On Having a Writing Routine

I really enjoy how the internet lets me follow a link to a link to a link to find something unexpected but interesting or useful. I also enjoy the fact that even though I don't put down a trail of breadcrumbs so that I can trace my way back, I still end up safe and sound in front of my computer where I started. I was on one of those bunny trails this morning and ended up reading about the routines that writers follow when they are working. The last site I ended up on had compiled the routines of authors such C.S. Lewis, John Grisham, and Stephen King. This subject of writing practices has come to my attention several times in the last few weeks, so of course I thought this was an opportune moment to add my thoughts on it to the blogosphere.

Throughout my elementary, junior high, and high school career, the idea was hammered into me that to write anything well (except maybe a poem), one must first put together a numbered outline before sitting down to compose an essay, research paper, or novel. Deviation from writing ideas down in the exact order of the outline was discouraged. Opening paragraphs and closing paragraphs (tell them what you are going to tell them,  tell them, and then tell them what you told them) were the bane of my existence. Counting the number of simple, compound, and complex sentences in each essay to make sure it was "balanced" was a chore. My writing style was often praised by my teachers, but the writing process they had us follow was excruciating to me. If I had something to say, I wanted to just be able to say it. These rules and regimens did not exactly inspire a longing for "author" status in me. 

When the time came for me to take English Composition as a foundation class in college, I thought that it would be more of the same. Students would need to be reading, thinking, and writing on a higher level, but the process would not change. I was right and I was wrong. In the English classes I had taken previously, we had read works of several great authors. We had talked about the events in their lives that might have influenced their ideas. However, I don't remember us discussing the authors' personal quirks and eccentricities in general or specifically applied to how they set about writing. I'm sure I really believed that Shakespeare, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Rand, and Dr. Seuss all started with a numbered outline and did not deviate from the order without first consulting their editor, twelfth-grade English teacher, or the Elizabethan equivalent. They probably sat upright (with excellent posture) at a desk that had the essentials laid out in perfect order but without any frilly extras. 

Study the Creator or the Creation?

Flying half-way across the country has been bittersweet in ways that I would not have expected. Going over countryside, I get to watch as we pass over all kinds of different geological regions (not to be confused with geographical regions, although we are obviously going over them too). I get to see deserts, forests, rivers running down a steep hillside. I wonder at the obvious signs of streams in the desert. I see sharp edges next to curves. I see a cliff that drops off into dry canyon in such a way that it looks like someone took a giant shovel to it and formed it all at once instead of slowly picking it apart.

All of this reminds me of one of my favorite college courses:  physical geology. I got learn about glaciers and fjords. We studied about the ocean floor. I discovered the origin of the oxbow lake. Our professor taught us about the shoreline processes that we would be able to see taking place on our bay all year long. Learning about our local geology was fascinating.  I also learned practical advice for the future like why I should never, ever cut out the toe of a slope. Never. And over the years I’ve been able to see where people have not listened to that advice. Oops. What fun it would have been to pursue this course of study further, although it would have meant more math (yuck).

What I also remembered was that I had been timid, weak, and undisciplined. The New Testament advises us to always have an answer when asked about the hope we have in Christ Jesus (1 Peter 3:15).  I don’t know that that verse was aimed at how to handle yourself in science class in 1990, but then again, maybe God had let the ApostlePeter see the future. What I do know is that having a firm testimony, even if I never spoke it out loud in class, would have made me feel much more secure in my faith when in the presence of non-believers. But I didn’t bother to learn the way in which God wanted me to speak the Truth. I wanted a nice little world like I had grown up in, where everyone believed the same thing and defending “The Faith” was taken care of by the older men in our circle. I wanted somebody to take care of me and make it easy to go out into the world with my Christianity. I didn’t want to be challenged or have to explain myself. How childish of me.