Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Write down these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.”

• Exodus 34:27

“When you are brought before synagogues, rulers and authorities, do not worry about how you will defend yourselves or what you will say, for the Holy Spirit will teach you at that time what you should say.”

• Luke 12:11-12

So Paul and Barnabas spent considerable time there, speaking boldly for the Lord, who confirmed the message of his grace by enabling them to perform signs and wonders.

• Acts 13:3

He began to speak boldly in the synagogue. When Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they invited him to their home and explained to him the way of God more adequately.

• Acts 18:26

“Whenever you are fed up with life, start writing; ink is the great cure for all human ills, as I have found out long ago. …
“What you want is practice, practice, practice. It doesn’t matter what we write (at least this is my view) at our age, so long as we write continually as well as we can. l feel that every time I write a page either of prose or of verse, with real effort, even if it’s thrown into the fire next minute, I am so much further on. …
“It is impossible to write one’s best if nobody else ever has a look at the result. …
“I am sure that some are born to write as trees are born to bear leaves: for these, writing is a necessary mode of their own development. If the impulse to write survives the hope of success, then one is among these. If not, then the impulse was at best only pardonable vanity, and it will certainly disappear when the hope is withdrawn.

• C. S. Lewis, The Letters of C. S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves

“To the present day one meets men, great readers, who write admirably until the fatal moment when they remember that they are writing.”

• C. S. Lewis, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century

The four scriptures are related, but distinctly different.  When God speaks to Moses, God is directly speaking the words that Moses writes.  I recently heard an unbeliever talk about the tremendous amounts of “contradictions” in the Bible and that was due to the stories being handed down for centuries before anything was written.  First, the Bible has no contradictions; people simply do not apply logic and fail to see what they are reading, the style of writing that the Jews used, etc.  And second, God breathed the words into those that wrote it down.  And third, Other than the book of Genesis, the Israelites were known as the people of the books.  They had it written down from early on.

But in this bit of writing, I would never consider that anything that I write is God-breathed.  I just started with that Scripture to illustrate one way God’s message reaches people, through His Holy Word, the Bible.

Now, the second Scripture is Jesus telling His disciples and by extension, us, that the Holy Spirit will give us the right words to say at the right time.  I believe that this expands to the right words to right.  I screw up a lot in my writing.  Maybe some of the things are trash; note the third C. S. Lewis quote in his letters to Arthur Greeves.  You never know if anything is really good until others have read it.  But occasionally, I have something that hits a heart string here or there.  Someone comments that they were blessed by what I wrote.  But then, I may give them my thanks for the comment, but when that happens, I truly believe I quit writing for a few seconds and the Holy Spirit took over.  It was the Holy Spirit who knew what the other person needed to read, not me.

In the third Scripture above, Paul and Barnabas speak boldly at Iconium, and the Holy Spirit is so much at work that they also perform signs and wonders.  This is not getting written down, but it is a message of the Gospel being passed along.  The signs and wonders provide a verification.  Neither Paul nor Barnabas would take credit for the healing.  It was always done in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ.  I will not get into the belief hear that these signs and wonders have ceased, but the message contained in the Bible is all sufficient.  Anything from a Christian writer should be explanation, interpretation, or illustration.  We should never add anything to what is already there.  But if we can point people to the Scripture and encourage them to read it, I would write from morning until bedtime.  Wait!  Most days, I already do that, but I believe God will use what I write, no matter how flawed it may be at times.

And in the last Scripture, we see Aquila and Priscilla leading Apollos to a better understanding of who Jesus was, and is, and what Apollos did not understand about the Gospel.  Apollos was a persuasive speaker, but was what he said worth hearing?  It was when his errors in understanding were corrected by patient teaching from a couple of tent makers.  Apollos became a very powerful evangelist once he had the right message.  So, maybe by adding this, we need to check our attitude before reaching for the keyboard, at least sometimes.  We definitely need to check our pride at the door.  Do not let pride inside the room where writing is done.  That is echoed by C. S. Lewis’ last quote above, the one about sixteenth century literature. And we definitely need to check our sources and do more research.

But now, for what C. S. Lewis adds.  I agree with him about ink being a great medicine to heal us, but I have not printed a post to have someone else review it in a long time. Thus, it is data stored on a cloud instead of ink.  For maybe the first year, my wife read everything, but then she said it was stressing her out.  I learned that it was not my writing, but her attention span.  As the diseases attacked her body, she was falling behind because she could not remember if she had read page one, and she kept reading it over again.  Me not asking her to review what I wrote provided her with less stress.  Often after that point, she would compliment me on a recent post.  She was still reading, but if she skipped a few here or there, that was okay too.

And have I ever thrown something that I wrote into the fire?  Yes, I have.  I have deleted files on the computer and off the cloud.  And I am sure, I probably should have done that to a lot more of what I have written.

Lewis’ idea that we can never write our best if someone does not read it is the fear that gripped me when I first heard the Voice telling me to write and my fear was that people would write comments to argue or put me down.  But the Voice kept talking and I had to obey.  And everyone out there with positive feedback or a different way of looking at the subject that might just be better, I enjoy each one.  It makes a connection that will last forever.  And yes, I pray that my writing has improved as a result.

And the last one to Arthur Greeves is totally different these days compared to Lewis’ time.  He was a literary scholar, thus, he had means of publication that we may not have.

Then for the unknown writer, to publish a book these days is a case very close to a Catch 22.  Some people find a Catch 22 once each week, but being difficult is different than being nearly impossible.  The big publishing companies will not accept blind submissions.  They must all go through an agent.  An agent will not take you on unless you have published something.  That is a Catch 22, except…  There are smaller publishing companies who might publish something, but they are rare.  And there are compilations of poetry and short stories that will accept blind submissions, but they do not pay you.  BUT that gets you “published” and with a few of those, an agent might, maybe, sort of, take you on.

Thus, your work might be wonderful, but breaking through the barrier to get to a publisher is much different now than it was one hundred years ago.  But then, the blogosphere did not exist then.  Publishing books strictly over electronic means did not exist then (editing is required, but no paper and ink expenses).

I have read a lot more articles on advice from great writers, but I have a hard time finding them in my boxes.  I remember one article about writer’s block, and they quoted Earnest Hemingway.  He said to always stop writing for the day when you are on a roll.  If you stop due to writer’s block, that block will continue the next day, and maybe last even longer.  At least, I think that was Hemingway.  But that advice is so hard to follow.  I use it when writing a short story.  When I end a particular conversation, I always start the next action or the next conversation before turning off the computer.  Even then, my hands keep wanting to touch the keyboard and finish the thought. But before I started the next thought before going to bed, I have opened the computer the next day, stared at the ended paragraph, thus the ended thought, and then continued to stare for a couple of hours, having no clue where I was about to go the day before, usually forgetting about the story and writing about something else to clear the mental block.

This might not have been helpful, but I am sure some people have been there.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.