The funny thing about this whole process I'm in is that once you get the urge, the wanting to write, the real writing becomes so much harder. I think the books on the subject that I picked up yesterday will be really helpful, but they can only go so far. The formula, the secret weapon to learning how to write really well is simply how to best put down what goes on in your head. The thoughts and feelings that are washing over your consciousness like the ocean’s tide are full of potential sparks of inspiration. Those are things no one but you can impart, which is one of those cool/scary things, because you think you don't really have that much to offer and yet some of that may be something that someone NEEDS to hear. Even past memories could fill volumes. It’s all in learning how to lasso those things and herd them onto the paper.
While there’s always room for improvement in English mechanics, that’s not the real stuff. My mind is like the Earth’s crust, with millions of gallons of unrefined crude oil waiting to be tapped, and it needs to be processed and refined. The point is, I know that the stuff that makes a good writer is in there, but I’m in need of some sort of catalyst to get it out. Like Dustin Hoffman’s ‘existential detective’ character says in I Heart Huckabees, “Everything you could ever want or be, you already have and are.”
Yesterday at Barnes & Noble, I found Rob Bell’s new book Drops Like Stars. It’s quite a different animal from his other books, although definitely his style. Rob’s writing can be sparse, and this book is that to the extreme. It’s the size of a coffee-table book, with some pages having only one sentence in the very middle. The reviews I’d seen online weren’t very friendly to this (“Who would pay $34.95 for this?! It’s like a dollar a word!”), but I like how he does it for emphasis. He writes like he speaks. In my opinion, that’s how it should be all the time. I was told that I did that once... granted, it was because of my chatting style on AIM, but it’s what I hope for all the time.
So, seeing as it was somewhat shorter due to the style, I read through it in about 40 minutes. Isn’t it amazing how some things we read are perfectly timed to hit us where we’re at in that very moment? It was that way with Drops Like Stars. Without giving it all away, Bell’s general message is that creativity is often born out of suffering.
That idea resonates with me. It seems to be one of those threads running through all of life. A similar thought I’ve heard several times is that “tough times are the womb of heroes.” A.W. Tozer wrote that “It is doubtful that God can use any man greatly until he’s hurt him deeply." Could that be it? Are we like forests, where the soil of our hearts and minds is the most fertile after a fire has come through, destroying those things we hold dear? When I think about the times when I’ve experienced the most personal growth, those have often been the times when it felt like everything around me was being utterly shaken to the core.
...Is that the catalyst, when things seem insurmountable? You’d think I’d notice if I’m suffering... have I just gotten complacent? Life seems pretty good, and sometimes that worries me that it’s slowly gone from good to just sort of base-level boring, leaving me wondering if I'm like a lobster in a pot of slowly-heating water, not knowing you're dying until it's too late. That seems a little extreme, but this whole thing has me wondering...
Where am I being challenged?
Where do I need to be shaken up?
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