Category Archives: Passion

The Sabbath Life for a Writer

This may seem counter-intuitive, but here it is: You can improve your writing by taking time off to not write.

Those of you who are jumping up and down right now because you think you’ve just found a new excuse for your lack of writing this week, this month, this year—“Hey! I’m on a writing Sabbath!”—calm down. You’re misunderstanding.

First, let’s define the term: Sabbath comes from the Hebrew word that means “to cease, to stop working.” As Peter Scazzero writes in his book Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, it refers to “doing nothing related to work for a 24-hour period each week.”

Sabbath, as Scazzero is referring to it, “provides for us … an additional rhythm for an entire reorientation of our lives around the living God. On Sabbaths, we imitate God by stopping our work and resting.”

Reorientation

For many years, I saw the Sabbath as a day to rest after working, working, working for the previous six days. I have used it as an excuse to work more and more throughout the week—if I worked hard enough I could enjoy the Sabbath without feeling guilty. But that’s backward.

A biblical Sabbath isn’t a reward for hard work; it’s not a time to unplug. Rather, it’s an opportunity to plug into God and recharge in anticipation of the coming week. It’s a retreat, yes, but not to inactivity. It’s a retreat into relationship with
God.

So should a writing Sabbath be. Don’t retreat into inactivity, but retreat into activities that build your relationship with your creative self. Some writing Sabbath possibilities:

  • Instead of writing five chapters of your current manuscript, pick up one of those long-neglected books on your To Be Read pile and submerge yourself in it. Suspend your inner editor and your inner learner. You’re not looking for typos or trying to analyze how the writer created that unique feature. Your goal is simply to be carried away.
  • Instead of spending time “marketing” on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest, turn off the computer, call a real friend, and take in a local walking or bicycling path. “Pin” the memories of the beauty you see and experience in your Emotions Bank—you can withdraw them later for use in your WIP.
  • Instead of printing your latest chapters and grabbing your red pen for corrections, visit a local nursing home, homeless shelter, or school and volunteer with the aged, the invisible, or the young. Your investment could “edit” the course that person’s story takes forever.

Re-Engage

Best of all, when you do return to your desk and computer, you’ll return energized—and may even have a couple great plot points to flesh out as you move your story forward.

The important thing when taking a writing Sabbath is to remember Scazzero’s four principles of a biblical Sabbath and apply them to your writing Sabbath:

  1. Stop: Stop writing. Stop social media. Stop editing. Lay it all down, knowing that it’s temporary and will still be there when you return. (Deadline exemptions available.)
  2. Rest: Step completely away from writing and writing-related activities. Your creativity needs it.
  3. Delight: Experience “joy, completion, wonder, and play,” as Scazzero puts it.
  4. Contemplate: Before returning to your keyboard, think about the experiences you had and what they might mean when you begin writing again. Seed your brain with the “what if” possibilities and allow them to germinate.

Consider the writing Sabbath—not as an excuse to not write, but as an opportunity to enrich and deepen your well. See if it doesn’t help you recharge for the next session of writing.

One last thought from Scazzero: “Sabbath is like receiving the gift of a snow day every week. Stores are closed. Roads are impassable. Suddenly you have the gift of a day to do whatever you want. You don’t have any obligations, pressures, or responsibilities. You have permission to play.”

Writer image courtesy of Phaitoon/ FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Friends in water image courtesy of adamr/ FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Mike-9Michael Ehret loves to play with words and as the editor of CHEFS Mix Blog for CHEFS Catalog he is enjoying his playground. Previous playgrounds include being the Managing Editor of the magazine ACFW Journal and the ezine Afictionado for seven years. He also plays with words as a freelance editor and has edited several nonfiction books, proofedited for Abingdon Press, worked in corporate communications, and reported for The Indianapolis Star.

Originally posted on Novel Rocket

Quote It! Chuck Colson

Chuck Colson, of Watergate fame, has formed an evangelical ministry, and the current class of "Centurions" graduates this weekend in Leesburg, Virginia.“At the root of what makes us good, just, and decent, is a recognition that we owe a debt to those who have gone before us.”

–Chuck Colson, Watergate figure who emerged from the country’s worst political scandal a vocal Christian leader and a champion for prison ministry, spent the last years of his life in the dual role of leading Prison Fellowship, the world’s largest outreach to prisoners, ex-prisoners and their families, and the Colson Center, a teaching and training center focused on Christian worldview thought and application. Colson died in April of 2012.

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Last night, our small group finished the study Doing The Right Thing. This quote from Colson was one of the last statements made in the video.

I can’t get it out of my mind.

The statement is truth for each of us, but for the Christian the debt both deepens and enriches. In a Kingdom economy, the debt we owe is one of love:

8 Don’t owe anyone anything, with the exception of love to one another—that is a debt which never ends—because the person who loves others has fulfilled the law.

(Romans 13:8, The Voice)

Kim Peterson, Writing Instructor

Kim Peterson

But what does it mean to me as a writer? Certainly I owe a debt to my parents and siblings who nurtured me–and to my wife who never fails to believe–but also to my writing teachers from first grade (Mrs. Oyer at Hawthorne Elementary) through college (Kim Peterson at Bethel College).

But many others have invested in me as a writer and editor–including many of you who are reading this now. To each I owe my thanks, but also my commitment to use what you willingly gave from your storehouse. There is one other thing: I owe to those who come after me, my own willingness to share, encourage, and educate.

Together we make a chain–and we make each other “good, just, and decent.”

Colson’s quote was one of the last things the video lesson shared. The last thing was this:

“Gratitude is the mother of all virtues.” — G.K. Chesterton

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Michael Ehret, for Writing on the Fine Line

Mike-9Michael loves to play with words and as editor of the ACFW Journal, he is enjoying his playground. He also plays with words as a freelance editor here at WritingOnTheFineLine.com, where he often takes a writer Into The Edit, pulling back the veil on the editing process. He has edited several nonfiction books, played with words as a corporate communicator, and reported for The Indianapolis Star.

Quote It! Ray Bradbury

Ray_Bradbury“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”

— Ray Bradbury, recipient of the 2000 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the 2004 National Medal of Arts, and the 2007 Pulitzer Prize Special Citation. Renowned author of Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, and Something Wicked This Way Comes. (1920-2012)

I don’t think it’s possible to underestimate the importance of reading–not only for personal growth, but for the benefit of our society-at-large. Saw some disturbing reading statistics from 2012 today:

  • 56%: Young people who claim they read more than 10 books a year. (That’s not even one a month.)
  • 33%: U.S. high school graduates who will never read a book after high school. (Never. As in no more books their entire life.)
  • 42%: College students who will never read another book after they graduate. (It’s getting worse.)
  • 80%: U.S. families that did not buy a book this year. (Can it get worse?)

If you are a reader, good for you! According to the same study, if you read only 15 minutes a day you expose yourself to 1 million words annually. All of those words help keep your brain nimble–and a nimble brain is a good thing!

What are your thoughts on reading and our culture?

Michael Ehret, for Writing on the Fine Line

Michael Ehret loves to play with words and as editor of the ACFW Journal, he is enjoying his playground. He also plays with words as a freelance editor here at WritingOnTheFineLine.com, where he often takes a writer Into The Edit, pulling back the veil on the editing process. He has edited several nonfiction books, played with words as a corporate communicator, and reported for The Indianapolis Star.

Quote It! Barbara Kingsolver

“Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer.”

Barbara Kingsolver, an American novelist, essayist, and poet. Author of The Poisonwood Bible and The Lacuna, among others.

This strikes me as truth, for writers. Akin to the advice to not “chase the market” because by the time you figure out what’s hot, it won’t be.

But there’s more to Kingsolver’s advice than that, isn’t there? For me, she’s also suggesting that we each have a passion. We each have a handle that turns the crank on our personal ice cream maker.

My passion is shining the light of God into the dark places of love, marriage, and life together. I want to illuminate the things many married people are afraid of because when the Light shines, darkness flees and the Boogeyman is unmasked.

What about you? What’s your passion? Why do you write what you write?

Michael Ehret, for Writing on the Fine Line