Timothy's Thoughts

W riting is hard, or so I’ve heard. It seems easy enough. You simply put pen to paper to fingers to keyboard and let your thoughts flow. It’s great when that happens. So what’s so hard about writing? For me, writing gets hard when I’m writing along and I realize, “this is boring.” When we write, we begin with a theory for the story. When the theory works, the story flows from the fingers. We write scene after scene and it keeps on going. When the theory fails, it is difficult to write. If we’ve diligently outlined our story, we know we need the scene, but it’s boring. The characters aren’t moving the story forward. They’re just sitting around waiting for something to happen, something to respond to or they’re talking about something that they’ve already discussed or no change is taking place. The conflict is minimal. It’s boring. What’s the Theory? The theory for a story is all those decisions we make before we begin that we think will present the story in the best way. One of the bigg...

S ocial networking, is the topic from the 20 questions for leaders that Michael Smith of ClearView Baptist Church in Franklin, Tennessee asked Mike Hyatt Can you explain the impact, if any, that social networking and Web 2.0 has made on your organization or you personally? I hear that Web 2.0 is dying as a term. It is probably just as well, but the stuff it is will remain for a long time. A few weeks ago, we had a student in our Sunday school class who was absent. When I got home, I sent her a simple little message on Facebook saying something like "Missed you in class." I encounter people on a daily basis on various blogs that I will probably never meet in person. I spend far more time with social networking than I probably should, but I have yet to see any significant change in our church because of it. E-mail has finally caught on. It seems like our committees are doing more work through e-mail these days than we are doing when we meet face to face. I know Robert'...

E ditor’s Note: This week, rather than give you a behind the scenes look at my books, I thought I’d give you a look at a little of my thought process as I write by telling you a story. Before I write page one and before I draw an outline, I often begin with a story concept that looks something like the one below. This particular story is unlike any of my books, but it is one I’ve enjoyed contemplating. Deep in the blackness of space, a cargo ship is underway toward a planet on the other side of the galaxy. On this trip, the ship is also a passenger ship of sorts. Few cargo ships make a such a long journey without taking on a few paying passengers along the way, but this ship is loaded with stasis pods—hundreds of them. Most are medical patients who have picked up a deadly decease on one planet or another. They have paid a great sum of money for the hope of a cure on a distant planet. A few are travelers who prefer traveling in stasis to spending months in space. Some of the pods bear ...

F orm letters are a fact of life. I suppose some people hate them. That seems to be the opinion of some literary agents anyway. They refuse to send a response of any kind. But me, I love form letters. No one expect busy people to respond to write a personal response to every piece of correspondence they receive. For that matter, most people don’t care if the response is personal, as long as they get a response. We know that some of the mail we send never gets past the secretary and the response is either a form letter or written by someone else.So maybe there isn’t much to love about that, but what I love about form letters is that occasionally one will come that is a little different. It is a reminder that we aren’t just another face in the crowd. The other day, I received an e-mail from a particular library saying that they would like to have copies of my books in their library and asking if I had copies I would be willing to donate. I gladly sent them a copy of each of my books....

O ne of my favorite flowers is the Dogtooth Violet. You might say that I prefer it to some other flowers, such as the African Violet and yet, I have an African Violet growing in my living room window, but no Dogtooth Violet anywhere. The important thing to note here is that our preferences don’t keep us from recognizing the beauty of something else. The other day, I mentioned 5 Favorite Plot Devices . These are things that when they appear in a book, I want to read the book. In response to that post, Michelle wrote, “There’s several of those that I actually avoid.” What I prefer, she doesn’t. Music is the same way. Some people might like Country, others might like Rock, and still others might like Classical or Jazz. I pretty much like any kind of music, as long as it isn’t Country or Southern Gospel. That is my preference; you don’t have to agree with me. It’s subjective and so are our preferences where books are concerned. You’ve heard that beauty is in the eye of the beholder . But w...

W here should a book begin? I don’t mean the story. I mean the book. One of my pet peeves is that so many books are numbered incorrectly. Pick up a book and look at chapter one. What page is it on? Zondervan begins Frank Peretti’s The Oath on page 3. They begin Terry Blackstock’s Line of Duty on page 11. Kregel begins Miralee Ferrel’s The Other Daughter on page 9 and Maureen Lang’s Pieces of Silver on page 7. Oddly enough, some publishers get it right on one book but not on another. It’s like that don’t care. I will say, however, that some publishers do seem to get it right, allowing for the occasional mistake. I randomly looked at some of the books published by Thomas Nelson and they each began Chapter One on the proper page. Which page is that? Page one, of course. What many publishers are doing is that they numbering from the first page in the book, rather than the first page in the story. This makes the book look sloppy because by they time we include all of the front material,...

S peaker attributes tell the reader who is speaking. Some writers believe that readers often skip over the word said , seeing it briefly only to ignore it. Others try to avoid speaker attributes as much as possible. Some writers like to use speaker attributes to indicate how a person said something. Rather than just, “he said,” such an author might write, “he whispered” or “he shouted.” Some writers will extend this and write such things as “he laughed” or “he smiled” in their place, but some writers and editors will strike out these statements, saying that laughing is not a way of talking, so it should not be included as a speaker attribute. They would prefer, “he said as he laughed,” or something like that. The writers who would strike out speaker attributes all together would likely tell us that we should replace speaker attributes with an action beat . Instead of the following: "Fascinating," he said as he walked through the door. They would have us write: "Fasc...