I’ve read a few books on writing, a few more blogs by writers, and they all mention becoming a better writer by forcing yourself to write every day. I do that. But I’ve run out of things to say. When that’s the case, the experts recommend, we should go back in time to one moment in our life, maybe something seemingly mundane or ordinary, and write about it in detail. We’re supposed to try not to make sense of it, try not to perfect it or make a point. Just write about that moment. That’s harder than that it seems for a guy like me who’s made a living and a life of making sense and making points. Here’s today’s attempt. Your turn…
A thick-throated round man in a brown suit belted out a closing song. After the final firmata’s release, the Wurlitzer and piano played us out of the sanctuary and into the lobby of the small country church. It was then that my search for the Candy Man began - a wrinkled deacon with shiny crisp palms always dispensing butterscotches and peppermints to any child brave enough to give him five.
I was such a kid.
He held my hand for what was probably a full minute, an eternity, asking what I’d learned in Sunday School and reminding me to be nice to my sister. The smell of coffee was thick on his closely spoken words.
This was church.
I was driven there every Sunday by two good smelling dressed up adults in their magic Ford LTD that always played Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton and Barry Manilow on its radio. We stopped for donuts on the way. Sunday was a perfect day and church was a perfect place.
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I’ve written and rewritten large chunks of my book five times now. I’m doing it again.
My fear of failure and inability to finish anything that I know won’t be perfect are mostly to blame - along with poor time management skills, a lack of discipline and a dozen or so more character flaws that I’ll keep between me and the other folks in my head.
But then there’s this too…
Seth Godin writes about my predicament today in a piece called Coloring Inside The Lines:
People who want to do a good job are more likely to follow instructions that they know they can successfully accomplish, while they’ll often ignore the ‘softer’ tasks if they can.
If you’re marketing a product or an idea to a group of people and you juxtapose two ideas--one obvious and simple while the other is challenging and subtle, you can bet the mass of people will grab the first one (if they don’t ignore you altogether).
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For anyone still interested...the most thorough and well-written review in the blogosphere of Mark Driscoll’s book Confessions of a Reformission Rev is over at Relevintage. Brad writes a great summary and a brief interesting little discussion/diversion on Mark’s choice of language in which Leonard Sweet is quoted as once writing:
“I can enjoy and quote Nobel Prize-winning author Elias Canetti without embracing his sincere belief that he was never going to die. I can learn from and be instructed by the theology of Martin Luther without embracing his beliefs about the evil of Jews or his rejection of Copernicus. Ninety percent of Isaac Newton’s writings consist of treatises on theology, alchemy, and mysticism. Does that mean that his scientific colleagues should have dismissed his scientific work? Any visit to the Christian Hall of Fame [Hebrews 11] reveals a gallery of greats who didn’t have it all together or get it right, either.”
Click here to purchase Confessions of a Reformission Rev and read more about it.
I stopped reading Mark Driscoll’s Confessions of a Reformission Rev today. I didn’t finish it. I just stopped reading it. (And I’ll start reading David Augsburger’s Dissident Discipleship tomorrow.)
The reason? While Mark is a pastor I listen to a lot and am entertained and challenged by always, his writing comes across as just, well, mean. Way mean. The book version of Mark would probably mock me for even saying that right now, accuse me of being an effeminate loofa user (a charge made against Emergent Church leaders in the first chapter).
I still suggest listening to Mark’s great teaching and hanging with him if you get the chance. But some personalities just don’t work on paper and his is one of them...for me. (This book was a needed warning to me to be sure my humor isn’t misinterpreted in print as mean.)
The ideas we speak and write are not all there is to our message. The method is also part of that message. And for me, at a time when I’m realizing my own tendencies to divide instead of unite the Church, Mark’s writing was a repellent two-faced message. The ideas presented say, “Love God. Love people. Build a church that does the same.” But the method, the words and tone, say instead, “I love God and if you don’t agree with me then you don’t. I’m a better person than you and if you don’t think so then, well, my church kicks your church’s ass. So there.”
I highly recommend the teaching and ideas of Mark’s. Just not this book of them. I was sent Mark’s book to review on this blog. One day I’ll pick it up again and give a more thorough review after finishing the last couple chapters. But right now I’d give it 5 stars for lessons worth learning and 1 star for writing style and unnecessary low blows. Here’s what other folks are saying about it:
Jeff at healing malchus writes…
“...the book hits its lows when Driscoll starts swinging prescriptive ethics like a club, demeaning people caught in a cycle of sin or theological confusion. He thinks his banter is humorous; it is actually base and cruel. Ironically in the last few pages he feels compelled to put forward all his own struggles asking for sympathy. It seems to be the mark of a particular sort of bad man who fragrantly insults those wrapped in moral failure, then turns and asks for pity for their own sin. I hope I miss read him on this front. Thankfully, most of the readers of this book will be mature believers, primarily pastors who will easily slide over Driscoll’s over-exaggerations, self absorption, and straight out mean-spiritedness. If you buy it, cherish the good when you find it cause there is much to be discarded.”
BUT worship.com says…
“This book is highly recommended and should be read by every pastor, elder, and worship leader. Those who have a desire to reach an increasingly post-modern culture without compromising doctrine will be encouraged to know they are not alone in either their struggles or their passion to reach the world for Jesus.”
Have you read Mark’s book? What do you think? Not about him but about his book.
I’m constipated right now. Creatively speaking. I don’t get “writer’s block”. You can build with a block, stack a block, stand on the stack and reach the hit song on the top shelf. I’m not a complete idiot: I know “block” in this particular metaphor is more about being clogged, stopped up, unable to flow. But it’s still open to a positive interpretation - it still has a bright side (that word “block” and it’s other meaning) - but having it, having writer’s block, isn’t at all positive.
So I prefer constipation as the metaphor. That’s how “writer’s block” really feels. It feels like there’s something that truly needs to come out - it would be very healthy, I think to myself, for this to come out of me, I need it to come out or I might be sick and even possibly die - but it won’t. It sits there stubbornly lodged in the large intestine of my mind, or fingers or wherever it is good ideas hide out while they’re being processed.
This constipation leads to irritation which would lead to eradication (of myself) if I thought that I, a song writer/article writer/sermon writer by trade, would never, you know, “go” ever again. But I always get unclogged somehow...eventually. Something always comes along and acts as the metaphoric bran muffin to get me making musical number twos good enough to be number one on some chart somewhere. Suddenly I run to the piano or to a napkin with pen in hand and a mind swarming with a buzzing cloud of bee-like bits of melody and rhyme. And I take dictation feverishly. Eventually the brainstorm ends, usually in a matter of minutes, and I’m left in awe of this thing that just shot out of me, out of nothingness, out of the total wasteland that was my head. Amazing.
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