Current Prayer Needs:

Paul:

• To keep going, though progress is slow
• Physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual growth
• Praise God for how far Paul has come from where he was

Marcia:

• Walking close to Christ
• Novel

What´s going on with my novel?

To give a general analogy, it´s like God is "growing a tree" with this book. As I told a friend, I´m sensing that He doesn´t want it to be a summer sunflower, which fades at the end of the summer. He wants it to be an enduring oak.

Don´t get me wrong; I haven´t suddenly thrown off all time restraints. On the contrary, I´m putting in longer, more intense hours than I ever have. I´m consumed with it! I fight against the urge to let everything else go and spend all my time writing on my novel. Hence you haven´t seen a lot of e-mails lately and often my house remains rather cluttered. But I realize I have a timeless message to tell, and if I don´t tell it well, the message may not come through.

So, God is watering this oak, giving it sunshine and fertilizer and time. He is teaching me. It´s hard work. The art of writing a great novel is not learned overnight.

Besides, I cannot write a greater book than I am, and God is forging me into a greater person. Through all my suffering, through my waiting, through my giving, through my learning and teaching, through much writing and re-writing, I am becoming. I am becoming an oak, so that I might write an oak of a novel.

Much of it has to do with the growth in my perception of God. Is He the central figure in my life? If He is, then He will also be the central figure in everything I write.

So as I plot and plan and revise, I´m taking a deep breath and diving deeper. God gave me some unexpected "diving gear" a couple of months ago. Let me explain.

A Writing Tool

Back in July I ordered a workbook from the Writer´s Digest Book Club--which I had initially joined to get four books at a greatly-reduced price. On what I thought was a whim (but what has proved to be divine guidance), I ordered an additional book several months after joining. It was a workbook of material taken from an intense workshop on writing/rewriting a novel.

The author/workshop leader (Don Maass) took a large number of best- selling and classic novels and analyzed what gave them substance. His concepts make a lot of sense to me, and are providing a wealth of rich ideas from which to re-write and strengthen my novel. As I go through the workbook, I am taking pages and pages of notes for the revision.

Looking through new analytical eyes, I was surprised to discover some shallow places in my writing. For instance, Maass recommended writing down what your heroine´s "defining quality" was. Now how many novels have you read in which you could ascertain the main character´s defining quality? Not many, if you´re like me.

I couldn´t even write down what the heroine´s defining quality was in my own book. Surprisingly enough, I´m not sure she had a single defining quality—but she does now! And I´m writing it in throughout the book, and changing the places that would seem to contradict that defining quality.

Which brings me to something else that I learned which was a new concept. I used to think that I could NOT have my heroine act in a higher, more honorable way than I myself would act, given her circumstances. For some unconscious reason, I thought there was integrity in writing like this. Now I´ve changed my mind, after realizing that I can create a heroine who would behave as I would LIKE to behave.

Even though I have been working harder on this novel than ever before, the work has been more rewarding than ever before. Why? Because I am learning to communicate with the Lord about what to write…learning to converse with Him about the hard places. It has become a collaborative effort, not just an effort on my part to "do what God wants me to." I think the process is what God is using to help me grow, and the product will be what God uses to help others grow.

An entertaining novel that can help people grow closer to God? you ask. Yes! And I think I have a strong Biblical model to follow, because Jesus often used fiction to help people grow. The gospels are peppered with parables. He rarely taught, but what he told a story to illustrate what He was teaching. (Mt. 13:34).

Isaiah and Ezekiel and other prophets used parables and allegories. ( Ezekiel 17:1, Psalm 78:2-3, Isaiah 5, Hosea 12:10).

Granted, a novel is quite a bit longer than a parable. But a non- fiction book is also quite a bit longer than one of Christ´s sermons. Get my point? Just because something is book-length doesn´t mean it´s not valid.

Because a parable or a novel is "about someone else" it´s truth has the potential to reach a heart that would otherwise remain closed. I think that´s why Jesus used fiction: to minister to hearts that were consciously or unconsciously barring the truth.

That´s a "nutshell" of what´s going on with my writing. Your prayers are greatly welcomed. Even though I haven't "beat the bushes" for prayer support, I need it. As anyone who's serious about magnifying the name of Christ has discovered, the invisible forces of evil are likely to come against you when you do.