Archives for July 2011
What Getting Published Will Not Do for You
An amusing list from Meg Rosoff
This week it’s for everyone thinking that publishing a book will solve your financial, career and self-esteem issues and cause your nearest and dearest to treat you with respect and awe.
The reality is…
- Getting published will not write your second novel for you.
- Or entice laundry fairies to come live in your house.
- It is unlikely to make you rich. Most writers also have real jobs.
- Getting published will fill your children with respect and awe until you ask them to clean their rooms.
- “When can we have the next one?” is what publishers say directly after “congratulations on your first novel!”
- The role of the second novel is to prove that the first one was a fluke.
- Being shortlisted for a major award is nice, but unless it is the Booker, none of your friends will notice.
- Being shortlisted for a minor award requires attendance at a long ceremony followed by sincere-looking applause for someone else.
- If you are lucky enough to be reviewed, it will usually be by the only person you have ever been rude to. The accompanying photo will announce publicly that you could afford to lose a few pounds. (A flattering jacket photo, on the other hand, will inspire people to remark how terrible you look in real life.)
- Publishing a novel will not grant you immortality. In the unlikely event that your book survives to the next century you will almost certainly be too dead to care.
Talking the Talk vs. Walking the Walk
Don Miller, Blue Like Jazz, writes in his post A Good Reason to Get Real
If you say something contrarian, share a real struggle, the whole group looks at you pityingly and prays for you. Not that your struggle was anything out of the ordinary; voicing it however was. In such a group, people don’t explore what they really believe. They seek to give the right answer.
* * *
I Interestingly, the real thing might not necessarily bring social acceptance. People might find someone who honestly follows Christ with all her heart as threatening as they found Christ. The real reveals the fake.
In a group that have combined to pretend that the Emperor has no clothes, a truth-teller may not be welcome. In a group playing in the garden, someone who has been out to the holy wilds of following Christ, who has left the shore and paddled out to Aslan’s Own Country, might be very threatening and suspect.
Coffee and Breaking Addictions
The Third Generation of British Christian Blogging and Sustainability
Image : Paul Wilkinson |
Short term Missions (thoughts inspired by Jamie, the Very World Missionary)
Negatives
Churches and individuals spend money that could have gone a loooong way in the third and fourth world on airfare to fly half way across the world to build and paint when local professionals could have done it for a fraction of the cost.
Many career missionaries, whom one hopes are loving and investing in those whom nobody else can or will invest in, start as short-term missionaries.
For children in orphanages, being hugged by a stranger for two weeks is better than not being hugged at all.
I have never been on a short-term mission. If I did, I would like to work with Heidi Baker in Mozambique as much for what I might be able to learn from her as for any benefit her orphans might receive from the love I will undoubtedly lavish on them.
My Week in Facebook Status Updates
Daisy and Quicker, our new pet ducks. Pet rabbits in the background. |
Roses on our garden wall |
Very interesting talk in small group on Chinese religion and culture. Lots I didn’t know. Duty and devotion to parents is one of the strongest held Chinese cultural values, followed by a kind of pragmatism that values things which work, such as success. When you present the Gospel to an ethnic Chinese person, a frequent early question will be, “What can it do for me?” though this might be put in code.
.Zoe has been going from one sleepover to another ever since her GCSEs and wonders if she’s “broken” Hmm…Today,the sweet sounds of Midsummer Night’s Dream and Romeo and Juliet are filling the house as both girls have their Trinity Guildhall Speech and Drama exams tomorrow. Can’t wait to see their performances.
A nice, though very warm day. Enjoyed Blenheim Palace Gardens with the girls. Zoe’s back from her Lake District trip with friends, and it’s been the first time since those GCSEs started that we’ve been able to go out and relax as a family. The Secret Garden is Blenheim is looking lovely, though the hostas are a bit slug-eaten. C’est la vie!
Is someone cursing America (thoughts inspired by Matt Appling)
Americans celebrating the death of Osama Bin-Laden |