A few weeks ago I asked authors and other artists what music they listen to when they write. The respond as diverse as the authors who responded.

Silence is Golden:

Bryan Allian is a prolific blogger and the author of  31 Days to Finding Your Blogging Mojo. He responded:

 ”Silence is best for me. If I’m in a cafe or a place with a lot of white noise, that’s fine too.

“I can not listen to music with words when I write…I find it nearly impossible. And if I’m in a place where one or two nearby conversations are too clear and too loud, I find that too distracting. In that case I will listen to instrumental music like All The Bright Lights, Explosions in the Sky, or even Derek Webb’s Feedback.”

 

Jayon Boyett is a proflic author. For me, he’ s the calm voice of reason on the Internet. Jason doesn’t bloat his web traffic with the sensational or trivia. Instead, he offers quiet and witty reason every time he posts. Perhaps it’s because of his Zen approach to creating his writing space:

“As for me, I can listen to absolutely nothing at all while writing. And it doesn’t matter what kind of writing — books, blog posts, advertising copy, whatever. The words in my ear compete with the words being composed by my head and fingers. I need silence. Just the thought of King writing with high-decibel metal in his ears gives me a headache.”

James Williams: Blogger and gadfly writes that he generally prefers to avoid the distraction of music: “I can’t think enough to write words while someone is singing other words in my ear. Instrumental stuff is OK, but if it’s instrumental versions of recognizable songs, then I essentially hear those words, and it’s still a distraction.”

Susan Isaacs is a brilliant actor and author. Angry Conversations with God is one of the most creative, funny, and insightful spiritual memoirs I’ve read. I credit Susan with giving me the writing advice that made my work both better and unpublishable.

 ”I almost never listen to music, especially songs with lyrics. Music that is asking to be paid attention to distracts me from writing. However, I may listen to classical or instrumental.  Ralph Vaughan Williams is one of my favorites. If I’m on a later draft and am only rewriting, I may listen. But the music has to fit the genre of the piece. Like, I wouldn’t listen to the B-52s if I were writing about The Great Depression.”

Playlists as Book Soundtrack

And then there were authors who carefully selected their music for creative inspiration for the scenes they were writing…

Next to David Crowder, Sean Gladding has the best beard in Christiandom. His book The Story of God, The Story of Us is the first book  I recommend to Christians trying to get acquainted with the Bible. Sean wrote about how he used music to shape his book:

“I holed up for 6 weeks to turn our narrative introduction to scripture into written form (‘The Story of God, the Story of Us’) and listened to this CD on repeat the entire time:

http://www.amazon.com/How-West…

As i imagined the experience of the people of Israel in exile in Babylon, the haunting soundtrack to PBS’ miniseries on the native peoples’ experience of subjugation by europeans seemed appropriate. It’s pretty much been my go-to instrumental music for almost 20 years. Maybe the CD i would choose if i could only keep one…”

David Zimmerman is an author and an editor with IVP’s Likewise imprint. David thinks much and he records many of these insights here. David and I share a common love of Bonhoeffer. David offers these thoughts about writing his book Comic Book Characters: 

“I made a playlist when I wrote Comic Book Character–mostly songs with heroic themes or that reference superheroes. “With My Own Two Hands” by Ben Harper was on there, as was “Bigger Than My Body” by John Mayer. Lin Brehmer on WXRT in Chicago puts together montages based on questions by listeners; he did one for my question “Why do people write songs about Superman and not about Batman?” His opening response: “Because Superman is the best!”

 Hillary Lodge is an insightful writer who I wish would bring her wisdom back to Burnside Writers. She sometimes writes in a genre she calls “Urban Amish”, which I’m assuming is something akin to bringing Tarzan to England. Or not.

I’m thoroughly fascinated with her process of using music to help sculpt scenes in her books:

“I make playlists according to the book I’m writing and the type of scene I’m working on.  I like to “score” my scenes – the book I’m working on has a lot of people of French and Italian descent cooking and eating and talking. I’ve got the soundtrack to Julie & Julia, Carla Bruni, Coralie Clement, some Feist, some Madeleine Peyroux, with a twist of Pink Martini.  I also enjoy throwing in some Glasser for kicks.”

“When I was writing the Amish books – obviously no cannon of Amish music to choose from. I chose according to what the non-Amish character would choose. Lots of Glen Hansard/Swell Season for those.”

Artists Who Use Music to Nourish Their Own Souls as They Write

This category is where I fall, also I’m fascinated by Hillary’s approach. Here are some other artists who use music as soul care as they write…

Karen Spears Zacharias is a veteran author, journalist, and professor. Her book Where’s Your Jesus Now is one of the most challenging books I’ve ever read on spirituality. Karen is unafraid of the hard topic and uses music to replenish her heart, even as she chronicles unthinkable crimes. She writes:

“In my upcoming book I have two pages of artists that I listened to while writing A SILENCE OF MOCKINGBIRDS. Music was crucial to me in the writing of this crime memoir, primarily because I think it was the music that quietly ministered to me as I wrote about an unimaginable tragedy. I listened to everything from Mercy Me to Johnny Cash to Dave Barnes.”

 

 

 

Richard Dalhstrom is a brilliant pastor and thinker hailing from Seattle. His book The Colors of Hope was recently selected by Christianity Today as one of their tops books of 2011. Richard writes:

“Wild Variety:  Usually a Pandora station… often Manchester Orchestry, or Paul Winter, or Sigur Ros — I love how I’ve come to associate a good day of writing w/ certain songs, so that when I hear them later, I’m refreshed, inspired, and grateful.”

 

 

How about you? What do you listen to as you write or create? Or like others, do you prefer silence. 

(I wasn’t able to include every response in this post. You can find more insights here.

Saint Patrick’s Day. For children, it’s leprechauns and rainbows. For adults, it’s an excuse to indulge in a thick Reuben and a stout. For others, a few stouts too many.

Saint Patrick’s Day could be a reminder for Christians to just enjoy people.

Just because they’re people.

Saint Patrick is famous for evangelizing pagan Ireland in the fifth century. What’s not as known is that he had a brew master on his missionary team. Mescan, was Saint Patrick’s personal brewmaster. According to Stephan Mansfield, “It seemed that Patrick understood godly hospitality and captured many Irish tribal chiefftans with his tasty beer before he won the man for God” (God and Guiness, page 21).

I suspect that the Patrick employing a brew master was an indication that he liked people and just wasn’t interested in converting their souls. Patrick ate and drank with the pagan kings and entertained their courts.

Here’s the thing about a good party. You can’t rush it. People relax, let their hair down, talk, dance, and laugh. A party is not the place for people with an agenda. There’s nothing efficient about a party. It’s a place where smiles and stories are swapped. If Patrick were simply interested in getting notches in his evangelistic belt, throwing parties about a bad method as I can imagine. It’s slow, sloppy, and bad behavior tends to break out.

There’s precious little reliable information about their about Patrick. But I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that his motives weren’t much different from those of his Savior.

One of the most fascinating features of the Gospels is that none of the four writers explain how Jesus managed to attract the sinner class (yes, that was social designation invented by the religious lawyers) and transform them into his followers. There’s no record of Jesus proselytizing at parties or making a general nuisance of himself. In fact, he fit in to the point that the religious lawyers accused him of being a drunk and a glutton.

Jesus seemed to be getting about the business of enjoying people. And why not, they– as imperfect as they were– were made in his image.

This simple act was scandalous. In the Ancient Near East, social meals was a very symbolic ritual. When you enjoyed a meal with someone it was literally an act of making a treaty with that person. Kings called it a Salt Treaty, since the access to the mineral could be scarce. The religious lawyers stipulated that good Jews could not eat with Gentiles or sinners because the act of dining was an act of endorsing these outsiders and committing yourself to their well being. Jesus then was making a statement with his dining partners: God is for the outcast and the marginalized.

Eugene Peterson pointed out that the religious lawyers demanded that a person convert to Judiasm and renounce their sin before they would dine with them. “Clean up and we can enjoy you.”

Jesus, on the other hand, said, “Let me enjoy you.” And those who did found themselves wanting to let him clean them morally.

So this isn’t a post about drinking or not drinking but being willing to enjoy people just because they are people. Be a Christian as you do it, but don’t degrade your friends into potential notches on your belt.

If a little St. Patty’s day magic happens then so be it.

One of my favorite books on creativity is a bit dated, but the wisdom holds up. A Kick in the Seat of the Pants, by Roger Van Oech argues that there are four phases of creativity:

I don’t think I’ve ever recommended a book on the strength of its opening chapters. However, I feel comfortable doing just that with Carolyn Custis James’ The Gospel in Ruth. A good friend of mine gave me a copy of the book and I’m eternally grateful.

The Book of Ruth has long been cast as the “chick flick” of the Old Testament. There are no battles, burning bushes, kings, or warriors. Just a small band of women trying to get buy in hard times. The church has tended to treat this book  as a romantic interlude that allows us to catch our breath in the middle of the larger epic. That, or our most weird readings of the book as a handbook for dating. Either reading misses the point.

Carolyn makes a compelling argument that both readings are inadequate. She offers a theory that the Book of Ruth is most similar to the Book of Job. She reminds us that the book opens being told from Naomi’s point of view and not Ruth’s. Like Job, she loses her family and her economic stability. Like Job, Naomi is staggered and laments openly (and like Job, she is misunderstood by observers as being a complainer).

What sets Naomi’s story off from Job’s is her vulnerability in a patriarchal society. James observes that the book opens with a listing of the men in her life. We assume that this will be a story about men. Instead, the men are struck down, just words into the book. A band of widows are left to fend for themselves and with the question “Is God good for women?”  Calamity forces these women become innovative protagonists that challenge the status quo around them.

Perhaps this International Women’s Day we should struggle with Naomi’s question and read the Book of Ruth with new eyes.

via Wikicommons.”]

By John Shea (This image is from the FEMA Photo Library.) [Public domain

I’ve read that writing a book is like building a house. Story structure provides the foundation. Characterization provide windows of insight. The tone of the book provides the decorative molding.

I wish I had understood the twist on the manuscript as home metaphor. Writing a first draft is the creation of a blighted building. This true whether you’ve had a dozen books published if you’re a greenhorn. You can argue about how blighted your new home is, but I’ll just reply, “condemned is condemned.”

A first draft is uninhabitable. The foundation is cracked and the place is overrun with verb tense errors, fragmented ideas, and writing tics. If you doubt this, hire an editor or an agent. Their home inspections expose all.

Revision is reclamation. Revision is loving your rotting house, having a vision for what it could be, and what it never was. It’s only the most patient of builders that will end up with a house worth calling a home. These builders end up selling the home and starting the process all over.

An early chapter of the book, God and Guinness,  provides a history of beer. I was surprised to read that St. Gregory noted in medieval times that it was common for children to be baptized with beer. The quality of the water simply could not be trusted.

And so the church adapted.

And so the church adapted with  how it administered an ordinance.

And so the church adapted with how it administered an ordinance prescribed by Jesus.

Its true that Christianity’s attitudes toward beer was more positive then than it is now. Beer was viewed as a staple item. It was even believed to have medicine properties. Baptizing a child with a Coor’s Beer would mean something different today than it would in Gregory’s time. Our culture associates alcohol with excess.

But even granting that we have a powerful example of the church changing methodology to meet the needs of its community, even when it meant getting dangerously close to tampering with the sacred.

What are the things that you would change quickly, change with caution, change with fear of Divine retribution, and what would you never dream of tampering with?

(Dear FCC: I bought this book at Barnes and Noble with my own money. Thanks for caring.)

This week, Michael Hyatt is in the hot seat. Michael is the CEO of Thomas Nelson, the largest Christian publisher. I’m a regular reader of his blog, which is filled with invaluable information about leadership, social media, and the writing industry.

Here’s three things I could learn from Michael:

Continue Reading…

By Ggia (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)

What I didn’t understand until recently is that I’ve been carrying around a “hidden curriculum” that I picked up at the Ranch that hasn’t served me well at all. After much prodding, picked up the book The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse.  Slowly, I’m beginning to understand the sociological dynamics that drove that place.

At root it comes down to this: A spiritually abusive system exists for the needs of those in power. 

Jesus saw through the widely popular Pharisees and their legalistic systems. In Matthew 23, Jesus leveled the following accusations:

• They found power in prescribing spiritual regimens to others but didn’t practice them personally (v3).
• They legitimized their power through name dropping (v.2)
• When they did perform spiritual disciplines it was done publicly, to impress others (v.5-6)
• They sought the prestige that came from titles (v.7)
• They built a system of rules and loopholes that legitimatized their own hypocrisy (16-21)
• They were so wrapped up in external religion that they neglected God’s core values (justice, mercy, faithfulness) (v.23-24).
• They were privately self-indulgent the entire time they placed others on a spiritual austerity plan. (v.25-28)
• They killed anyone who ignored their system and demonstrated a healthy spirituality and connection to God. They folk were a threat to their system (v.29-36).

It doesn’t take a whole lot of skill for me to see the evil in the Pharisees, or to get angry over all the hoops that I made myself jump through or the people who held them in place. What’s scary for me to admit is that, as a pastor, how easy it is to do the job to get my own needs met. I have performance reviews. It’s good to be able to show results. If I’m not careful, I can work the congregation to make myself look good. For example:

• I could pressure people to attend events so I can demonstrate a numeric growth.
• If I still worked with children, I could use sticker charts and behavioral modification techniques to show quick results instead of teaching them to love scripture and to meditate on it for the right reasons.
• I could major on proper entertainment choices instead of focusing on how to be discerning and read culture.
• I could fabricate bogeymen as potential dangers to the focus. This would create the unspoken understanding that I’m a defender of their faith. Again, I win.

The point is that anytime I pastor in a way designed to increase my own sense of worth or to sooth an insecurity I do so at the very expense of the people I’m called to serve. Meanwhile, there’s Jesus in Matthew 23 throwing verbal grenades at the “sons of Hell’ who pastored in a self-serving manner. He gets to be forceful. After all he’s the Good Shepherd who was willing to lay down his life for the sheep. He gets to expect the same from those of us who sign up to care for his flock.

Last night I taught my church’s FAITH curriculum to a really sharp group. We were exploring humanity’s relationship with God before the Fall and a lot of the usual phrases were used: Intimate, comfortable, and personal. One perceptive individual pointed out from the beginning God’s relationship with Adam and Eve included “death threats.”

The matter of fact manner in which she said this caught me off guard, but she’s not wrong. Genesis Two is the story a paradise, created by a loving and perfect Divine Being, who tells the first couple to enjoy creation. But one caveat: Eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and you’ll die.

When I step back and separate myself from being overly familiar with Scripture, God’s pronouncement does sound like a death threat. If I was at a bank and I heard, “Touch that alarm buzzer or I’ll shoot” I’d count that as a death threat immediately after I finished soiling myself.

Perhaps the words placed a seed of doubt in Eve’s heart that made her vulnerable to Satan’s treachery. We know that Adam and Eve made for the bushes the next time God showed up for his daily visit. Adam said it was because they were “naked and ashamed.” Perhaps Adam was afraid that these new emotions were the precursor to an immediate execution so he hid himself and Eve.

We kicked this idea around before deciding that what what play wasn’t anything like a capricious death threat, but a parental warning. When my children were young I gave them stern warnings about riding their bikes in the road: ” A car will hit you and you could die.”

What there a threat of death in my statement? Absolutely.

Would a passerby report me to the authorities for abusive language? Absolutely not.

God knew that through their disobedience Adam and Eve would be passing through a door, but unlike the wardrobe in the Chronicles of Narnia, they would not be passing into a magical world, but leaving one. Also, unlike the Chronicles of Narnia, movement through this door was “one way.” There could be no return to Eden.

So the most loving thing God could do was to warn them of impending death.