Encouragement for Writers

“The Lord God gives me the right words to encourage the weary” (Isaiah 50:4a, Contemporary English Version).

Many times I have used this verse from The Holy Bible to close a class or a conference in which I had been trying to train less experienced writers. My words may not always encourage the weary, but that’s always been my aim and intent – with God’s help.

From time to time, this page on my author’s web site will offer various free resources and practical tips for would-be writers who have grown weary of the task. Right now at the very beginning, take that verse from the Prophet Isaiah and make it your prayer and motto.

Remember, as Christian writers we don't primarily try to write in order to become rich or famous: Instead, we try to find “the right words to encourage the weary.”



Free Tip for Writers #1:
Write what you know.



Every would-be writer has heard that well-worn piece of advice. "Don't always be trying to write about princes and princesses, about elves and fairies, about space warriors engaged in intergalactic battles, about all those things you don't really know very much about. Write what you know!"

That's very good advice.

Yes, yes, I know it's a cliche that has been thrown at aspiring writers many times over many years. Yet that's not a good reason for ignoring it.

You should indeed write what you know. If you try to write what you do not know, . . . trust me, sooner or later it will show.

Here's the thing we often overlook: There are different ways of knowing.

You can know through first-hand experience, through seeing and hearing and feeling and tasting and smelling. You can also know through second-hand experience . . . that is, if you're willing to work hard.

May I share briefly from my own experience as a published writer? Some of my books have been written based on first-hand experience:
More of my books, though, have been written based on second-hand experience:
The big question is, can a writer make second-hand experience seem as real as first-hand experience?

That's where the hard work comes in. You have to read and study anything and everything about a place and time and situation you've never experienced personally - colonial Virginia in the 1760s, for instance, or a ship adrift in the Mediterranean two thousand years ago. It isn't enough to find dry facts, either: You need to make those facts come alive. You need to learn what people ate and wore back then. You need to work hard at imagining what they must have seen and heard and felt and tasted and smelled.

In other words, you have to work very hard to make second-hand experience seem as real to your reader as first-hand experience.

That's the main reason why would-be writers are often told: "Write what you know." It's ever so much easier writing about things you have experienced first-hand, than it is trying to work and imagine your way into the experiences of others who lived long ago and far away, and to do it so successfully that what you write about them will have the ring of truth, the aroma of reality.

Maybe a better tip for aspiring writers should be worded like this: "Start out by writing what you know."

There'll be time enough later on to dig into the hard job of writing based on second-hand experience.



Free Tip for Writers #2:
Write sensuously, not sensually.



Are you sure you know the great difference in meaning between those two similar words? If not, here's your chance to learn it!

Sensuous writing is writing that appeals to the reader's five senses--seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching. Sensual writing is writing that appeals to the reader's sexual nature.

Can writing be sensuous and sensual at the same time. Of course. But should it be?

I am not a prude. I do not write in an ivory tower. I am the father of two and the grandfather of seven. I am well aware that our sexual natures are God's good gifts to humankind. After all, didn't God tell Adam and Eve in the beginning to "Be fruitful and and multiply"?

However, I have a problem with overly sensual writing, just as I have a problem with overly sensual dramas, films, and television programs. It's not that I feel we must close our eyes to our sexual natures and all that this entails. Rather, as a long-established writer I have a theory about sensual writing or sensual acting--see whether you agree with me:

Portraying explicitly sensual acts, either on a page or on a stage or on a screen, gives them a greater shock value, and makes them more likely to appeal to our baser instincts, that the same acts will cause when occurring normally in real life.

People have argued with me when I have voiced my strong dislike for overly sensual writing. They have said that I am trying to hide from reality, that I am seeing things through rose-colored glasses. I disagree--not only for reasons of personal morality, but for the literary reason stated above in italics. Reading about a sexual act is not the same thing as performing a sexual act. Printing it explicitly on a page (or acting it explicitly on a stage or projecting it explicitly on a screen) turns it into something disconcerting, something disagreeable, almost as if the reader (or viewer) has become a peeping tom.

That's why in all my books I have tried very hard to write sensuously, appealing to all of the reader's senses. But I have avoided writing sensually. When sexual matters are a normal part of something I write, I have tried to respect the privacy of the characters in my book, just as I would respect the privacy of my neighbors.

No doubt about it, sensual writing sells. But . . . so does sensuous writing, if you can write it well enough. I've made my choice.




























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