2013
I remain confident of this:
Psalm 27:13-14
I will see the goodness of the Lord
in the land of the living.
Wait for the Lord;
be strong and take heart
and wait for the Lord.
Yea, thank you, Lord, it has been a long time coming and I have tried to be patient in my waiting, scared that it would never happen again. Last night I broke my duck and wrote. I had been thinking about doing it for ages but was scared what kind of voice would come out. The days of “Slasher Suzie” are gone. I can’t get to that point of utter hopelessness in my writing because I can’t feel it in my life.
It was a strange night, I had studied, I had read and got back to my three blogs after being immersed in Nathan and David for three days. It was half past midnight and I was about to switch off and go to bed. A friend had emailed earlier and the content of the email was still ruminating around in my head. The story I wrote was not her story, far from it, but it was the inspiration.
It was a short piece about 1200 words, a third of what I’d done in my exegesis of 2 Samuel 12:5-7 earlier on in the day. However it is complete, the tragic half finished pieces that litter my bedroom do not have a new playmate, and “A Tattered Affair” is posted on blogger.
I am not pressurising myself to keep producing, I’ll be like a hen, laying every day and then stop for a rest before continuing again. I am in a state of awe at our Lord, that he managed to get through my scaredy cat state to help me move on from my block.
I haven’t read much Christian fiction, Joshua and Joshua’s Children and a few by some American ladies. I am sure there’s edgy stuff out there but I can’t write wishy washy tales that present themselves as Christian and yet the only Christian thing is they go to church. (not Joshua stories, I found part of those to be lovely narrative, the inter faith one especially) One of the authors I read started out with Mills & Boon, which I have to admit (if that’s the right word) I have never even read the back cover of one. Maybe they are good literature for their genre, but it’s not me.
My two favourite authors are dead, Douglas Adams and Anne MacCaffrey. I still get great stimulation from Douglas’ “Dirk Gently” books, Hitchhiker is a bit different because it was written just at the beginning of the digital age and so is quite difficult to translate to the technology we have now, even the size of the “Guide” is laughable in today’s context.
I can remember a time when I would scour the charity shops of Cork hunting for a new Anne MacCaffrey, “Killashandra” was my first introduction to her but I was soon swept away to a land where people, dragons and dolphins worked together against a hostile environment. Two years ago re-read a few but I couldn’t ‘get them’ anymore. I was left grieving for the characters because they didn’t know God. I know sad isn’t it feeling sorry for fictional characters but I did.
Talenkynic, not sure what to do with her, I think I will leave her hanging for a while longer, till I am more mature and can know how to have an alien in a Christian story. Mary, my beautiful queen of the crows, Morrigan. I still love her, she was my first character, totally unloved and unloveable, she had no redeeming features at all, and yet she broke through and was written whilst I was waiting to get on a plane at Kerry Airport.
So I’ve got my groove back, I can write (Yea) and I must be patient for the next inspiration, not scared but excited at the prospect. Lord I wait, thank you
Rebuilding Community 