Timothy's Thoughts

A fter years of writing books and never understanding why people say writing is hard, I’ve decided that if writing isn’t hard, you aren’t doing it right. Now, that’s not to say that we should make writing difficult, just so we have to suffer for our art. And it’s not to say that everyone who finds writing difficult is a good writer. But no one achieves greatness by doing what is easy. This is true in any field. Imagine the great concert pianist. He is performing in Carnegie Hall. He walks out on stage. All eyes are on him as he sits down at the piano. He rests his hands on the keys. They raise ever so slightly as he prepares to hit the first note. Then with one finger he plays Twinkle Twinkle Little Star . You don’t get to Carnegie Hall by being the best at playing easy stuff that any five-year-old can play. The same is true of writing. When you consider that there are millions of would be authors out there who are willing to write the easy stuff, no matter how well you write easy...

Now here’s another one. Suppose someone offered to give you all of those pennies ($10,737,418.23) or they will give you only those things you need in any given day. After having been burned by the pennies, I’m sure you will assume the second is the better choice, but you may not know why. Without having been burned, you would likely choose the money. With money, you are in control. You get to choose what you buy. You don’t have to rely on the other person knowing what you need. The thing is, as we go through a day, there are relatively few things that we use at any given time. Look around your house and think about how many things you have that you haven’t touched today. Other than the joy of knowing you have it. You could have gone through the day without it. Tomorrow, you might need it, but not today. Look at the food in your pantry. How much of that will you eat today? What about your car? You drive it for maybe an hour or two and the rest of the time it is parked. If we looked at...

“ I just love it when a plan comes together!” Hannibal Smith used to say as the A-team brought victory from the jaws of defeat. Well, I’m at the point where I want to say, “I just love it when a story comes together.” I’ve been fighting this thing for several months. It started out as a simple logline. It sort of flashed into my mind, but once I thought of it, I knew I had to try to do something with it. I’m not ready to reveal what it is in a wide public forum, but I will say that what fascinated me about it is that it takes one of the worst situations you can imagine and then implies that the solution makes it even worse. Not this, but something along the lines of “She thought their divorce was the worst thing that could ever happen, but then they reconciled.” After thinking about it for a while, I went ahead and started the story. I had an idea of what might be worse than the worst thing, so I headed in that direction. But then it didn’t work. The story involved a couple of par...

W hat one word sums up everything that every successful writer has ever written? What one word tells us what every reader it is looking for? Think you can’t do it? Think you can’t come up with just one work? I think you can, because that one word is hope. Hope is what it is all about. Take the bestselling book Heaven is for Real as an example. It has turned into a chase cow for Thomas Nelson. But why? What is it that people expect to find in its pages? Hope. Many people are fearful that maybe heaven isn’t real. They’re fearful that the Bible isn’t true. So they are turning to a little boy named Colton Burpo to give them hope. If he went to heaven and saw it, then it must be there. My fear is that he’ll let them down. I fear he’ll revise his statement later and say, “I made up most of that because I thought my parents wanted to hear it.” Read the book and tell me you don’t see that coming. What about a novel, like Harry Potter . Don’t we look to characters like Harry with hope, wis...

H ere is a book trailer that works. Let’s look at why. 1. It entertains - Even if you never intend to prepare a sermon, this video is fun to watch. Who can’t imagine what must be going through the poor assistant pastor’s head when he receives an e-mail saying he’d better be ready to preach on Sunday. And then to look at all the things he tried, before typing in the phrase “How Sermons Work.” It’s kind of funny to think that a man would do that, and yet we’re all guilty of doing something similar. 2. It shows why you need the book - It first shows us a problem and then it shows us that the book is the solution. But if you look closer, you’ll see that it follows the outline of a story. There is a problem, which the character tries to solve. The solution isn’t what he hope. He tries again (with the book) and all is well. 3. It is simple - A video like this shouldn’t burden us with all of the reasons we should buy the book, but it should give us one very specific reason. If the v...

Y esterday, I mentioned a discussion I had with someone about the color or Francine Rivers’ novel Redeeming Love . I also described For the Love of a Devil as being green and moving into the territory of forest green or even black at points. There is another book that I’ve been working on some and I think of it as a brown. Not a dark brown, but it had definite earth tones to it, with a tinge of yellow that brightens it. Why are we able to think of stories in terms of color? Some are a fiery red. Some are as black as night. Some are a cold blue. Some are a soothing green. Some a relaxing teal. Some are a cheery yellow. Some are soft and tender pastels. What is it that allows us to say that? Color moves us emotionally. So does music, but music is active. Color is more static. Color tells us the state of the environment. The gray of a cloudy sky gives us the impression that it is a dreary day. The black of night hints at dangers lurking in the darkness. Blue is a color of authority....

I love when people disagree with me, especially when they stick around long enough to have a good discussion. The other day, I got into a discussion with a woman about the color of a novel. It started with a literary agent asking me what kinds of books I thought were missing in Christian literature. I answered that it seems like most of what is out there is either pastel, as is the case with romance and other forms of women’s fiction, or it is the dark browns and black of stories about demonic forces taking over the world. There isn’t much in between. In another part of the discussion, another commenter said something about Francine Rivers’ Redeeming Love . I said that I had read the book and I saw it as being primarily aimed at women and it is more pastel. The woman disagreed, so I thought she was disagreeing about Redeeming Love being aimed at women. I went into some detail about how Francine Rivers’ had fashioned Redeeming Love in such a way that the woman had the primary lead a...