Timothy's Thoughts

E ditor’s Note: My guest today is Beatrice Bumble, but most of us call her Bumble Bee. I originally asked her if she would write a post for my blog, but what she came up, while great, didn't realy seem to fit my site. I told her she ought to send it to the webmaster at their church, so you may be able to read it there. What I have for you today is another interview. Timothy Fish: Bumble Bee, I want to say that it is really good of you to do this. Bumble Bee: It's my pleasure. You know me. I want to do anything I can to help and I love having company. Timothy Fish: You've had a rough life. Bumble Bee: I suppose, but I don't think of it that way. Timothy Fish: You had a child when you were young and gave her up for adoption. You had a miscarriage after you got married. You and your husband couldn't have children. Then he died. Bumble Bee: Well, now that you string it all together like that, it sounds a lot worse than it really was. Besides, I get to see my daughter o...

S tories are made up of scenes. Every story has at least one scene and most have many. With novels, we often think in terms of chapters, but a chapter is just an arbitrary means of dividing the text into chunks that can be read conveniently in one setting. The scene is a basic unit of a story. A chapter may contain several, but it is conceivable that a scene will cross the boundaries of chapters, though this rarely happens. A scene has a setting. A scene that takes place at night in a trailer is very different from a scene that takes place during the day that the White House. When a story changes setting, we change to a different scene. A scene has a cast. Suppose we place our protagonist in a trailer at night. He does something and then leaves. That is a scene. Now, if our antagonist shows up at the same trailer and has no interaction with our protagonist, does something and leaves, that is a completely different scene. A scene shows change. If we enter a scene one way, we s...

A fter putting it off for far too long, I went looking for a new dentist the other day. I started with the website of my insurance provider, which gave me the name of a dentist office near me. From there, I went to the website of the dentist office, which actually has several branches in the Metroplex and a couple in Austin. I hate calling to make an appointment because I’m always at work during the typical office hours and it is inconvenient. But this website was different. This website had a form for people to fill out if they wanted an appointment or more information. Since it was Sunday evening, I filled out the form, believing that they would contact me the next day. They did not. I waited another day and on Tuesday I filled out the form again. This time, I asked the question in the more information field, “Is anyone responding to this form?” Still no response. I ended up taking time out of my workday, just to call and schedule an appointment that could have been done using the fr...

S cience Fiction writers, especially television writers, love the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics. This is the interpretation that allows for characters to slip into a parallel universe and interact with duplicates of themselves, the only difference being that one made one decision at some point in history and the other made another choice. Even though this interpretation is held by many prominent scientists, it is beyond ridiculous when we consider the implications. If the Many Worlds Interpretation (MWI) is true, then tomorrow morning at 8:46 AM, everyone is the world is going to simultaneously go outside, raise their voice to the heavens and sign Kum Ba Ya. When we are done, hundreds of reporters will call me to ask how I knew it was going to happen. If MWI is provable, there exist many universes in which scientists have proven beyond any doubt that MWI is false. If communication between alternate realities is possible, then there exist an infinite number of altern...

D enise Hunter posted a sneak peak at Seaside Letters , a story about a woman who falls for a customer and gets into a online dating relationship with him, but doesn’t want to let him know (go figure). Actually, she didn’t steal that idea from me, though it has a few of the same elements in it as Searching for Mom . But there are some very obvious differences. The main similarities are that the love interest between a worker in a restaurant and a customer, as well as the online dating aspect of it involving deception. In my story, the poor guy didn’t even know he was in an online dating relationship.   I thought the cover was interesting. It has all the stuff wrong with it that I don’t care for with recent Christian fiction covers, such as appearing to be a stock photo, chopping off the head and too much pink. What makes it interesting is that the woman dress appears to have gotten hung on the name banner as she walked past it. So ladies, that’s why you shouldn’t wear short skir...

O n another author’s blog I mentioned that when I wrote For the Love of a Devil I outlined it backwards. When I mentioned it, I didn’t think it a particularly foreign approach, but at least one person hadn’t considered that possibility, so maybe it’s worth covering in more detail. Why Outline Backwards There are some good reasons to outline backwards anytime, but in my case, I was working with a story with a known ending. For the Love of a Devil is based on the first three chapters of Hosea . I was also dealing with an unlikely scenario in modern society. Slavery is illegal in America, though it still exists in some form. Read the first three chapters of Hosea, then ask yourself, how do you take a modern woman, married to a good Christian man, sell her into slavery and then have her husband buy her back? The book of Hosea gives us a hint, when we see that Hosea was to choose a wife of the children of whoredoms. Gomer came from a family that didn’t teach her right. But she escaped tha...

T oday I continue to answer the 20 questions for leaders that Michael Smith of ClearView Baptist Church in Franklin, Tennessee asked Mike Hyatt . At this point, this activity is growing a little tiresome. Many of these questions seem to be very similar with very similar answers. But this week we move on to the question, Which is most important to your organization—mission, core values or vision? When you are talking about a church, isn’t the mission to teach the core values ? I don’t exactly see how you can possibly separate the two. And if we take the biblical understanding of vision , which Proverbs 29:18 seems to imply is right up there with the Law, we can’t say that one is more important than the other. But I doubt Michael Smith meant it quite that way. In a business sense, the vision comes from the big boss, whomever that might be. Since Christ is the head of the church, vision would still be right up there with the law, even in the business sense, but let’s leave him out...

E ditor’s Note: Today, we’re doing an interview with a private investigator. I originally asked him to write something for the blog, which he did, but it looked more like ad copy for his business then it did a blog post that any of you might be interested in. Incidentally, if you need a private investigator in St. Louis, Memphis or Chicago, you might want to call him, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Timothy Fish: Xander, thanks for agreeing to do this interview. I’m sure the readers will enjoy it. Xander X: I’m happy to do it. You did bring the money didn’t you? Timothy Fish: Yes, I brought the money. I’ll give it to you as soon as we’re done. Xander X: Good. You remembered I only take cash, didn’t you? Timothy Fish: I’ve got you covered. You can relax. Xander X: In that case, I’m happy to do the interview. It gives me great pleasure to give the readers what they want. After paying more than $100 for a book, they deserve something. Timothy Fish: They aren’t paying that much. Xander X: Th...

I f you want a popular website or blog, you have to have two things. You have to have links and you have to be relevant. Of the two, it is most important that your content be relevant. If you have that and at least one link from another website, your links will eventually grow. But the topic of relevance is a topic for another day. Today, I want to talk about links . This will be a fairly lengthy post, but if you’ll stick with me, I’ll show you what links are, how to get them and why it works. What Links Are Links are like hooks that draw surfers from one webpage to the next. They can be internal or external. There really is no difference between the two types of links, other than control. In their most basic form they look like the following: <a href="http://www.timothyfish.net">my website</a> The a comes from the word anchor . Anywhere you need a link, you place one of these anchors. Most comment forms allow you to use the anchor tag. By doing do, you can...

T he calling to write is something that many authors talk about. Some Christian authors will even tell you that they went down to the altar and surrendered to the call . Many writers—perhaps most—have a strong desire to write. Put a pen in their hand, give them a few blank sheets of paper and it won’t be long before the pages are filled and the pen runs dry. That’s the way writers are, but is that a calling? In the world’s concept of the calling , it may very well be, but is every person who eats and breathes writing called by God to write? And how do we know if we are truly called or if it’s just something we enjoy immensely? That is what I would like to explore today. In the Bible, a word that is often used to refer to the message the Lord gave various prophets is a word that can be translated as burden . A burden to prophesy, we might ask? Did the prophet get up in the morning and say, “I think I’ll die if I’m not able to be God’s mouthpiece today?” No, not so much. In fact, many ...

S omeone once suggested that if a person would study a given topic for one hour a day, five days a week for five years, he could be a world renowned expert on the subject. When you think about it, it seems to be true. That doesn’t mean that you are an expert on everything you have been doing for five years, but if you were to deliberately study a subject—any subject—with the intent of becoming an expert, you could reach your goal. A working year is 2,000 hours. Five hours a week times five years is 1,300 hours. Just imagine if you could take on this task as your job. You would take up your work each day, looking for things you could learn about the subject that you hadn’t learned before. You would begin your time studying what others have written on the subject, but you would soon exhaust their work and you would start looking for new things. In a little more than half a year, you could be an expert. We see that happen all the time in the engineering world. An engineer is given a new ...

R ecently, I have noticed a surge in interest for my book Church Website Design . I don’t know about everyone else, but when I see book sales rise, it gives me a renewed interest in the subject matter. Now, I’m not going to talk about church website design , exactly, but I am going to talk about that big R you see to the left and tell you more than you probably wanted to know. Now, if you know anything about HTML, there isn't a drop caps tag. To get that, you have to use Cascading Styles Sheets (CSS). In the case of this R, the style is defined inline. I will note that there are some good reasons why you should avoid doing that, but it is the easiest way to go for the typical blogger, since it doesn't require messing with the template or files on the server. This R is accomplished using the span tag and has the following form: <span style="font-size: 100px; float: left; color: #477fba; line-height: 70px; padding-top: 2px; font-family: times, serif, georgia"...

C ontinuing to answer the 20 questions for leaders that Michael Smith of ClearView Baptist Church in Franklin, Tennessee asked Mike Hyatt , this week’s question is, Where do the great ideas come from in your organization? I’ll tell you where they don’t come from. They almost never come from the leaders. Leaders are great people, but tend to get caught of in making the last great idea work. You get tunnel vision sometimes and then some ordinary person comes along and asks, “Wouldn’t it be easier if you did it this way?” Your natural tendency might be to tell them all the reasons they are wrong, but after you take the time to consider the idea and make adjustments for things they hadn’t considered, it might the one of the best ideas you’ve seen in a long time. Remember Moses? He got so busy trying to judge the people that he didn’t have time for anything else. His father-in-law showed up one day, observed what was going on and told him he ought to get some men to help him. Moses set up...

Editor’s Note: I’ve been looking for some ways to do more with this blog than just talk about writing, publishing and websites. To that purpose, I have sought out a few guest bloggers. I know some people don’t like guest bloggers, but I’m hoping you’ll like these. It took some serious arm twisting, but today’s guest is the beautiful, tough as nails, restaurant owner in training, Sara Dawson. W hen Timothy asked me to write a post for his blog, I said, “I thought you would never ask!” Its funny how much it sounded like, “Uh, no.” But as you can see, he talked me into it. I told him that I don’t have anything interesting to say. If I bore you to tears, it’s his fault. He told me I should write about growing up without a mother. So, here goes. I don’t know if anyone ever told me I didn’t have a mother. I don’t have many memories from when I was very young. It was just Dad and me back then. Of course there was also Grandma and Aunt Stephanie. I usually stayed with one of them when Dad wa...

W hen I hear some people talk about their story ideas, I’m amazed at what they think is a great idea. One author described her great idea as “an adventure story from the girls’ point of view.” She also described it as a female Lord of the Rings . Doesn’t that just make you want to rush out to the story and buy her book? Yeah, me neither. I see nothing wrong with putting female characters in an adventure story. We’ve seen several authors do it. But what’s the story? The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley could be described in the same way as that above, although there are many things that are different. What that tells us is that the author above has told us very little. At most, she has told us the plot and one characteristic of the protagonist. But as you’re aware, there is a decade of plots, depending upon who is numbering them. A story idea includes characters and plot , but these things alone are not enough. Change is the element that completes the triad. We start with a chara...

P aul wrote to Timothy in order to give him special instruction on how people in the church should behave themselves. In I Timothy 1:3, 4 that the church at Ephesus had problems with false doctrine as well as problems with people spending too much time talking about fables and endless genealogies. So, Paul tells Timothy what they should be doing instead. What does he tell him is the most important thing people should do when the church assembles? Pray. ( I Timothy 2:1-4 ) These days, we hear a lot about styles of worship, how many services we should have or whether we should have small group meetings during the week or on Sunday morning. In all of that, we may have lost sight of this simple truth. The most important thing for a church to do when it comes together for worship is to pray. We are to pray for our needs. We are to intercede for others. We are to give thanks to God. We are to pray. We are to pray for all men. We are to pray for those in authority. Why? So, that we may have...

E very author needs a website. I think an author should have a website before he has a blog. My argument is that the author website provides a single location for people to go when they want information about the author, while a blog is constantly changing and information that was on it one day may not be visible the next. So we need both, but blogs are such time hogs that once we start blogging, it may be difficult to justify spending the time developing a website. If you’re sold on an author website, here are Twelve things that every author website needs. These may be on separate pages, linked from the home page or you can combine them and even include some on the home page, if that is what you want. 1. About Me You don’t have to call it About Me, but every author website needs a section dedicated to telling visitors who this person is. Tell us why we should listen to you. Tell us something personal. Tell it as a story, not a list of events. Give us information that isn’t available ...

Your platform is essentially the people who willingly listen to you. I’ve said before that platform is your capacity to influence people. We must earn the right to influence people. The reason you are able to influence people is because they have given you the right to influence them. Most people have sense enough not to give that right away too freely. We must earn the right to influence people. This is just as true with an online platform as it is with any other social platform. Subconsciously, every visitor has asked the question Why should I visit this site? It Answers a Question If a user finds a site through a search engine, he is probably looking for the answer to a very specific question. If the site appears in the search results and the title and summary statement imply that the site will answer the question, the user clicks the link. But a platform this does not make. Even if the user finds the exact answer he was looking for, there is no guarantee that he will ever return. ...

S lowly buy surely, I am answering the 20 questions for leaders that Michael Smith of ClearView Baptist Church in Franklin, Tennessee asked Mike Hyatt . Mostly, this is because I am curious to see what my own answers are, rather than because I am some great leader. This week I answer the question How do you encourage creative thinking within your organization? I believe responsibility and authority are the keys to creative thinking. The Bible tells us that where our treasure is our heart will be 1 , . We focus our attention on the things we hold the most dear. We also put our money there. The most generous givers to any ministry are the ones who are the most actively involved. You want someone to think creatively? Identify the problem, make that person responsible for fixing it and give him the authority to take action. You want several people to think creatively? Stick them on a committee, don’t give them the solution, step back and let them go to work. If you do that, the...

In The X and Y of Buy , Elizabeth Pace makes the claim that because men and women think differently those of us who must try to sell products and services must take into account those differences if we hope to make the sale. Throughout the book, she notes differences, such as how women tend to buy from people within their network and men tend to buy from people within the same organization. If the assertions Elizabeth Pace makes throughout the book are accurate, the book will help your company reach out to the half of the population that you are not currently reaching. She does provide references to back up many of her claims. Frequently, she brings up the topic of primitive man and relates the hunter/gatherers of that time to modern man. It is unclear whether she is saying that modern man is the way we are because out ancestors were the way they were or if she is saying that the same traits that make man and woman different today are the same traits that produced the hunter/gather...

W hat do all the big names in Christian publishing—names like Rick Warren, Robin McGraw, Mike Huckabee and Max Lucado—have in common? No, it isn’t doctrine. Yes, they all have a huge platform , but that isn’t it. No, the thing they have in common is that they don’t blog.  Cindy commented yesterday about how it might be interesting to see whether successful authors have more followers who are readers or followers who are writers. The only way to answer that is to ask, so I decided to compose an e-mail message to send to each of the top writers. I went to Mike Hyatt’s blog, where I remembered that he had a list of the top Christian authors, thinking that would be a good place to start. I expected find their e-mail addresses on their websites and if I didn’t I would see if I could contact them through their publishers. As I moved down the list, I quickly noticed the problem. Not only did they not have e-mail addresses, they don’t have blogs. It would do me no good to ask about peop...

W hat does it take to build a platform online? I look at blogs and I ask myself why one blog is successful and another isn't. I particular, I look at the blogs run by literary agents and I compare them to those run by authors. As a general rule, literary agents have blogs that have several times the followers that successful authors have. How do we explain this? There is a theory that as long as you write great posts, your blog will succeed. I won’t say that literary agents aren’t capable of writing great post, but if we are looking for someone who can write “great” posts, doesn’t is stand to reason that the typical bestselling writer should be able to write better posts than the typical literary agent ? But the numbers don’t add up that way. The reason this happens is fairly simple. Literary agents are doing what is essentially selling bottled water in the desert . If you’re out in the desert with a bunch of people, the guy selling bottle water is a popular guy. What literary...

D o you ever go the extra mile? Do you ever expect other people to go the extra mile? Do you know what it means? The saying originates from something Jesus said. “And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him two.” (Matthew 5:41) In Jesus’ day, Roman law permitted a Roman soldier to compel anyone to carry his pack for him, but only a mile. Jesus was saying that instead of just doing what we are required by law to do, we should go beyond that. In other words, don’t do the bare minimum. One of the interesting things in looking at this passage is that Jesus isn’t talking about the stuff we want to do. These are things that we don’t want to do. Someone takes us to court. We don’t want to pay the judgment, but if we have been found in the wrong then we should pay more than what the court rules. We don’t want to carry a soldier’s heavy pack, but rather than doing so grudgingly, we should carry it farther that he can force us to. Going the extra mile is sacrificial in nature. Imag...

H ow we handle comments on our blogs and websites greatly influences the experience people have when they visit. Yesterday, Rachelle Gardner posted about her Comment Policy . Mine, as you may have noticed when you commented, are somewhat more relaxed than hers. To summarize mine: 1. Be Nice (Okay, that pretty much says it all, but I’ll ad the second for clarity.) 2. Don’t say anything inappropriate or mean spirited to my guests. But this post isn’t about the rules of commenting on my blog. What I want to discuss is my philosophy on blog comments . The topic of blog comments has been going around lately and I’ve noticed that several people disagree with me. I thought it would be good to put my thoughts out there. Maybe I’ll persuade a few people to my point of view. Or maybe someone will show be the error of my ways and I change my mind, but this is my philosophy thus far. Comment on Your Own Posts If you blog, you know that the only sure way you have of knowing if people are actuall...

W e’ve looked at the first four questions from Andy Stanley’s pod cast . Today, we look his last question. In lecturing, people remember a small percentage of what we say. In writing fiction, we don’t really think about the need for people to remember. Just the fact that we are communicating through a story will improve retention significantly. We are most interested in people remembering our theme and the action they need to take. If they don’t remember those, our time is wasted. But if people remember our story, they will probably remember these as well. So, do we need to ask: What can I do to help them remember? Andy Stanley talks about sending trinkets home with the congregation, so that they will remember. Of course, you can also use object lessons. One time, we had a Sunday school lesson on the furniture in the tabernacle. I set up the classroom with the candles to represent he candlestick and the show bread and burned incense. I took our small group of adults in there, with noth...

T he topic of inspiration is the next question from Andy Stanley’s pod cast . Why do they need to do it? Years ago, people didn’t realize the danger of smoking. Smoking didn’t lose its popularity until people were able to explain that it is bad for people’s health and the health of the people around them. Today, people are being told to stop smoking with the added incentive that they may receive money from their employer. They have a reason to do it. If we expect people to take action based on our novels, we must address the question of why they need to take action. As with showing what they need to do, we do this through the example of our characters or it will come across as preachy. We do so by either revealing the danger that our characters are in if the action isn’t taken, by showing the good that will come if people take action or both. In Uncle Tom’s Cabin , the call to action was an end to slavery and inhuman treatment. The reason that unfolds in the book is that while some of ...