Fallow Ground
These blog posts were all written in the second half of 2011 and the first half of 2012. I am including them here for you to read because I think they work well together as a series.
This period of time was a season of waiting for me. I knew not what for. I've had other similar seasons since. They have always led to something surprising. I meet my wife in November of 2011.
I'm archiving these posts here because I need to remember that season, to remember that fallow periods are part of the way God has organized the creative life of the world.
All Posts in This Series
On Writing
Writing is paralegal research. Each scratch of the pencil across the page is a scratching away at the layers of falsity applied to my personality. Each click of the keyboard is chipping away at the calcified lies concealing my heart.
Writing is trial. Each fiction crafted is truth teased out by hypothetical character and action. Each autobiography is a shaking until separated and settled of all the grit that clouds my testimony, an uncoerced confession of blindness, of confusion, of sin. My words are accusers. My phrases, condemnation. Punctuation is sentencing. Justice is having written, being done.
There is no escaping my story, and my story cannot escape me. We go together, chained at the wrist. As one sinks into the depths so does the other. If one gains wings, both fly. Furtiveness is futile. We are only bled by the metal bands, our respective arteries alleviated of their fluid until we are no more. Freedom is in cooperation, in submission, in love. My story and I only work when we work as one.
My characters are suspicious, calculating, distrustful, overcompensating, expect betrayal, terrified of uncertainty, self-sufficient, anti-social, guilt-ridden, begrudging, paranoid, and confused.
I only write what I know.
My characters are loyal, courageous, sacrificial, innovative, insightful, determined, empathetic, conscientious, amusing, and amused.
See the promise. Look past the masks. Believe redemption is all that lasts through edit’s process. Pursue the goal of resurrection taking hold in every character writ by Writers preexistent, triune Sage ever narrative-involved twist to twist, page to page.
There is a good story being told in the world. I will continue to try to echo the lines I hear the talent speak, to mimic the motions suggested by the text and animated by well-trained thesps since ancient times. I will involve myself in this story if the Director/Producer/Writer/Audience will have me. Better an usher in the theater of our God than star of a one-man show in Hell.
Search me and know me, God. May truth drip from my pen and convict me of my sin. May my denouement coincide with Thine. May my only resolution be in You.
Amen.
The End.