A Synonym is a Word You Use when You Can't Spell the Other One.

With Redemption gone (into the vague hazy world of distribution), I find myself rereading it and wishing I still had Jonah with me each day, finding our way to Nineveh. I feel the same about my children. Wouldn’t it be great to take just snippets of their lives and make minor adjustments here and there? Like the time my son spent a week at scout camp and never changed his socks!

As a parent, I’m now at the phase where I watch my children as adults, like a spectator along a parade route. They are making their own choices, shaping their own lives, and multiplying themselves into families. My role now is to stand aside, cheer and soon produce a string of photos from my wallet.

Same with my book—as invested as I was in its creation, I am reduced now to pulling out the grandma photos and telling others how wonderful it is. No more late nights spent in the smelly caravan across the cleansing desert or early mornings beneath a withering gourd. I am reminded of a quote by Alfred Kazin, “The writer writes in order to teach himself, to understand himself, to satisfy himself; the publishing of his ideas, though it brings gratification, is a curious anticlimax.”

But like seeing children leave home, until that last one goes, there is usually another one to prepare. I now find myself reading about water in Jerusalem and the debate over Warren’s shaft; or countless conflicting opinions on where the first temple in Jerusalem actually stood. Samuel Johnson said, “The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading in order to write. A man will turn over half a library to make a book.” Or the 21st century version: explore half the internet for the most recent discoveries.

Ok, two more quotes, and then I’ll try to resist for several posts. The first quote appeals to my weaknesses with words like ‘very,’ ‘such,’ and ‘then.’ Mark Twain wrote, “Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very;" your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.”

But the one that really struck me was, “There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.” --Walter Wellesley "Red" Smith




BTW, because I’ve been taught to give sources, the damn good title of this post was a quote by Baltasar Gracián