Timothy's Thoughts

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 ...

A fter several months of putting up with a website template that I wasn't particularly pleased with, but was "good enough," I updated my website . The content's all the same as before, but I got rid of the design that I had hoped would look like a piece of paper with a burned edge--like what we used to do when we were children--and I updated it to something that I think looks better. The CSS is a little more simple than before, giving us less opportunity for it to break. I’ve got the print capability working. So, if you happen to be on my website and find an article you want to print, all you have to do is hit the print button on the browser and you should get a nice black on white page without the graphics. Well, without the graphics other than the images on the right-hand side of the page. Anyway, if you’re bored, go check it out. Like I said, the content hasn’t changed, so you won’t find much there that you couldn’t have found before.

B y now, you may have noticed that I have been using Sunday as a day to post my answers to the 20 questions for leaders that Michael Smith of ClearView Baptist Church in Franklin, Tennessee asked Mike Hyatt . This week’s question is As an organization gets larger there can be a tendency for the “institution” to dampen the “inspiration.” How do you keep this from happening? When we consider what the “institution” is, what we find is that it is a structure that defines exactly how things ought to be done. There is a place for the institution. Some rules are important, especially for a large organization. A committee of three, for example, may not need a chairman to accomplish its task, but if there is a committee of fifty, you had better have a chairman and a secretary, just to keep things running smoothly. But there is no reason that has to dampen inspiration. Inspiration comes from responsibility. If I a person sees a problem and feels personally responsible for solving that problem,...

T he next question from Andy Stanley’s pod cast deals with application . In teaching a Bible study, preaching a sermon or just speaking to potential book buyers, application is very important. We want people to take some kind of action, either change something in their lives or write out a check to pay for a book. But that’s non-fiction. What about fiction? What do they need to do? Jesus often taught using stories. He told of a traveler who was attacked along the road. As he lay there dying, two men respected by the men Jesus was speaking to looked at him and went on, not wanting to be bothered, but then a man despised by the Jews came and helped the man, even going above and beyond what was required. Turn from being self-righteous and pursue true righteousness, was the application, but Jesus didn’t say that in so many words. Instead, he revealed the application through contrast. You think you are righteous, but you aren’t even as good as a Samaritan is what he implied. They were fi...

T hree heavy hitters in the marketing community went at it this week. It began with Chris Anderson's book, Free . The second heavy hitter, Malcolm Gladwell, wrote a review for The New Yorker titled Priced To Sell: Is free the future? . His review disagreed with much of what Chris Anderson said in his book. Gradwell's claim being that no matter how cheap individual units of something become, the infrastructure of producing the whole will be too large to truly make them free. On Tuesday, Seth Godin came to Anderson's defense with his post, Malcolm is Wrong . So, who is right? Are Chris Anderson and Seth Godin correct that we will reach the point where information is so cheap that we might as well give it away? Have we reached the point? Or is Malcolm Gladwell correct that the cost of generating and delivering the information will prevent us from offering it for free? What was it your mother told you? There is no free lunch. I definitely am going to have to side with Malc...

N ovelists spend a lot of time writing. When treating it like a full-time job, it can take a month to write a novel. Sporadic writers may take a year or more. The whole time, the writer is wondering if it is a waste of time. We wonder if anyone will want to read what we have written. That leads us into the next question from Andy Stanley’s pod cast . We want other people to believe that what we have written is worthwhile. Why do they need to know it? We talked yesterday about the theme of our novels, or to use Andy Stanley’s term, the one thing . We don’t usually sell novels by telling people we’re going to teach them something, and yet, stories have a higher purpose than entertainment. Stories have always been the most efficient way to convey information that people will remember. Stories must be entertaining, or people won’t read them, but we must never forget their higher purpose and as such, we must write in such a way that people see what we are telling them as relevant. If you ...

H ow do you handle criticism? As writers, we open ourselves up for it. We labor over some of the decisions we make with our writing, from what our characters like to the theme of our books to whether to self-publish or traditionally publish. It is all open to scrutiny and every writer has his share of praise and criticism. We love the praise, but the criticism is hard to take. It might be better if we don’t handle criticism the way mediabistro.com reports Alice Hoffman reacted to a less than ideal review . Allegedly, she chose to respond by Tweeting the reviewer’s phone number and e-mail address, encouraging her fans to respond to the review. I can think of worse things she could have done, but the word for this is vengeance . She later apologized . I’m sure most of us have looked at something someone said or did that we didn’t like and thought, “I’m going to make him pay. He’ll regret he ever did that.” If I were to guess, that is what I believe must have been going through Alice Hof...