Timothy's Thoughts

I n the interest of full disclosure, I should first say that I own stock in Radio Shack. I’ve often said that I think one of Radio Shack’s problems is that their stores are too small. I like Radio Shack because they you can’t help but dream about all the ways you can build something with the cool stuff they have in there and I don’t like Best Buy because it is such an unsatisfactory shopping experience and yet I shop at Best Buy more than I shop at Radio Shack. If I had my way, Radio Shack would have a superstore the size of a Best Buy store where you could get any and all the stuff that Radio Shack sells online. That being said, there’s something to be said for the small stores that Radio Shack has. I walked into a Radio Shack the other day in need of RCA connectors. The store clerk greeted me the moment I walked in the door and asked how he could help. I told him what I needed. He not only knew what I was talking about, but he left the counter, walked the short distance to the back ...

P ornography is a problem. And it’s not just men. I won’t bother to repeat the statistics because on a personal level you either have a problem with it or you don’t. The reason I bring it up on this blog is because due to the title of one of my books, the Google Alert I’ve set up for it generates a number of results linking to web pages where people are looking for specific kinds of pornography. I’m sure they sit in the privacy of their own home or maybe even at work and think that no one knows what they’re doing. Of course, God knows, but even if that doesn’t bother them, there’s really nothing you can do online that someone else can’t see. I don’t figure those people who are online looking for pictures and videos of mothers doing strange things to their children are finding evidence of my book like I’m seeing evidence of their search, but it got me thinking. There are people who think they should write books to reach the sinner. Some of these people write books with bad language and...

W e had a full house at church yesterday. There was still some seats left. Some people sat in the choir loft. We had a video feed going, so I was upstairs taking care of that, though I wouldn't be able to tell you if anyone actually watched it or how many. Even if no one watched it, it was good practice for us. I'm sure the day will come when we'll need that capability. Sometimes it's good to practice something just so you'll be able to do it later. I'm sure that can be applied to writing, but frankly I don't feel like writing much more at the moment.

L ast week, I lost a dear friend, Wyndol Hart, a deacon in our church. He died from complications following a heart attack. He was well loved by the whole church. The young children quickly learned that he carried candy in his pocket, ready to hand out to them all. He was well known not only at our church and in our association, but he was well known by the southern gospel music crowd. As I write this, I’ve just remembered that he was always the one who organized the Valentines banquet, selling tickets and arranging for the entertainment. I’m sure that by the time that event comes around the Planning Committee will have it under control, but it’ll be different. He was very involved with our effort in building our new family life center. I can’t help but wonder if it doesn’t say something about God’s timing when we look at how it all worked out. It was a long drawn out process, but we had finally completed the building and we had the dedication service. Within a week of that service he...

I ’m really frustrated with some of the bloggers I follow. I see most of their blogs through the RSS feed. I’ll decide I want to say something about what they said and I’ll click through to the blog. So then I can’t actually comment because it takes so long to load all of those widgets they’ve got running on the side of their blog. Do I really care which books they’ve been reading or what songs they’ve been listening to? No, I don’t. So why show it to me? Some of that stuff is okay, but some of it doesn’t work very well. And the only reason much of it exists is as a way to advertise something the widget creator is selling. He gets free advertising because some writer wants to put her bookshelf on her blog. That stuff will kill a blog. So cut it out!

A nother author mentioned the gender imbalance at the ACFW conference. That was one of the first things I noticed when I learned of ACFW. There just aren’t that many guys who attend. It looks like a big women’s meeting and for the most part it appears to be run like a big women’s meeting. This may make me sound like a male chauvinist, but there’s a big difference between the way men conduct meeting and the way women conduct meetings. I don’t like the way women conduct meetings. Stick a man in front of a large gathering and he’s all “let’s get on with this thing; we’ve got stuff we’ve got to get done.” With women it’s all peaches and cream. “Isn’t that a wonderful speech she just gave? Let’s give her a hand to show her how much we appreciate her.” It could very well be that more men don’t attend the ACFW conference because they would rather listen to fingernails on a chalkboard than to sit through a women’s meeting. But let’s consider some other possibilities. Logic Men tend to think ...

R ay Bradbury talks about his writing journey in the video below. I apologize beforehand for the product placement in the video, but near the end of the video he talks about what he decided is the right stuff to write. What the video and then we’ll discuss it. “I was writing for me and I discovered that was the way to go.” On the surface, that sounds vain, but when we consider what he’s saying it makes a lot of sense. While our ultimate goal in writing is to communicate with the reader, writing that doesn’t draw upon our innermost feelings will come across as hollow. There are a number of stories that I could write just because I’ve read or watched so many of them. Being able to write a story is one thing, but understanding the motives of a story is another. If we aren’t writing about our own emotions, we won’t get them right. We might end up with a villain who is just bad because he’s a villain and a hero who is good because he is a hero. The reader will be much more interested in a...

I ’m not one to be big on the power of positive thinking, but I’ve noticed that how you see yourself has some influence over what you are able to accomplish. An example of where it works is in public speaking. If you walk into a classroom thinking that you have nothing to say and the students are just humoring you because they don’t want to teach the class themselves, you will fail as a teacher. But if you walk into a classroom confident of your ability to teach them something and with self respect for your ability as a teacher, you’ll be able to do a much better job as a teacher. However, before you take the attitude that if you think it it will come true, let’s consider why it works. Thinking you’re a great teacher doesn’t make it so. I’ve seen a number of people who are overly confident in their abilities and the result is that people laugh behind their backs. To be a great teacher you must prepare to be a great teacher and only then have the confidence in your abilities. If you do...

S everal of the writers for the blogs I follow have been off at the ACFW Conference, so much of last week and maybe this week they’ve been having all these “guest blogs.” Am I the only one who just skips over a blog when I see that it’s a guest blog? It’s not that I don’t think the people they invite to write for their blog don’t have something meaningful to say, but it’s a little like calling someone on the phone and getting the answering machine instead. It may be that I can tell the answering machine what I needed to tell the person just as easily, but it’s disappointing because I was looking forward to talking to the person and all I get is the machine. When I visit a blog that I’ve enjoyed reading and see a guest blog, I’m disappointed because I know the blogger isn’t going to post anything today. To rectify this problem, I suggest we bloggers adopt the following rule: Never use a guest blog to replace a regularly scheduled blog post. If you post on Monday, Wednesday and Frida...

T o paraphrase Psalm 115:3 , God is in heaven and he does what he pleases. I think many people have a problem with that verse because it makes God seem distant. It gives us a picture of God in which he seems to have no concern for the problems of mankind. But when we consider the context in which it appears, it gives us a better image than that. The psalmist talks about the heathen asking where our God is. They point to the idols they worship and say here is our god, where is yours? To that the psalmist answered that God is in heaven, but he goes a step farther, saying that God does what he pleases. Unlike the idols that these people made with their hands, God does as he pleases. We can take a stick of wood, shape it into an animal, stick it on a shelf and bow to it as a god. If we decide to move to a different house, we can take the god with us and put it on a shelf in a different house. The god has no control over which shelf it sits on, but the living God does as he pleases. Where i...

O ne of my responsibilities is to keep our church website up to date. In doing that, it is necessary to inform people of upcoming events. I find it difficult at times to know what to write. One of our church members is an author who will be teaching a ladies’ Bible study class based around her latest book. Before her husband retired from full time pastoring, I knew this author as the wife of a preacher in our local association. But there are many women who first met her through her book “What’s a Girl to Do?” a book that teaches teenage girls biblical principles on how they should handle many of the problems they face. The issue I have is that while I may see this author as just another church member talking about her in that way doesn’t do much to encourage people outside of our church to consider attending the class she is teaching. It’s easy for me to say that she’s just like our other teachers—they’re all great, but how many outsiders would believe that. They’re looking for proof. ...

L ast week I attended the Cane Creek Baptist Association’s Youth in the Harvest for the first time in several years. I even got to lead the singing, which is always a pleasure. For those of you who have no idea what the Youth in the Harvest is, it is a monthly youth meeting. I assume it’s a Missouri thing, but it’s not unlike youth meetings that other associations have had. It struck me while I was there that it is ironic that healthy church associations are typically made up of small churches. By healthy I mean that the association has frequent meetings that draw several churches. The Cane Creek Baptist Association has two meetings a month. One is the Youth in the Harvest and the other is the Third Sunday Singing. They also have a Fifth Sunday Meeting that meets the weekend of the fifth Sunday. And they have an annual meeting. They have about twenty churches, which is relatively large for a local association, but I’m not sure any of their churches run more than a hundred in Sunday Sch...

I write this from rainy Zalma, Missouri, having returned from a high school volleyball game. Zalma beat Marquand three games to none. Zalma’s volleyball team has been doing fairly well this year. If this game was any indication, Marquand hasn’t been doing very well. It wasn’t much of a game to watch. But I got to see some people I haven’t seen in several years. I saw some of my old teachers and some of the people who were around when I was in school. The old gym looked a lot like it did when I was there. They’ve made a few changes, but mostly it was the same. It’s odd going back to school. I spent thirteen years of my life there and it all seemed so important. These days, it doesn’t seem important at all. There are other students who are there now. They’re walking the same halls I walked and sitting in the same classrooms. They are the ones worried about their test grades. I’m glad I’m not there.

H omeschooling is growing. Texas saw a twenty percent increase in homeschooling last year. Supposedly, it is because of the economy. Parents who were sending their children to private schools are pulling them out and homeschooling instead. Now, I realize that there are some cases where home, private and alternative schooling is necessary, but as a general rule, I think that parents with Christian children are doing the wrong thing by homeschooling their kids. The primary reason parent homeschool is because they want to “integrate their faith” into their children’s education. I get that. Really, I do, but what about integrating our faith into the education of the lost world? Isn’t that what God has called us to do? I hear a lot about prayer being taken out of schools and the Ten Commandments being taken off the walls. I can tell you right now that the courts have done far less to take prayer out of school than what Christians have done by pulling their kids out of the public schools an...

S cience fiction folks like to talk about these other dimensions. Sadly, many of them get the idea wrong. They talk about another dimension like it is another Universe. As you know, we keep track of four dimensions, X, Y, Z and Time. If you were to add a fifth dimension, whatever that would be, it would be possible for something to be at one location and at the same time be at another location. Quite literally, as far as our four dimensional Universe is concerned, that object could be everywhere at once. The comparison is usually made between a two-dimensional space and a three-dimensional space. If a living being could only perceive two dimensions, then a three-dimensional object would appear as the intersection. A cone would appear as a circle or some other conic shape. If it moved along the third dimension through time, it would appear to expand or contract. It could come into existence within an instance and disappear for no apparent reason. The problem with that is that there is ...

T here are several stories that I’d like to be writing right now. And there’s a non-fiction book I’d like to write. Actually, there’s more than one. Funny how I want to work on them while I need to be working on the book I’ve already started. The one I’ve started completes a five book series. I really want to be finished with that series. It isn’t that I don’t want to spend more time with those characters; I love my characters, but I’m ready for a new cover design. That’s one of the great things about self-publishing; you get to design your own cover. Of course you can let someone else do it, but what’s the fun in that. So one more novel and I get to play around with covers again.

I ’ve hard that the best stories come about when you write yourself into a corner that you don’t think you can get out of, but you do. Writing shouldn’t be easy. When you find that a character is doing something without a good motivation, you might decide to quit. You might decide to go on to another story, but if you keep going and work through the problem you might discover that what you have is one of your best stories ever. It might take you a while, but work it out and see what happens.

A lot of importance is placed on an author making a name for himself. How different that is from how television and movies work. You don’t often know much about the person writing a script. You might know something about the actors, but only the stars. You don’t pay much attention to most of the people involved and you may only recognize the actors by the character they play. It may just be wishful thinking, but wouldn’t it be nice if books were that way? Perhaps it’ll get that way. People won’t pay much attention to who wrote the book, just whether it is a good book or not.

C onfess your faults, one to another, James 5:16 tells us. I’m not sure when the Catholics first built their confessional boxes and made confession a requirement for salvation, but in modern times the confessional box often aids sagging plots in television shows by providing a place where the evildoer can talk about his crime without fear of the police learning of his crime. Of course, his confession is often overheard by someone standing nearby or by some recording device placed in the box. It’s all in good fun to make things more interesting. But before you go sticking confessional boxes in your stories, let’s look at the idea of confession a little closer. The Catholics have popularized the idea that confession is going and telling one’s sins to a priest. Protestants have turned around and said that it is God we should confess to and not to a priest. When we look at James 5:16, the phrase “one another” seems to indicate that confession is not limited to the sinner and the priest, b...

B ooks aren’t like television shows. The thing about television shows is that some people will watch them just because there isn’t anything else on. You’re tired and you want to watch some mindless entertainment. You want to watch it now, so you turn to the most interesting thing you can find that is on now. With books, people pick and choose. Occasionally, they’ll pick something up just because it is there, but someone had to make the decision that the wanted it in the first place. It’s interesting because television shows can get by with some of the worst plots. They’ll throw an episode in there that is nothing but clips from previous episodes. Usually, the main character is away somewhere and the supporting cast is remembering what a great person he is. Can you imagine if we tried doing that with books? Instead of writing a new book, we would just pull chapters from other books to tie together with some weak plot. No one would buy the book, but television producers don’t seem to t...

S uposedly, you're twice as likely to get a traditional publishing contract by self-publishing a manuscript than by getting an agent. While that may seem like it ought not be the case, I think it makes sense. People who self-publish are a different breed of people than the traditional author. The author who is willing to self-publish does so with the idea that he will have to do most of the work. So while some traditional authors are sitting around debating how much work the publishing company should be doing that they aren't, the self-published author is out selling books. The result is that the manuscript that some people thought wouldn't sell proves that it will. There isn't a publisher around who wouldn't prefer an author who can sell books over one who just wants to write books.

I read the other day that there is an elongated youth. It used to be that soon after high school, people began to be responsible productive members of society. They got jobs. They got homes. They married. They had children. But today, many people are waiting to do those things. And worse, I think, is that so many people don’t see themselves as being responsible. A woman in her forties got onto me the other day for calling her “Ma’am.” And many women don’t like to be addressed as “Mrs.”, saying that that is their mother-in-law’s name. I think it’s all sad. Even though I expect my parents have many good years left, I can see that they have reached age where they have begun to move away from the active involvement they once had. If the younger generations are not willing to take on the responsibility of adulthood, we will have a society of children and no progress will be made.