute session. My only goal for each day, in terms of writing, is just to write. Write everyday. (I can take one day per week off. I’m a Christian.) Then, assuming I have written, my next goal is to write 1000 words (unedited) each day. I type fairly fast, so I’m able to hit my 1000-word mark at almost precisely 30 minutes. Because I’m writing in such strict time constraint there is a great deal of pressure when I sit down to write. I cannot waste a single second. I have thirty minutes to put 1000 words on the screen. If I’m finishing a scene, then my material is ready to go. But if I am starting fresh, I only have a rough arc for the plot. I have to come up with something. (To be clear, this “something” is a wholly unedited first draft.)

Both of these approaches, though not wildly different from the other, seem to work well for me. Having the outline gives me material to write from whenever I sit down to write. I may (and have) cut out scenes and substituted new ones, or added new ones. But sometimes this was unhelpful and limiting. Sometimes it felt forced, and the words were hard to get out. Forcing myself to type without stopping helped overcome that. Writing from no outline is helpful in that it allows me to keep the project fresh, though it is somewhat daunting to stare at a blank screen and come up with something to write about. What helps with this technique is the time pressure. If I waste five minutes thinking about what to write, I won’t hit my 1000-word target.

The common denominator in both these scenarios is pressure. In the first, the pressure is to not stop typing. I may have set material to write about, but several times I got started writing and then stopped. I didn’t know what to have the character say or do next. By both forcing myself to keep writing and giving myself the freedom to write total gibberish, I was able to be both productive and creative. In the second, more recent, scenario, the pressure is time combined with a word-count goal. I can take my hands off the keyboard. I can backstroke and correct error. I can delete and rewrite sentences if I want. But I only have thirty minutes to write 1000 words. In this case, however, about half the time I’m starting from scratch. I have an eye to the overall arc of the plot, but the rest is almost entirely blank. In both cases, I have to write. The pressure is intended to turn on the word tap and let the words flow. In one case, I can’t stop typing, and I have an outline. In the other, I have only 30 minutes to write, and I have no outline.

Having spent some time with both techniques, I like the small, but significant, differences each one brings to my writing endeavors. I’m going to continue on with the current technique of timed writing with no outline. I want to see how much I get out of it. But given my writing habits when I was younger, I will probably go back to using an outline. However, rather than free write, I think I’ll focus on trying to write a target number of words in a defined time. We’ll see how that goes.

Addendum:

By the way, I have found Scrivener an immensely helpful tool. The corkboard is incredibly helpful in seeing the 30,000 foot view of your project with scenes/chapters represented as notecards. Also helpful for me is the Project Targets feature, in which you can set wordcount goals for your entire project and for each writing session. (Disclaimer: I have no connection to Scrivener other than an enthusiastic end user.)

Reblogged from The Edited Life:

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Want to know how many words you added to (or deleted from) your MS today? Need to see how close you are to your total word count goal? My favorite way to do this in Scrivener is via Project Targets, especially now that it’s more customizable than the 1.x version.

The Project Targets feature lets you set an overall project target (of words, characters, or pages), as well as a target for your writing sessions.

Read more… 657 more words

Blog planning with Scrivener.

I’m writing again . . . again.

How many times have I been here? How many times, and in increasingly public ways, have I declared “I’m a writer!” How many times have I re-engaged the discipline of daily writing? And how many times have I ultimately begun to write less and less and less? Well, here I am again, starting again.

The novel I began working on about two and a half years ago (and wrote about half of it in first draft) has been dusted off and re-imagined. I have some new writing tools which make organizing the draft so much easier and more pleasant. I even recently hied myself to a coffee shop and wrote a thousand words of the first scene while sipping some locally roasted java. As I parked the car back at my home, the sun was shining, the spring air was warm. I felt as though my life again had a center to it. I felt determined, oriented, focused.

And I thought to myself, “Why the [expletive] don’t I write every dadgum day? What gives? This has been in me since I was six years old. Why isn’t this my daily focus?”

If you’re a writer, too, you know the answer to this. Resistance. (Thanks, Mr. Pressfield.) And, at least for me, back of that Resistance is a fear. Perhaps a fear of being different. How many people do you know who claim to be writers? “And what do you do for a living? No. Seriously.” Perhaps a fear of being rejected. “You write what?” Or: “I’m sorry, but your manuscript doesn’t meet our present needs.” Or, worse: _____________________. (That’s silence, in case you were wondering.)

There’s always the fear of failure; that somehow this whole writing thing is just an ego-driven delusion, and when you put it on paper, the fantasy will dissipate like morning fog in the light of growing day. I would say also that perhaps it’s a fear of succeeding. Because if there’s anything worse than failure it’s success. Because with success it’s real. You did it. Now: do it again. With failure all you have is broken dreams. With success you have the agony of having realized a dream, only to face the possibility of losing it again. It feels like it’s actually better not to have loved at all. Better not to know what one might ultimately miss . . . and never have again.

But, honestly . . . who cares what the Resistance is about? I don’t need sessions with a therapist. I just need to write. I need sessions with my keyboard. Every. Dadgum. Day.

This self-absorbed, navel-gazing post is not working on my novel. But it is writing. Not world-class writing. Not great writing. Not even good writing. Just writing.

So screw you, Resistance.

Let us set out with joy upon the season of the Fast, and prepare ourselves for spiritual combat. Let us purify our soul and cleanse our flesh; and as we fast from food, let us abstain also from every passion. Rejoicing in the virtues of the Spirit may we persevere with love, and so be counted worthy to see the solemn Passion of Christ our God, and with great spiritual gladness to behold His Holy Pascha.

Another hymn exhorts:

Thy grace has shone forth, O Lord, it has shone forth and given light to our souls. Behold, now is the accepted time: behold, now is the season of repentance. Let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light, that having sailed across the great sea of the Fast, we may reach the third-day Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Savior of our souls.

We see here the dual contrasts: Joy and sorrow; despair and hope; ugliness and beauty. This is Lent, when we experience sorrow for our sins, but joy in Christ’s mercy; when we despair of our sinfulness and hope in his grace; when we see the ugliness of our sins, and the beauty of forgiveness.

Although the theme for the day is the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise, and it is often called Cheesefare Sunday, as it is the last time dairy and eggs will be consumed prior to Pascha (or Easter), the crown of the day is the Vespers service, where all the faithful drench themselves in God’s forgiveness given and received.

At the conclusion of the service, the rubrics begin somewhat tersely: “Then follows the ceremony of mutual forgiveness.” Pragmatic directions follow, though local customs dictate the specific mechanics of it all. But it is in that short sentence that the whole point of Lent is summarized: the experience of the mercy of God. Although we express our forgiveness to one another, we do so only because forgiveness has been extended to each of us through Christ and his saving work.

Among the many mercies of the Forgiveness Vespers are the tears that flow from eyes that smile. Here before me is my brother, my sister, before whom I kneel and press my face to the ground, asking their mercy, and–how can it be?–they in turn kneeling and pressing their faces to the ground, asking forgiveness of me. We each sorrow for our sins, but then embrace one another, saying, tear-stained cheek to tear-stained cheek, “God forgives, and I forgive.” God forgives. What amazing words these are. God, to whom I can give nothing to cover my sins, freely and without payment gives mercy and grace to me. And here am I, a conduit of his mercy, extending the same grace to this child of God with whom I am confronted.

This mutual forgiveness stirs the waters of the soul, for there are in this life many wounds, small and large, which striate my soul, and engrave my heart. I may leave the service reconciled to my brother and my sister, but there is still work to be done. Our lives are a large tapestry of interconnected threads. Forgiveness given and received calls forth more healing work, more giving and receiving of forgiveness. Some of this work is damnably hard, and bitterly painful. And yet . . . and yet, surging within, as life within death, there is light and joy, too. To cast off the soul-infection, to release the pent-up bile, is an act of freedom and relief.

And here is the wonder of it all: the more I forgive, the more space there is in heart and soul for mercy and forgiveness to fill. We are lightened, both in the casting off of the weight of sin and in the filling of our lives with brightness. The same tears are transformed as the sweet casts out the bitter, and the sorrowful is filled with joy.

This is why we begin Lent this way. And this is what awaits us at Lent’s end.

My first typewriter was a Smith-Corona. I was not so attached to it. When a proto-version word processor/typewriter came out, I ditched the old Smith-Corona. It probably sits in some landfill somewhere, though the romantic in me would like to believe that it has all these long years since graced a dusty corner in an old shop selling the sewing machines, typewriters, irons, and such from decades ago, as a sort of mascot of the place.

Ironically, when I got the Smith-Corona, though I knew how to type and was fairly proficient, when I did write, I wrote longhand, in pencil, in spiral notebooks, each notebook devoted to one of the characters whose exploits filled the pages. I was indefatigable as a writer. In the calendar year spanning my sophomore and junior years of high school I wrote dozens of stories comprising more than 100,000 words total.

I’m tracing the memory-associations here, because this is not about a Smith-Corona typewriter, nor is it much about the stories I wrote that one prolific year. It is, rather, about burials. You see, it was not more than three years later that I took all those stories, some dating back to my seventh grade year, and in a completely misguided attempt to demonstrate some sort of religious commitment, I threw all of the stories in the trash. I then dutifully walked the trash down to the dumpster. From there I’m sure they went to the landfill, ultimately to be buried under rotting garbage and toxic refuse over the course of the next years.

As I say, it was done in answer to a sadly deformed and misplaced sense of faithful zeal. God help me. Because what I was really doing was burying myself. Don’t misunderstand. I continued to write. But not really. There was, of course, the writing for my college courses, but the real writing, the writing that filled me with life and joy and intimacy with God was gone. What I wrote was plastic, cardboard, flat and lifeless. And so I didn’t do much of it. Essentially, I shut down. I buried myself.

Trouble is, I wouldn’t die. After a couple of years of bland and fake writing, some of the rotting ground I’d thrown myself into was wiped away, here and there, freeing this hand, allowing me to lift my head. I began to write again, lines and lines of blank verse and essays. And it was invigorating. But here’s the truth of it: It was only marginally more real than what I had been doing. It was better, to be sure. And I’ve kept these things. But it was missing the very things I had written less then a decade before. No stories. No narratives. No fables.

It is no surprise, then, that only a few more years, and finding myself on the other side of some poor life decisions, the writing got buried again. And a whole lot more of me got buried. For twenty years, the shovels did their work. Deeper and deeper it went. Occasionally, I would write a poem. Surprisingly, a handful of stories were spit out of the darkened earth in which I had sunk.

But the grave into which I had cast myself, thank God, was, I now see, more like a womb. Having reaped the whirlwind, when the dust settled, a good Samaritan bound up my wounds and by words and love sat my fanny down in front of the keyboard. I began to write again. There was poetry, to be sure–a romantic always has some drivel in him–but for the first time in nearly thirty years there were stories. Real stories. They had at last been unburied.

Tonight, for the first time ever, I cried over those thrown away stories, my thrown away self. I had lamented the loss, but never grieved it. It felt good. I gave value and life back to those stories, back to myself.

I am a writer. It’s that simple. I do not know if I will ever publish a book, or whether I will ever make any money from any books I might publish. I could care less. (Well, okay, I could care a little bit.) What I have found is my self, that life, that gift of God, that thing that when I do it I am more real, more myself, more a child of God than at nearly any other time of my life. Writing is nearer to me than any lover, sweeter to me than any passion, more harsh and more demanding than the cruelest master. It has taken many, many years to unbury it. It’s staying with me. I will lug it around like an old Smith-Corona, in dozens of hand-scrawled spiral notebooks. And never ever again will I bury it in the ground. That’s not a fate I will want to suffer. It may not yield a double return. But such as it will yield I will offer.

There is no accounting for this. It will come of its own accord. But having been inculcated in such complex rhythms, a man can learn to accept it and take the stillness in.

It is said by some that nature abhors a void. A farming man might tell you there is no void, only the tilling and the reaping, the calving by moonlight, and a rest and stillness that can never be empty. A careless man, or a wise one, will turn up that loam within the heart, or let a thing rise up through the soul-soil, leveraging that silence like a fulcrum. A sound, the smell of the turned earth, anything at all can give the thing passage. And there it is, fronting him, while folded arms steady his weight across the sill of the open truck door and a gaze turns unfocused toward the horizon. The smell of rain is in the wind.

There he sits, long years past, side by side with her, the rain falling gently over the windshield, the car running softly while the song plays on the stereo. See, she says, the urgency in her voice, willing him to hear the words, to ingest the melody. That’s us. And for a moment, the breach is filled. The small fracture healed. But only for a moment. For the gulf is not spanned, and before the world spins again its seasons four-square, he will break her heart. Not for any great sin. Not from any great betrayal. Simply because the time has moved him onward to a different place.

It could have been a memory from yesterday, instead of from his beginning days as a man, independent in the world, more than a quarter century ago. That’s how these things go. There is no rhyme nor reason for the recalling of such things. But the soul, the heart, has its movements, unravels its threads in conjunction with timelessness anchored in time.

Hard upon such a memory, another may come, and another. Suddenly the soul-wounds beg for cleansing, for the salve of remembrance. And here’s the thing: sheer remembrance alone cannot do it. It is there, standing under prairie stars, the heart can understand, the soul can reach out and find life. For the digging up of memories is not accomplished by one’s own hand alone. A greater someone will call them forth. Just when they are needed. When the emotions are again felt, when the brokenness can be pressed tender, when the divine hands of healing minister the final judgment. These things are now finished.

When that farmer climbs stiff back into that truck, not even the engine noise and the scraping of the prairie grass along the side panels can overtake the silence. Nor is there any diminishing of the surprise at what has burst up from the soil. It is a wonder of healing.

Here’s an excerpt:

4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 34,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 8 Film Festivals

Click here to see the complete report.

Samuel heads to the home of Jesse, on a mission from God to anoint a king. Moved by the word of God in his heart, he anoints the youngest son, David. It took another decade and a half before David was finally installed as King of Israel.

Daniel, in Persia, sends aloft a prayer for understanding. Immediately, God sends his messenger. But the messenger is opposed by demons, and it is three weeks before Daniel receives his answer.

Word comes to Jesus of Lazarus’ illness. He waits long enough for Lazarus to die. Four days later, Lazarus emerges from the tomb.

We wrestle not against flesh and blood, Paul tells us. Our lives as Christians are constantly immersed in realities we do not perceive with our senses. All around us is an immaterial reality we do not see, which our prayers influence and which influences our prayers.

We do not often know when our prayers have impact on these realities. This is the great mystery of prayer, this co-laboring with God for the transformation of our world and our lives. Sometimes we see the immediate effects of our prayers. Limping from his all night wrestling, Jacob immediately experienced the pacification of his brother. Earlier in Daniel’s life (and one chapter earlier in the book that bears his name), Daniel prayed and Gabriel was on his way with an answer while Daniel was still praying. Other times we do not see the effects of our prayers for some time. David had a lot of fleeing and fighting and praying to do before his anointing as king was fulfilled. We might also mention Abraham who waited twenty-five years before Isaac was born. There is a providence here unique to each person, and not always discernible.

What are we to make of these things? First and foremost: prayer matters, because it matters to God. Though God may choose to act apart from human cooperation, it is most often his way to invite into this creative labor those whom he has called to pray over a specific person, situation or struggle. This is why prayer requests are no light thing, not simply a way to greet or bid farewell (though when such words are indeed backed by action, it is a most powerful and meaningful way to cement our bonds with our fellow Christians). When we take on the glad duty to pray for someone, we set ourselves at odds against an unseen reality, a multitude of hosts whose sole existence is our harm and destruction. When we undertake to pray for the change in a situation, the relief from struggle, we enter into conflict. We are engaging in actions that by God’s cooperative grace, will change circumstances, change hearts, heal wounds, give life where there is death, call into existence that which does not exist, bring divine wisdom to minds and hearts clouded with confusion.

Prayer changes things. A disease, a particular troubling situation, a conflict has a hold on our life, binds us, keeps us from the freedom and joy we are meant, as adopted children of God, to enjoy. We call out to God, we ask the King of the Universe to take what is presently the case and to change it. From mercy, God responds. Our prayers call down invincible power, make possible what is impossible.

But God in his infinite wisdom, though he could instantly change all diseases into health, bring relief to all circumstances of trouble and adversity, end conflict and bring peace, sometimes does so and sometimes chooses to bring about change over time. He always does what is best. We may trust him in that.

There is no doubt, however, that our prayers, cooperating with God’s grace, create turning points. We sometimes perceive the immediate effects. Most often we don’t. In rare cases, God may give us the spiritual eyes to see the turning point in the immaterial realm, the assurance that the victory is already won, and the joy of watching it unfold in time to our material senses.

All these things we take by faith. Our prayers are not ineffectual, however long we may pray them without a discernible answer. Who knows but what with God we created a turning point that we have not yet seen? We may nonetheless trust that God is at work, doing always what is best for us.