Sunday, sitting in church, Paige and I were in the middle, with our sons on either side. Joe, our older boy, leaned over Paige and asked me to pass a note to his little brother, Sam. Sam giggled like a maniac, and in a stage whisper heard three pews away, asked me what it said. I looked at it and (so as not to disturb my fellow worshippers) whispered in his ear: "It says, 'Sam is a dirtbag'."
He giggled, rubbed his hands together, picked up his pencil and started writing something. Then he turned to me and asked, "How do you spell dirtbag?"
I leaned over and whispered [Continue reading...]
Why Writing is Important
I like Noah. Noah was a late bloomer. All his contemporaries were having children in their sixties, their hundreds, their one hundred nineties. Mere striplings. But Noah? Noah was five hundred years old when he had Shem, Ham, and Japheth, six hundred when the flood came; middle age. A few more years and he wouldn't have had the energy for kids after a hard day plowing a rock with a stick, much less take up boat building. And that's what I like about him: He's middle-aged. I'm middle-aged. And now I'm taking up writing. Other than God telling him to build a boat, the whole destruction of the human race thing, and him living close to a thousand years, we're pretty much the same.
The world needs writers. Writing is the heart of the matter. It is the root from which all other art springs. Writing is the mythic at its most basic form. To the literate, all other art needs interpretation, but writing–good writing–springs forth from the mind needing [Continue reading...]