Timothy's Thoughts

T he battle with the biggest villain always comes last in our stories. Our hero battles his way through the minions, each is worse than the last, then comes the final enemy. Everything that the hero has learned to this point goes into defeating the enemy who has been behind all the problems he has faced. Only then is there a final victory.   In life, we have a final enemy. That enemy is death and there is no enemy quite like it. If we face it and lose, there is no coming back from eternal separation from God in a place of torment. If we face it and win, there is eternal joy and peace. But win or lose, to face death is to face pain and agony. Though some go quietly in their sleep, there are so many ways to die that are far from peaceful. A man’s heart stops and though he may keep breathing for a while, it does him no good because he runs out of oxygen. He gasps for air and fears the end is upon him. He knows he is dying, but there’s nothing he can do. A woman driving her kids...

J unk mail may find its place in the trash unopened. Bills may sit unnoticed until they are due. But something personal—a love letter—doesn’t go without notice. The recipient opens it carefully, anxious to see what the one he loves has written. His heart swells with joy as he reads each word. He holds the paper close to his face and takes in the faint scent, bringing him closer to his beloved. He’ll put it back in the envelope for a while, but he puts it aside with care. It won’t get torn or carelessly dropped in soup. And then the time will come when he will take it up again and read it, memorizing portions of it without even trying. I recently saw a post about the use of scripture in sermons. It seems that many preachers are being encouraged to reduce the amount of scripture. Some seem to suggest that while it is good to read scripture a preacher must move quickly to something relevant to the people in the audience if he doesn’t want to lose them. And lest you think it is just ov...

A reader who is reading Searching For Mom for a class she is in asked me several questions. I am posting them here so you can also see the answers I gave: Where are you from? I am from southeast Missouri, which is also the area in which Searching For Mom takes place. I took some artistic license with the town in which the story takes place, but the heart of it is very much like what you might find in the area of Cape Girardeau and Jackson. How old are you?, Are you married?, Where do you live? I am 34 years old and I live in Fort Worth, Texas. As a child, what did you want to do when you grew up? As a young child, I wanted to be a fireman. To some extent I lived out that dream in that I helped setup a volunteer fire department in a rural community and I spent one summer during college working for the fire department at a large diaper plant. What books have most influenced your life most? At the top of the list of books that have influenced my life, the Bible sits very comfortably. ...

S aying something against prayer seems like a bad thing to do, but recently I have had a few reminders that prayer isn’t always a good thing. I saw a blog post recently about “praying the Psalms.” I’ve often wondered if God bothers to listen to prayers that people read out of a book or have memorized. The Psalms are great for meditation and if that leads someone to pray about something personal that’s great, but I sometimes get the impression that people think they can use prayers written by other people as some form of incantation. It doesn’t work that way. Somehow I get drawn into some of the strangest discussions. The other day Michael Hyatt had a post on his blog about the tension we authors experience concerning self-promotion. I disagreed with the guest blogger and she took far greater offense at what I said than what I could have anticipated. She had included the words of one of her fans and had disagreed with that fan. I basically said that I thought the fan was right, so some...

A writer’s voice is that part of his writing that makes him unique. Read Mark Twain and you know it’s him. Read Dickens and you know its him. Read Poe and you know its him. Voice is a lot like a person’s accent. We may think we don’t have an accent, but we all do. We have all learned to say words a certain way and to move our mouths a certain way. It is unique for each of us. A writer may spend time trying to “find his voice.” You don’t have to “find your voice.” If you are writing from who you are, then your voice is already there on the page. If you are cynical, that will show. If you are light hearted, that will show. If you are meticulous in word choice, that will show. So what happens when you get a rejection letter and the agent says, “you need to work on your voice?” The agent isn’t saying that you don’t have a voice. We all have a voice. What the agent is saying is that he doesn’t like your voice. That’s a little like the American Idol competition. A few years ago, there was ...

A s writers, we want to write compelling stories. The Bible has many compelling stories that we can use as our example, but today I would like to do a case study of the most compelling story of all, that of Hosea. It’s a short story that you should go read for yourself, but allow me to paraphrase. The Lord spoke to Hosea and told him of a message he had for his people. As a way of illustrating that message, the Lord told Hosea to go marry a woman from a family involved in prostitution. Hosea goes and marries Gomar. They have a couple of children together, but then there is a third child that may not have been Hosea’s. Gomar seems to have tired of Hosea at this point and leaves him for other men. She believes they can give her what she wants better than Hosea can. Hosea remains aware of what is going on and takes care of Gomar by giving the men she is with the resources to provide for her. She is unaware that it is him taking care of her and not the men she is with. He withdraws his he...

S ome time ago, I did a comparison of BookSurge, CreateSpace and Lulu in terms of value per dollar related to self-publishing a book. Both BookSurge and CreateSpace are owned by Amazon.com and recently they merged. I don’t think this surprised anyone, considering that having the two companies using two different pricing schemes only made things confusing, which is part of why I did that comparison. I recently received an e-mail from a reader, asking me to do a similar breakdown of the new CreateSpace. I am happy to do so. For our purposes, we will assume the author has a print-ready PDF for both the interior and the cover of the book. The author may have done this work himself, or he may have had someone else do it for him, but as he enters this process he believes he is ready to upload his files. In the new CreateSpace, he has several options. One is the Author’s Express Package. This is essentially the same cheapest possible package that was available under BookSurge and costs $299. ...