2015 FCWC – Page 2 – Faith & Culture Writers Community

January 26, 2015January 30, 2015

Three Essentials for Writing Words that Matter

By Emily Freeman

I recently watched a four and a half minute video where author and pastor John Ortberg remembers his friend, Dallas Willard. One quick segment shows a clip from a conversation John and Dallas had only a few months before Dallas passed away.
John: “How do we help people – if somebody wants to think about, “How is my spiritual life going or how is my soul doing?” – how do we help people ask and answer that question?”

Dallas: “Well, very slowly. One at a time, we listen to them . . . I think the next thing is a question and not a statement: What’s bothering you? Start there.”

They talk some more and then John makes a joke.
John: “What’s bothering you? could be an interesting liturgical question – to start the church service asking, What’s bothering you? And the people could respond back, And also you.”

I laughed out loud when he said it and so did the audience. Then, as the clip ends, Dallas can be heard saying, “That would be absolutely revolutionary.”

I had to pause the video at that moment, three minutes and fifty-five seconds in, Dallas’ deep voice and thoughtful statement hanging there in the air over my desk. That would be absolutely revolutionary. I knew I agreed with Dallas but it took me a few minutes to figure out why.

I don’t remember being expressly taught not to be bothered, but somewhere along the way I learned it anyway. To ask myself or someone else what is bothersome seems like a self-focused, self-indulgent invitation to rant or complain. But what if we were willing to look deeper in? Instead of manufacturing peace by shooing away my frustration or smoothing out my ruffled feathers, I am learning the importance of getting quiet enough to honestly consider what bothers me – not just on the surface, but deep within my soul. Sometimes what I learn is ugly or uncomfortable. But there are other times I discover right next to my frustration lives a drop of passion I didn’t realize was there and a spark of hope I didn’t realize I needed.

What does this have to do with writing words that matter? When it comes to uncovering my authentic voice as a writer, the first thing I have to know is what is bothering me. Once I’m able to honestly access my frustrations, I can begin to uncover the passion and hope that live close-by. This is how all four of my books were born.

Being frustrated doesn’t make me qualified or ready. But it does wake something up within me, something that compels me to move and want to get ready. The frustration rolls into a compulsion towards change, passion to communicate and to move into the chaos of the questions even if I don’t have all the answers. But being frustrated about an issue and compelled to do something about it won’t sustain the message for the long-term. For me, what really keeps me moving is the hope of something better. It’s important for these three things to work together – frustration, passion, and hope. Otherwise, my voice will be something I don’t intend.
Passion and hope without frustration feels inauthentic.
If I’m not bothered deeply enough, no one else will be either. Frustration is the spark that fuels the passion and the hope. Without it, my writing won’t have enough life to meet a strong enough felt need or to tell a compelling story.
Frustration and hope without passion leads to detachment.
If I’m frustrated and have hope for change but I’m not passionate about the issue, I won’t be able to engage it with enough heart to make a difference. Love is tucked deeply inside passion, and we don’t want your loveless art.
Frustration and passion without hope leads to cynicism.
In my experience, when I am frustrated and passionate without hope, I’m vulnerable to cynicism. If I don’t have hope for change, despair creeps in and my writing feels too dark and filled with angst. Without hope, I write afraid.

Frustration wakes me up. What frustrates you? Passion gets me moving. What compels you? Hope keeps me going. What do you most hope for? I’m thankful for Dallas Willard’s revolutionary question: What’s bothering you? As writers, may we be brave enough to answer it, passionate enough to engage it, and hopeful enough to influence change.

Emily is the author of A Million Little Ways, Grace for the Good Girls, and Graceful. She shares her words and photographs on her own website at www.ChattingAtTheSky.com. We are honored to welcome Emily as one of our featured speakers at the 2015 Faith & Culture Writers Conference.

January 5, 2015March 3, 2015

Tell your naked honest truth

By Marc Schelske

I started calling myself a writer a little more than a year ago. The truth is that I’ve been writing all of my life. I’ve got a stack of book starts buried in lost corners of my computer. I’ve been writing original content in the course of my employment for almost 20 years now. I self-published a book on Amazon almost exactly 2 years ago. (Man, was that cool!)

Then, at last year’s Faith & Culture Writer’s Conference I pitched a book and ended up with an agent! But even still, it took a little stern encouragement from Jeff Goins to push me over the emotional line of actually referring to myself as a writer.

One of the tasks I started thinking about as I started taking my writing more seriously was the serious quest that all writers must embark on: “Finding my voice.”

I worried about my writing voice as I blogged. I fretted that I might invest so much time building a blog, then discover I was writing in the wrong voice all along. Then what?

I started paying attention to the voice of writers I admired. What were the secret ingredients? How did Ann Lamott come off so self-effacing, so honestly-insecure and hilarious? What made John Gruber’s technology writing so engaging? What allowed him to be so darn opinionated and yet not off-putting? I was thinking about my voice, and then I was thinking about my thinking about my voice. That’s a stressful mind-game if ever there was one!

Then I remembered something. I had already found my voice once.

I’ve been a professional speaker for… well a little more than 20 years now. I’m closing in on a thousand presentations. During that time, I went through a host of stages.

There was the “Karaoke stage” where I tried speaking in the style and tone of various famous speakers I admired.
There was the “Memorized Perfection stage” where I not only wrote the presentation word-for-word, but then memorized the tone, the gestures, the whole darn thing.
For a few years I was in the “Speaking Factory stage” where I presented three different original talks every week for two years straight.

Through all of that I’ve tried on a pile of different voices. I’ve channeled African American preachers, comedians, TED talk presentations, professors, and the voice I imagine favorite authors speaking in. In all of that time, I was building skills. I was building experience. I was building courage. But I wasn’t really finding my voice.

I found my voice when I decided what I really had to offer.

I’ve been a preacher for most of my public speaking experience, so I had the authority of scripture and the buy-in of congregations that wanted to be taught. But we’ve all heard preachers. We’ve heard preachers talk about the very same scripture. What makes the difference between one you connect with and one you don’t?

At first I thought what I had to offer was great scholarship. So, I’d study and research and prepare so I could understand my material as deeply as I could. That helped me be accurate and thoughtful, but it wasn’t my voice.

Then I thought what I had to offer was well-crafted material presented with excellence. So, I’d write and re-write. I’d practice and practice. That made my presentations less painful for the audience for sure, but it wasn’t my voice.

At one point I thought what I had to offer was a twist, a new way of looking at an old truth. So, I’d hunt and pray and reflect on my material, always looking for a new angle. That made my work more interesting — sometimes in a helpful way, sometimes not so much… It also wasn’t my voice.

I found my voice when I learned that what I have to offer, my unique view, was my honest authentic vulnerable truth.

Over and over I experienced this. I’d put hours and hours into a presentation, crafting every edge, and the audience would be unmoved. Then I’d take a risk, push past the very visceral panic in my gut, and share something from my own journey. Some moment of insecurity or fear, a place where I blew it, my own weakness and doubt. Those moments? Every. Single. Time. People responded. They were moved. They were challenged. They grew.

I found my voice when I started telling my truth.

As a writer, I’m re-learning this lesson. I’m re-learning what it looks like to offer great content, to do it in a way that connects with people—but most of all, to do it in the most honest, authentic, vulnerable way I can bear. That’s where my voice resides.

It’s a scary place to write from. But it’s also when you start writing things that matter, things that will move people. Write as much as you can. Master the technical skills. Blog, because blogging is to writers what gigging is to musicians—it’s practicing in public. But most importantly, tell your naked honest truth. That’s where you’ll find your voice.
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Marc Alan Schelske attended his first Faith & Culture Writers Conference in 2014, and returns this year as an important member of the leadership planning team. He serves as the email and launch coordinator as well the scribe.

Marc is the author of Discovering Your Authentic Core Values, an upcoming online course called, “How to read the Bible to Hear God and Grow without Having to be a Legalist, a Theology Professor, or a Crackpot,” and has a book in development about the intersection of faith and emotion, and is represented by the DC Jacobson Agency.

Marc grew up in Ohio, but he’s lived in the Northwest long enough to feel like a native. Marc is a husband, dad of two, speaker, writer, hobbyist theologian, recovering fundamentalist who drinks tea & rides a motorcycle.

Visit him at: MarcAlanSchelske.com |Twitter: @Schelske

December 30, 2014January 9, 2015

The Quest for Epiphany

by Tony Kriz

There is something that happens when pen hits the page, when pixels populate the screen. It is like the unknown becomes known. It doesn’t always happen that way. In fact it is the categorical opposite of predictable, of formulaic, but when it happens, it is magic.

Writing transcends consciousness.

I am not a genius writer. Far from it. I have a simple formula that guides the majority of the chapters of my long form writing (books). It goes like this (I can’t believe that I am admitting this):

You start with a story. The magic of a story is not its drama. It is not its otherworldliness. It is not that it is exceptional. The magic of a story is found in its meaningfulness. You may ask, “Meaningfulness for the reader?”

No. The magical element is the meaningfulness for the author. Magic and meaningfulness exist in a delicate marriage. When a writer writes out of their own visceral meaningfulness and into honest expression there is the real hope that magic will happen.

One more thing… When I write a book, I am essentially asking myself one formative question. When I wrote Neighbors and Wise Men, I was asking myself “What are my formative memories when non-Christians taught me how to follow Jesus?” In my current book, Aloof, I was asking myself “What are my formative memories about God’s presence and God’s troubling absence?”

Once a story is identified, I often don’t actually know exactly WHY it is formative, I simply know that it is. I begin the chapter by teasing my best guess as to what the stories formative lesson might be; that is my introduction.

Next I tell the story. I write very existentially. If you were to happen upon me writing a chapter in a corner booth at a local pub or coffee shop, odds are you would see my face contorting with the emotions of the story I am writing. You might see my eyes filled with moisture or a hotly furrowed brow. That is how I write.

When the story is fully told, including a well-imagined setting, sympathetic characters and a believable conflict and climax, I move to the chapter’s conclusion.

This is where the magic happens. It does not happen every time, but when it does, it is one of the great endorphin cocktails. Suddenly, as if I am an observer and the chapter itself is a seducing character sitting across the table, the true meaning of the story blossoms right before my eyes.

I rarely see it coming. How could I? And the surprising frequency that this newly realized meaning is harmonious with my spackled-together introduction (bringing new meaning I could not have predicted) is soothing, comforting and arousing.

If we were to flip together through the pages of my books, both of us would probably be surprised by how many chapters I would admit “I did not know where this chapter was going to end when I started it.”

Keep writing. Write viscerally… existentially… and dare the magic.

Let the epiphanies come. That’s how we move from the blank page to something beautiful.

Tony is the Writer in Residence at Warner Pacific College, the sponsoring host for the 2015 Conference; Tony is also on the Faith & Culture Writers Conference advisory board, and a speaker at this year’s event. He has been at every single Faith & Culture Writers Conference, either as an attender, speaker, keynote speaker, advisor, or leader. His new book Aloof: Figuring Out Life with a God Who Hides is coming out in January, 2015. Tony writes at www.tonykriz.com.

December 24, 2014January 9, 2015

Allowing peace to be an overflow offering this Christmas season

By Ashley Larkin

I’m guessing you’ve heard the song “We Need a Little Christmas Now.” For me, its commands to fill stockings, bake fruitcake and deck the halls embody the bossy pressure I feel to make everything happen during the Christmas season.

Not only do many of us experience stress in the attending and tending, gifting and hosting, baking and making, but we also know the pressure to make the holiday meaningful, magical and memorable for ourselves and for others.

And by this point in the season, we might very well feel too exhausted to enjoy or even care about the day itself.

Brennan Manning asked, “What rules our lives as we prepare for Christmas? What has power over us?”

If I’m honest, more often than I would like to admit, it is compulsion to do more and fear that I will disappoint. Yep, I’m worried I will fail Christmas.

The world yells its accusations and demands, but on this Christmas Eve I am straining to hear the whisper of what I believe might be the most forgotten gift of Jesus’ birth: PEACE.

If you stop for a moment, you might hear peace in the whistle of the wind through bare branches. Or see it in the stillness of your children snuggled up under their winter covers. Or glimpse it as you look upon the glittering lights of the Christmas tree when, for a moment, all is calm and bright.

Yes, peace is a gift to you right in the middle of this day, whatever it might hold for you – in the midst of things that do not seem right and are not right at all. Peace comes as a gift to hold in both settled spaces and fleeting moments. Peace is an assurance in the midst of the storm.

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When Love came down in human flesh into a stable reeking of animals, into a long-waiting and hopeless world, the common shepherds were the first to know. The newborn King, they were told by the angel, would be in the feeding trough.

Then a huge number of angels filled the sky, praising God for the gift of Jesus, known in the book of Isaiah as the Prince of Peace. The multitude proclaimed “PEACE to all those touched by God’s favor.”

Songs of peace on earth, goodwill toward men flooded the heavens.

On this day before Christmas, how do you need to know peace’s flood? Where do you need peace to be born, like the newborn one in the manger?

Today, I will choose to find peace in giving thanks when stresses press. I will pray for God to carry the burdens of those suffering under grief, oppression, injustice, war, sickness and fear. I will light another candle. Read Christmas stories with my daughters. Gather around the table with those I love. Sing of hearts preparing him room, and hopes and fears of all years being met in him.

I will slow to feel the peaceful rush of breath moving into and out of my lungs. I will allow Christ’s peace to settle down deep.

And then, when some of the activity of the season has died down, I’ll snuggle up with my pen and journal, and then my laptop (though it’s a bit less snuggly), reflecting and musing and creating, allowing peace to be an overflow offering.

Isaiah 54:10 tells us that the Lord’s promise of peace will never be removed from us. This Christmas, might you know the truth of that gift: peace on earth, goodwill toward you.

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Ashley Larkin is a dear friend of Faith & Culture Writers. A member of the Advisory Board, Ashley will co-lead a workshop on blogging at the 2015 Mini-Retreat-Breathing Space Pre-Conference, April 10. She has served as the Agents and Editors Coordinator, scribe, and mentor at past conferences. She can be found sharing her heart at her Draw Near blog: AshleyMLarkin.com

December 16, 2014January 9, 2015

Rough Draft – Our conference theme, our lives.

By Cornelia Becker Seigneur

I love the quote by Maxwell Perkins that goes like this: “Just get it down on paper, then we will see what to do with it.” Perkins, as the editor of Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe, knew what he was talking about.

I just wish I would live by those words, as I should.

The blank page. Why does it haunt us?

Just begin.

The perfectionist in us perhaps, or the fear of being criticized or the fear of the painful memories we channel when we begin to write. But, the quote by Perkins reminds us to just begin, just get it on paper, onto the computer, into that journal.

That’s why we are really excited to announce the theme of the 2015 Faith & Culture Writers Conference:

Rough Draft: From Blank to Beautiful.

We want to gather friends of words and story and The Word together to give them permission to create. To not be afraid of the blank page. To know that it’s okay to know that our work is in progress. Because aren’t we all rough drafts, creations of God whom He’s working on?

Every year as we think through, pray over, and dream about the theme for the Faith & Culture Writers Conference, we come up with five words that represent our vision for the year. This year, to go along with the Rough Draft theme, we wanted to have those five words reflect the nature of the creative process. Those five words this year are:

Decide, Dare, Prepare, Persist, Release.

Follow these 5 words, and you will find your creativity expand and your writing career moving forward.

Decide. We need to decide we are writers, dreamers, artists, activists, authors, entrepreneurs, believers. It starts with a yes. An, “I can do this, I will do this, I start today.” It is a simple yes, packed in deep dreams and beliefs and that you-know-you-are-called vision. Don’t wait for someone else to give you permission, to tell you you are good enough. You do not need their permission. God has already given you permission. He has shaped you and molded you and made you into a creative being. He is a creative God. His first words, “In the beginning, God created.” Decide. Begin.

Dare. To write that first word. That first story. That first blog post. That first article. That first book proposal. That hundredth book proposal. Let’s face it, It takes courage to get our words and story out there. It takes guts. People may not like our work, they may not appreciate our story, they may think we are not good enough. That’s okay. Do it anyway. It’s your calling.

Prepare. Yes, you do need to decide that you are a writer with something to contribute, and you then need to dare to get your art out there, to have courage. But then, you need to find a way, get some advice, seek out the expertise of others, learn how to write moving blog posts. As a writers’ conference, we want to help you prepare for that launch of your words, your art, your story, your creativity.

Persist. Okay, you’ve decided to begin, you’ve said yes to the dare, and you’ve begun to prepare for what that means. Perhaps, it’s twice a week blog posts, meeting with a friend, seeking out an editor, attending a writers conference. But, then truth be told, it takes persistence. It takes sticking with it! There really are no one–book wonders or one-blog-post-goes-viral-and-you-are-famous wonders, or one-anything-wonders. Most of those authors who “make it” have been writing for years. When no one was noticing. Until one day, they got noticed.

Release. It’s time. You’ve decided to get your words out there, you’ve dared to be creative, you’ve prepared and you’ve stuck with it. Now, let it go. That’s it. Let people read it, and keep getting it out there, and leave the results to God. If one or a million or just you are changed by your words, your story, your art, it was worth it.

Cornelia is a freelance journalist and the mother of five children and finds her pen often turning to the chaos and craziness and beauty in her family life. She is the Founding Director for the Faith & Culture Writer’s Conference, and blogs at www.corneliaseigneur.com.

July 1, 2014January 9, 2015

2015 Faith & Culture Writers Conference dates and location announced!

The date and location of the 2015 Faith & Culture Writers Conference have been announced!

On Friday-Saturday, April 10-11, 2015 we will hold our Fourth Annual Faith & Culture Writers Conference at Warner Pacific College in Portland, Oregon.

Warner Pacific College reached out to our founding conference director, Cornelia Becker Seigneur, who met with Warner’s Writer in Residence Tony Kriz and FCWC executive admin Bethany Jackson along with key Warner folks to discuss details. We are excited to partner with this wonderful college. One thing that Luke Goble from Warner said is that Warner wants to be more involved in terms of the planning and presence of the event on their campus. I love this! More details to follow. 2015 Faith & Culture Writers Conference Date and Location announced!