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rgod -> RE: Does Your Writing Honor God? (6/26/2008 9:17:46 PM)
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This is a really interesting question. I wonder if it is something that I have to be intentional about or if it is something that just flows out of you, you know? I'm reading a book right now written by Julia Cameron called "Floor Sample." If you remember, she is the same writer that wrote "The Artists Way." I never liked "The Artist's Way" because I always felt that it was very new agey - I couldn't quite put my finger on it - but knew that there was something in it that wasn't quite right. Well, in reading "Floor Sample" which is a creative memoir that outlines her life - her marriage to Martin Scorcese, etc. - my thoughts were confirmed. She reveals everything, from her occultic involvement with psychics - her own "ESP" - "psychic abilities", and her approach to life which was not godly. My point here is that her spiritual views came through in "The Artists Way" - from the very first chapter - without it necessarily being very overt (I only read the first couple of chapters - perhaps she was more overt later in the book). It is so easy to pick up a book and within a chapter or two to see where the author is coming from - whether they are aetheist (like Amy Tan - who really is - I just watched an interview with her the other week), new age (like countless others) or Christian.
In my heart, I long to just write books where God just flows outward - I just want my entire life to be like that. Like, I think of Tolkien - did he deliberately choose to make his characters reflections of different aspects of the trinity? Or did this come out because of the way that the Lord lived in him? I don't know the answer to that because I don't know a lot about him. L'Engle - did she do that? I think Lewis was intentional.
My characters just come out of me - sometimes very refined, sometimes naive. Sometimes they are way more sensual or rough and I am almost afraid to keep writing because I don't want them to do something that I wouldn't feel comfortable with. This scares me - not because they are evil or anything like that - but because they seem to have a life of their own. Like the one today - she looks exactly like her Peruvian great grandmother with the exception of her being quite tall and lean - lanky and model-like. Yet, culturally she is much different than she looks and so she struggles with beauty, difference, and acceptance in American society that still insists that everyone without an accent fit into one of five slots - white, black, asian, hispanic, and native american (check the box on the census form). I have no idea where she came from, but I feel the anguish of her confusion as she considers a relationship with a man who is twenty years older than she is. But then the other character that came out today was an older woman with dementia whose mother thought creating stories was equivalent to lying. And so this woman, who was actually a tremendous storyteller, never quite realized her full potential - but with dementia, was able to bypass this early conditioning and come up with the most amazing - odd stories.
So little of what I write thus far has been ... biblical - but I am praying that the Lord still comes out in it.
So what do you guys think - do we need to be intentional?
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