Rachel Starr Thomson

The tighter your writing, the stronger it will be. You should always be on the lookout for words, phrases, and even whole sentences that can (and should) be pitched. No, I don’t mean you need to sap all the artistry out of your words–

“Now is the winter of our discontent” is a lot better than “Our discontent is over,” even though the first sentence is almost twice as long. Still, I hope you can see that either of the above is better than “Now is the time when the winter of our discontent is here.”

The key to creative tightening is not to shorten your sentences as much as possible: it’s to make sure that every word counts. Write potent words, reeking with significance. When every word is essential to clarity, beauty, and power–when there isn’t a single word that can be thrown out without leaving a dearth–you’re done tightening.

It’s a subjective art, of course. No one will ever do it perfectly, but to come close is a writer’s peculiar joy.

Any view of Christianity as fire insurance or a feel-good morality tale is missing the reality of the kingdom. The kingdom of God is that place wherein God has His unhindered rule, and that place is in our hearts. “The kingdom of God is within you,” Jesus told a listening crowd. And to live in accordance with His kingdom necessitates a total change of life. “Repent,” Jesus told the people of Galilee, “and believe the gospel.” Belief in the good news of the king’s arrival in our world goes hand in hand with repentance: with a complete about-face in our way of being, an absolute surrender to God’s rule and reign.

The fact is, the kingdom of God runs totally counter to anything we have learned growing up in the world. Jesus, the Servant-King, is the heart and center of His realm, and His character defines its laws and principles. There is no room in the kingdom for our self-serving games, our divisions and petty offenses. The King is love, and oneness, and grace. In the world, we preserved ourselves by fear and cunning; Jesus calls us to trust and childlikeness. In the world, we value possessions and position; in the kingdom, we value people and poverty of spirit.

In a sense, we who have repented and believed the gospel are outposts of heaven. We are a new and living world within an old and dying one. It is ours to walk in the light, to live as children of the day, to worship the True King and oppose the rebellious stewards who have tried to claim this realm for their own. To the darkness, we are the worst sort of traitors, because we dare to live eternal lives while the world tumbles ever nearer its ultimate destruction. The Bible speaks truly when it says that we are at enmity with the world. But at the same time, we are the world’s hope: because we have not just been left here to wile away the hours until Christ returns. Rather, we have been left here as colonists with a mission: to preach, as Jesus and His disciples did, that the kingdom of God has come, and that if we will surrender ourselves to the King, God has promised to “deliver us from the power of darkness, and translate us into the kingdom of his dear Son.”

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I just finished putting a complete collection of chapter excerpts from Heart to Heart: Meeting With God in the Lord’s Prayer up on Little Dozen. Come check it out!

My radio interview is tomorrow at 10:00 central time on www.homeschoolingradio.com. It should be accessible any time during the day. Let me know if you listen in! If you miss it I believe it will be archived and you can listen to it later, though I can’t guarantee that.

Topics including writing, publishing, homeschooling, God, and some blither.

Feeling rather insecure about this… I do not talk anywhere near as well as I write :).

My radio interview is tomorrow at 10:00 central time on www.homeschoolingradio.com. It should be accessible any time during the day. Let me know if you listen in! If you miss it I believe it will be archived and you can listen to it later, though I can’t guarantee that.

Topics including writing, publishing, homeschooling, God, and some blither.

Feeling rather insecure about this… I do not talk anywhere near as well as I write :).

I’ve been out of the “usual life” loop for a little while, so I’m enjoying getting back in. Alexis and I went to Bible study tonight (a sort of college & careers group based out of our church, but with an interesting mix of people at varying stages of life). We’ve been going through the Book of Hebrews, and it’s really been good. I just love getting into Scripture with a bunch of people and sinking our teeth into it, verse by verse.

I’m just so amazed by Scripture… I think I’m learning to appreciate it more and more. There was a time in my life when my spirituality (for lack of a better word) was largely based in “experiences” with God. I had a very emotional connection with Him. I’m not downplaying that… it was incredibly formative, and I still thank God for that time. And then things dried up. I fully believe that God orchestrated that “desert time.” And He promised me (when I begged for an explanation) that I would learn that “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth from the mouth of God.” Life since that time has been a deep and holy lesson in living by the word: eating it, standing on it, studying it, embracing it. He’s given us SO much in it.

The last year has been really rich in Bible study. At the moment I’m studying on my own (Luke… I’ve been going through the Gospels), listening to an interesting sermon series on Romans, and reading through Hebrews with my Bible study group. I love the way everything fits together, how more and more pieces fall into place all the time. Our discussion tonight brought to memory a verse I read when I studied Leviticus last year, and that verse suddenly snapped into focus for me for the first time. Not only that, but it applied to what I read in Romans… and something Jesus said… and a discussion I was having with a friend the other day.

I know I’m rambling… I’m just impressed with God all over again tonight, and I thought I’d mention it :).

I just did a radio interview with homeschoolingradio.com. Quite a new experience for me, and I’m sure I talked too fast and said “ummm” far too often, but I had a lot of fun talking about writing and publishing and serving the Lord and other connected things. Leland and Kathie Fleming, the hosts, were very nice.

The show should air sometime next week, possibly Monday, at 10:00 Central time (11:00 EST). I’ll let you know for sure as soon as I find out!

“I just returned from Vietnam where the church is exploding. What I saw on this trip, and have seen on past trips, is a church growing. It’s not because of Western involvement, or any other that I could detect, but from unique stories of how individuals came to faith in Christ through unexpected ways, and then wound up leading friends to faith in Christ.

“That led them to starting groups to pray and worship and reach out. I’ve yet to meet one who deliberately started out to start a church. It just happened because they were leading their friends to faith in Christ–just like Acts 11. Church wasn’t something they intentionally started to reach all these lost seekers. It was community that developed and emerged from relationships that grew due to their following Christ together.”

– Dr. Bob Roberts, Jr., founder of NorthWood Church in Texas, on why Asian churches move while we plan movements and often fail to see them. Check out the full article on House2House.com. (You may need to register to read some of the article… it’s free and worth it.)

Technorati Tags: missional living, church, Vietnamese church, house church, home church, simple church, missions, church planting, missions

“Now had the season returned, when the nights grow colder and longer,
And the retreating sun the sign of the Scorpion enters.
Birds of passage sailed through the leaden air, from the icebound,
Desolate northern bays to the shores of tropical islands.
Harvests were gathered in; and wild with the winds of September
Wrestled the trees of the forest, as Jacob of old with the angel.
All the signs foretold a winter long and inclement.
Bees, with prophetic instinct of want, had hoarded their honey
Till the hives overflowed; and the Indian hunters asserted
Cold would the winter be, for thick was the fur of the foxes.
Such was the advent of autumn.”

— from Evangeline, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I enjoyed that :).

There’s a whole coterie of words out there whose life mission it is to plague our work with ambiguity. Don’t get me wrong; they DO have their place. But these pushy little fellows will run rampant all over your writing if you let them.

Their ringleader is ye olde state-of-being verb “seems.”

Look at this sentence: “The sky seems to be grey.”

Ahem. Is the sky grey or isn’t it? Stand up to your writing: say what you mean! No more beating around the bush.

Here’s a few more:

“She felt a feeling like anger rise up inside.”
“It seems that the answer is found in our human nature.”
“The buildings resembled 17th century homes.”
“The river is probably the nicest place in town.”

All too often, we haul out words like “seems” and “probably” and “like” because we’re feeling apologetic or we’re not quite sure of what we’re saying. If you find yourself doing this, stop. Make sure of your facts. Solidify your opinion. And deliver it whole-hog. Have the courage to say what you mean. It makes for much better writing!

Was she angry or wasn’t she?
Is the answer found in human nature or not?
Are the buildings 17th century homes?
Is the river the nicest place in town?

Saying what you mean will make your writing tighter, sharper, and more impactful. Excelsior!

Technorati: writing, words, clarity, writing tips

The Writing Tip is coming tomorrow; I have fallen tragically behind on my work and have spent all day trying to mark and upload twenty papers by tonight. A failed trip to Starbucks to work on the papers in new scenery put me behind schedule still further. As a consequence, it is half an hour till midnight and I am still marking… the Tip can wait, I say!