This blog is a release valve for my passion to see people fulfill their created purpose. My desire is to light a fire in others by showing them or reminding them that they have intrinsic value because they are created by God. God is good and wants to do good for you and through you. Seeing God how He truly is and understanding how He sees us gives us a different measuring stick for ourselves than the one popular culture would have us use. Friends, family, co-workers, strangers - all have a measuring stick they would be happy to give us.
Our value is not determined by our dress size or our yearly salary, by the length of our eyelashes, the shape of our face, the label on our clothing or the car in our driveway. It's not determined by how many people did or did not like my status update on facebook. Value is determined by the price someone is willing to pay for an item, and heaven went bankrupt to get us back. God will overwhelm you with His love if you let Him.
I think that effectively covers why I write.
How do I write? Like Sarah, I have an internal editor I must ignore in order to get anything written. Honing each sentence into the most sleek and powerful version of itself as I am writing is a recipe for getting nothing accomplished. I let my thoughts flow until they're all out or until I have to stop writing for whatever reason. Once my thoughts are captured, I sit with a printed draft and a red pen and start slashing the overgrowth. A business writing instructor I had years ago told me to think of words as currency and realize you only have so much to spend. If you spend all your currency on weak verbs, filler phrases, and side thoughts you will lose your audience before you can get your message to them.
What am I working on? Most of my recent writing has been business writing - procedures, memos, emails, reports. My love of words makes this an enjoyable part of what I do. Over the summer I will blog more, thanks to the slower pace of academic summers. I've also started working on a series of essays that will eventually become a book. I was struggling with that project for a while, because I couldn't see how to attack the mountain. I recently received the idea of doing essays. Brilliant!
The question What am I working on? makes me think of Morgan Jacoby. She is always asking me, "How's the writing going?" Her expectant tone of voice helps me stay motivated to make time to write. I met Morgan through church & martial arts and discovered that she is a prolific writer and story teller! I'm looking forward to finding out more about what goes on behind the scenes with her writing when she posts for this tour next Saturday, June 14.
2 comments:
Enjoyed reading your post especially your purpose for this blog. As a fan of your posts, I see your passion to inspire people and anticipate more posts this summer.
Thank you, Sarah! And thank you for including me on this tour. I was so energized yesterday after posting. I enjoyed reading about other peoples processes as well. It helped me to recognize some things about my own writing.
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