It went for weeks and weeks around here without a drop of rain, lawns turned yellow, our poor tulips just gave up and died.
But as soon as I have a book to write… open up the floodgates. Anybody got a rowboat handy?
Forget writing indoors. All that does is make the phone ring off the hook. And look at the time–where does the day go?
Oh, all right… what’s in the nooze? When one is truly desperate, one can always fall back on the nooze.
Today I’ve started writing my next book, Ozias, Prince Enthroned. Patty asked, “How do you do it?”
Tain’t easy! Today, for instance, we’re bombarded with nuisance phone calls, we have a crew washing and painting our building, and the air is full of smoke from Canada’s wildfires. One obstacle after another. I was lucky to get three pages written.
Anyway, I know from where I left off Prince in Peril that certain things have to happen to keep the story moving. Duke Esdras has a death-bed prophecy to deliver. Ozias, now twelve years old, must go through a Re-coronation ceremony and feast. And would-be Queen Maressa has escaped to brew up new mischief–at least start another civil war.
I have found my muse in Geoffrey of Monmouth (d. 1155), whose History of the Kings of Britain, completed in 1136 or thereabouts, became an international best cellar centuries before the printing press was invented. Geoffrey’s work inspired a still-continuing boom in Arthurian literature. The critics have not been kind to him, saying he made it all up; but a book doesn’t stay popular for 900 years unless there’s something special about it. Herodotus could tell you that.
I missed all of May, simply because I wasn’t ready yet, and now it’s June and it’ll be a miracle if I finish before it gets too cold to write outside. Legal pad, ballpoint pen, and cigar. Such are the tools of my trade.
I ask the Lord to give me the story He wants me to tell, to bless my work, and make it fruitful in His service.
Our computer hutch last week began to fall apart. I have it propped up temporarily with books, but there’s no escaping the fact that we’ll have to get a new one.
I’m afraid the whole thing will simply collapse in ruin if I try to move it. And behind the hutch is a Gordian tangle of wires–computer tower, monitor, speakers, mouse, printer, and God knows what else. No one has ever accused me of being a handyman, and this job looks utterly impossible.
I never dreamed there could be so many obstacles to simply writing a book.
Please pray for us. These little problems pile up into big ones.
Two weeks ago I was trying to beat the heat. Now it’s the cold.
I don’t normally try to work on my book on Sunday, but for once it wasn’t raining, and with more rain forecast for tomorrow, I thought I’d better at least try. Only problem–the cold. I mean, it’s kind of hard when the ink doesn’t want to come out of the pen; and shivering makes my handwriting still worse.
Brilliant idea–put on a sweater, with my winter coat on top of that, and gloves, and take my bike out for a ride up a very long hill. I thought that might warm me up, and I was right, it did. Which gave me almost two hours’ writing time when I got back.
I rely on the Lord to empower me to write my books, and this time, Lord, I’m gonna need a lot of help. I still don’t have the climax of His Mercy Endureth Forever, and there’s lots and lots of wild stuff going on in Obann. Some of the characters have done things I wasn’t expecting. I’m starting to feel like the writers of an Akira Kurosawa movie: they never knew where the director was going to make them go.
Lord Orth, if you only knew what kind of trouble you get me into–!
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