One of the more disconcerting pieces of advice that professionals give you when you start out as a writer is to “kill your babies”. The first time you hear it can be a bit of a “Wait, what!?!” moment. It’s designed to be shocking, because the idea that they want new writers to learn is a difficult one. You must be able to sacrifice anything in the story for the good of the story. It works a little like this……
Last Sunday at church the young man presenting communion spoke about sin using weeding as a metaphor. it was a simple but very strong message. It also reminded me of something I wrote when I was that young man’s age, so I dug out one of my old prayer journals and read the story again. The similarity was uncanny – which encourages me to believe that the Lord had spoken to both of us. So here is my piece, written…
I’m doing my best to be head down and butt up with my writing this year. I know from experience that if I can get a good run at it, I can do a rough draft for a novel in about three months – fitting it around the household schedule. I’m the at home parent, but these days with one adult child and one teenager, that’s a pretty manageable set of chores, mostly. So, I’ve been giving it some…
The response to my last post has been really positive and I want say thinks to everyone who told me they enjoyed it. It looks like it’s going to yield some unexpected fruit. A friend of mine here in my hometown is an award winning short filmmaker. He’s been invited to present a short film this year as an alumni of a Christian film festival in the US. He contacted me the other day to say that he’d like to turn…
