rough draft – Faith & Culture Writers Community

April 19, 2015April 27, 2015

Reflecting on Blank to Beautiful

By Dawn Klinge

And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. -Philippians 1:6

Facing the computer, blank screen in front of me, silently, I will the words to come forth. Nothing happens until my fingers hit the keyboard. Even then, with that first tap, tap, on the keys, I have little idea of where these words are going. I only know that I want to create something beautiful. I must start somewhere. God help me, I pray.

The words sound clumsy. They aren’t beautiful. Keep going, He says. I look around at other pages, reading other people’s words. They’re beautiful. I want to write like them. I delete my words, ashamed.

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Facing the cross, crucified Jesus in front of me, silently, I will the words to come forth. I’m sorry, I say. Please forgive me. Even then, with that first heartfelt prayer, I have little idea where this life is going. I only know that he’s beautiful and I love him. He’s on that cross because of me, because he loves me. I must start somewhere. God help me, I pray.

I’m a mess. I keep doing things to hurt the One I love. Keep going, He says. I look around at other people’s lives. I think they’re beautiful. I want to be like them. I take my eyes off Jesus, ashamed.

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I start again. Tap, tap, tap on the keyboard, the words coming faster now. God help me, I pray. I’m scared but I keep going. I don’t know if I have anything to say that people will want to read. I want them to think my words are beautiful. He helps me anyway. My words are rough, but I put them out there for others to read. And then I want to take them back. I want to hide. But they’re out there now, and I can’t take them back. My words are still not beautiful, but I ask God to use them anyway.

///

I’m still a mess, but I turn my eyes back to Jesus. He’s no longer on the cross. Now he lives and I have hope. I still sin against the One I love, but God sees me as beautiful, because of what Jesus did for me. I keep going. I want others to see the beauty of God in my life. I feel their eyes on me as I stumble. I want to hide. But I pray that God will use me anyway.

///

I continue to face the computer. Tap, tap, words fill up the screen. God help me, I pray, because I want my words to point to Him, who’s beautiful in every way. Keep going, he says.

///

I continue to face the cross. My beautiful Jesus reminds me that I don’t need to hide. When I stumble, I just remember that he already took care of it. I want others to see my Savior. He tells me to keep going, and I continue to ask for his help. I see a little more clearly where my life is going now. One day, my rough draft will be done, and it will be beautiful, because the author and finisher of my faith will use it for his glory.

Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. -Hebrews 12:2

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Dawn Klinge attended the 2015 Faith & Culture Writers Conference. This essay was inspired by the theme of the conference, Rough Draft: From Blank to Beautiful. Find Dawn’s work at Dawn Klinge.

February 19, 2015March 3, 2015

Stop hiding from fear of failure

By Marc Alan Schelske

Like you, I’ve got a project I’m supposed to be working on. I’m supposed to be completing the written content for an online course I’m developing.

Most of the time I’m pretty focused on getting things done. Most of the time. But right now, I’m finding myself infinitely distracted. So many things to do. So many justifications. Social media to build connections for my writing. Another round of research. Reading just one more book full of insights on how I can be a better writer or blogger.

Lots of things to do, but honestly, it’s all just a distraction. I’m feeling enormous pressure and resistance around the one thing I really want to be doing right now. Why?

Because I’m a perfectionist.

I care a great deal about every detail. I want the things that I do to be excellent. Beautiful things inspire people. As an artist, it’s far more interesting for me to engage in crafting something elegant. The world is better when people care about excellence. But there’s something more here, something darker.

Perfectionism is a shield that hides fear of failure.

If something were truly perfect, it couldn’t fail, right? At least that’s our myth. I’ve known incredibly talented musicians who spent years tweaking their songs, rather than releasing them, and writers who will write and re-write and re-write, rather than let another human read their work. Failing to move forward is its own smothering failure.

Anne Lamott named this demon exactly when she wrote these words:

“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life… I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won’t have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren’t even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they’re doing it.”

Stop hiding from failure.

Fear of failure is the real enemy, and perfectionism is its voice. This fear results in paralysis or, in my case, eternal distraction. If the book never comes out, then I’ll never be critiqued on my concept, or my theology, or my writing style, or my font choice, or the hat I’m wearing in my picture. That feels so much safer.

It is safer, but it’s not life.

Steve Jobs is famously credited as saying “Real artists ship.” They do the thing they say they do. They write, or sing, or dance not in their bedroom, but out in the world where it matters.

Maybe you shouldn’t be allowed to call yourself a thing–a writer for instance–until you’ve done it in a place and time where your failure would matter, where others could judge your performance, where you had to push through the fear of being rejected and do the thing you love anyway, out in public where everyone can see.

My heart says, “I will be a writer, if I can just write exceptionally well,” but I don’t think that’s true. The truth is that I am a writer when I push through the fear of rejection and failure and share my writing with you. After all, we are all just rough drafts.

(Oh, hey! That’s the theme for this year’s conference: Rough Draft: From Blank to Beautiful! Letting go of perfectionism is a big part of that journey.)
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– Marc Alan Schelske is the Launch Coordinator and crazy-note-taking secretary for the 2015 Faith & Culture Writers Conference. He loved attending the 2014 event that he came back this year to help! He blogs about intentional spiritual living at Marc Alan Schelske

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January 7, 2015March 3, 2015

Dare to create in world of hushes

By Brooke Perry

We’ve all had it, that moment where we release the inner weapons of our mind and soul. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?

When we feel that blast of icy cold freedom, thoughts come easily like gifts and life seems like an adventure we can tackle one stroke of a paintbrush, pencil, key or chord at a time.

Not remembering a moment like that recently? They’re easy to forget. As children these moments are much easier to welcome in. We have an almost insane amount of resilience to the harshness of the world around us, even when it’s constantly in our face.

I remember daydreaming and being unrealistically hopeful as an eight year-old girl the very same day that my dad died in our home. I talked of my wedding as I sat on the couch after hearing the news that my dad had breathed his last. There was pain associated with the new reality of him not being at my wedding one day, but I could still see the dress.

Hope wasn’t completely sapped by tragedy.

My mind wasn’t completely numb to beauty.

There is something about a child’s mind that reflects the heart of God for us, and sadly, but not hopelessly, so many of us lose the permission we once distributed freely to ourselves to truly and fully…be.

We hold back, we doubt, we fear and when those ugly lies stand against our creative beautiful whole minds and hearts, it cheapens the wonderful and whimsical character that is in each of us.

Oh that we would dream in the face of death again. Oh that we would dare to create boldly and loudly in a world full of hushes.

So, can I ask you to join us? We’d love to allow you the space to release yourself back into this world; after all, you are a result of God doing just that through His creation of you, your wonderful and beautiful self. Let’s see what’s still inside of you, shall we? We’ll give you the permission you need to create until you can find it in yourself to do the same.

Brooke is the Mentor & Agent Coordinator for the Faith & Culture Writer’s Conference. She blogs at BrookeNicolePerry.com

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 21, 2014February 6, 2015

Overcoming Writers Block with the Rough Draft Mindset

By Kari Patterson

Hell hath no fury like a woman with writer’s block. Or so my husband says.

He has a right to say it, as he has endured my endless rants as I attempt to draft book chapters in the midst of life. Creativity is such a beast, yes? So untamable and infuriatingly elusive, yet intoxicating and life-giving once the muse mercifully makes her visit and you find words pouring out onto the page.

This process of writing, it can be absolute madness, especially when it “matters.” When the stakes are high, a contract is on the table, a deadline is looming, expectations soar and we find ourselves desperately hunting down that elusive creativity with such intensity we’re crazed. The more desperate we are for inspiration, the less likely we are to find it. The muse is shy.

There is, however, a gentle way to coax her out of hiding. It is a simple: the Rough Draft mindset.

This year’s Faith & Culture Writers Conference is Rough Draft: From Blank to Beautiful. I love this. It reminds me of the freedom-filled approach to writing and life that relaxes the pencil-grip and lets creativity come alive.

In her brilliant book, Writing on Both Sides of the Brain, Henriette Anne Klauser explains our trouble with writing stems from the fact that we are taught to write and edit simultaneously, rather than letting ourselves loose with words without worry for conventions, then going back later to edit and rework. She tells a fabulous story about a little boy who wants to write a story about a mouse and a motorcycle. The problem is, he doesn’t know how to spell motorcycle, so he writes a story about a mouse and a bike, but somehow when he’s done it wasn’t quite the same story he had in his heart.

Haven’t we all been there? We had something sacred inside that we so wanted to share, but we knew our limitations and feared failure, so we smash the story into something more manageable and lose the sacredness of it altogether. The boy was afraid of seeing his teacher’s red marks slashed across his paper, so he produced a lesser work, and wasn’t true to what was in his heart.

How much better would have been a rough draft about a mouse and a motorcycle!

Klauser also explained that the brilliant Russian pianist Franzk Liszt produced not only Tarantella, Don Juan Fantasy, and Liebestraum, but also more than 700 works, most of which were “uneven in quality, superficially composed or down-right dull.” The point? Even the greatest writers and composers spend the majority of their time writing less-than-stellar material. Can we allow ourselves to try something and do it imperfectly?

This is the Rough Draft mindset. It is the only way to go from blank to beautiful.

Here’s the thing: What’s true of writing is also true of life. An expectation comes such as, let’s say, Christmas. The most wonderful time of the year. The time when your kids’ dreams should all come true. Then company comes and the cameras are clicking and that blasted Facebook feed is just chock-full of everyone else’s perfect life and the pressure to “compose” the perfect holiday can choke the joy and inspiration straight out. We do well to remember, every day is only a rough draft.

The most sacred holiday moments are those when you just live. Not when you’re striving to craft the perfect moment. Not when everything’s orchestrated and choreographed. When my son and I were curled up on the couch last Friday night, just sitting in silence staring at the tree-lights, savoring the last few hours of him 7-years-old, I thought to myself, This is the highlight of my year.

The only way to discover the deep well of inspiration is to live. Not live looking for a tweet or a title or a clever catchy phrase, live looking for life. For beauty. And not only for the sake of writing it, but the sake of living it.

The ever-present danger we writers face is to skip straight to the telling without the living.

So this Christmas, let’s embrace the Rough Draft Mindset It is the way to overcome writer’s block and the way to overcome life block. Let’s relax our way into our imperfect holiday, because Christ is our perfection, once and for all. Let’s write and give and and live and love, scribbling beautiful fragments from the depths of our souls.

Merry Christmas.

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Kari is one of those people who has been to every single Faith & Culture Writers Conference since the first one in 2011. She loved it and got involved. She’s been our communication coordinator, an emcee, and now she’s on our advisory board. This year she’s co-leading a workshop at our pre-conference mini-retreat. Kari is a writer and speaker who loves seeing sacred in the mundane, and writes about it at karipatterson.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.